To my knowledge, the only-one-of-its-kind Con-scene report by Devestator and The Beat is now online [outline] [full report]. I believe this is the second year of the report, and this seems to have a greater participation than in the first year, though the sample size is still small.
It’s weird to write about this, mostly because TCAF is lauded in it and so linking it seems a bit like tooting my own horn, but there’s something important here.
If you remember my post on changing convention culture from late last year, I came to a few light conclusions, but I think one of those is now highlighted and underlined thanks to this report: non-comics exhibitors do better, on average, than comics exhibitors at comics shows. Even if the numbers are off, the trending isn’t, and this is an economic reality that comics makers at shows are constantly facing. I would think, or hope, that as someone who LIKES comics and wants to see successful and well-compensated creators of comics, that this would concern you reading. It certainly concerns those comic makers.
But most importantly, I’d hope that the convention organizers reading this survey realize that extra care and attention has to be given to comics at comics shows, just to bring things back up to an equal footing. Not an advantage, but equal.
Comics and their creators are the root of a lot of that merch and material that’s fighting for dollars at these shows, and treating them with a greater degree of attention, respect, and especially booth position and promotion, is integral to the overall health of the creators, and therefore, the comics industry.
Anyway, my two cents on a Monday afternoon.
– Chris
TCAF Photos used in this post by Joanna Wong, http://www.joannawong.ca/