Where to Sell my New Zine?
I recently compiled a selection of my Pandemic drawings into an art zine. The fun of zines is sharing them with someone who will read them.

C’mon. Just read my stuff…

Having exhausted my household of zine-readers, I decided to table at Geek Girl Con. This is a convention that takes place in Seattle and was on hiatus during the COVID days. I had only tabled once before but the feeling of the convention was, well, a weight off my shoulders. Geek Girl Con feels a lot more personal than big comic cons, but it still has lots of people attending and there is plenty of workshops and panels to attend. I don’t feel bad for being an indie creator at GGC! In fact I feel very encouraged to continue doing my own thing. The sales last time I went weren’t bad either.

Crab Rare Arts Best – my new 48-page zine featuring odds and ends, including drawings, doodles, and short comics.

This zine is named via magic square, so the title isn’t supposed to make sense. Scraps of knowledge were collated by ancient people and protected with magic squares instead of properly being titled. So I did that in the same vein. It’s 48 pages of unrestrained nonsense, pulled together by virtue of ‘this is everything I happen to have on my desktop right now’.

I also created giclée prints of my elasmotherium unicorn, my gastronomy chart, my medieval cat meme, and various small artworks I’d made on my livestream. I used my inkjet printer and archival-quality cotton paper. To fill in the rest of the table, I brought leftover acrylic fossil charms (some of which were in blind boxes) and some older zines from pre-pandemic times. Warlock’d and Hands & Feet made their appearance. Then Devin and I masked up, loaded everything up in the car, promptly snapped off the side-view mirror while backing out of our garage, and called in a Lyft to get the rest of the way to the convention. I totally forgot my banner so I sent Devin back for it. He arrived with all my forgotten stuff and also…dumplings. He’s sort of amazing.

Of Pomegranates and Unicorns –  $60 print I had for sale.

I thought for sure this print was going to be the star of my show. I even made extra copies and an additional design with the recently-reconstructed horn. I only sold one, and I only sold it while I was away from the table! Maybe I should have Devin pitch this one in the future.

Gastronomy Chart — Another $60 print I had for sale.

Much to my delight, Gastronomy Chart sold several copies. I even had it hiding behind the bone charms because the contrast of the dark night sky made the bones pop out. People still had a fun time discovering it and that probably added to its charm. I was worried about this one because online it’s never been very popular. Just goes to show that social media literally means nothing when it comes to point of sale.

Mother!! print — a $40 offering at a smaller size than the big luxury prints, same quality of paper and printing though.

This passive-aggressive cat meme was the surprise hit of the show. You can really tell when someone is responding to something on the table. People would run up and show their friends or reference roommates. Glad I made a few prints of these as a joke. I couldn’t even use my tactic of redirecting purchases from the pricey $40 print to the $15 zine — People just wanted the cat, and they were willing to pay the meme premium.

In terms of other sales, I sold the average amount of zines, and was surprised by the enthusiasm for some of my older zines. Someday I will shift those out of rotation. Still have a few left.

Among the various cosplayers and con-goers near my table, I encountered a very tame iguana on top of its owner’s shoulders and I got to pet it. Everyone was wearing masks. My usual sales tactic of handing people stuff off my table to handle it was a little awkward, considering. Devin was also somewhat better at selling my stuff than me. I think he pulled in more sales. Lesson learned: I should just go walk around and relax more at these things.

You may have noticed the high quality of photos taken of my table in a previous post. At the convention, I met an amazing photographer (AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps) who offered to take shots of my table. Sporting an impressive portfolio of print media photography, I was very excited to make her acquaintance and see what she saw through her lens. The organizers at Geek Girl Con put her in touch with me and it turned into a cool collaborative adventure.

I also met someone from the Sequential Artists Workshop in person for the first time! We both live in the Northwest area so it was cool to get my local social circle widened a little.

Look at this adorable whale shark print by Rebecca Martinez!

I picked up a moon rabbit sticker from Rebecca and couldn’t be happier with the design aesthetic. Now I just have to get back to drawing traditionally so I can get a new sketchbook, as I like to crown my sketchbooks with stickers. I highly recommend grabbing something from Rebecca’s Etsy shop if you can. It’s certainly inspiring me to do something digital, so that I have somewhere to send all this leftover stuff from the convention.

Should You Do Geek Girl Con?
All in all, Geek Girl Con only lasted one day, but it worked out really well. People had to buy then and there so I did about as well as I do during a three-day convention. It does make me wish that artist alleys were only open for one day, so that artists have more time to browse around and escape their tables during the rest of the con. I adore this convention and highly recommend it as just big enough to get visitors to your table, and just small enough to make you feel like you’re part of something special.

As far as health safety goes — everyone wore masks. It was still tricky to navigate health boundaries because part of a convention is handling merchandise and saying hello to tons of people. I know I accidentally thrust my hand out to a baffled person because I had totally forgotten not to do that anymore. In general I could feel my social skills grinding slowly into gear, but never really overcoming the awkwardness of basically holing up for 3 years with my partner and losing all of my small social groups in the process. There wasn’t anything particularly special in terms of health requirements outside of the masks and I believe (?) a vaccination requirement as well. So, do this one at your own risk when it comes to skirting COVID.

Geek Girl Con also does plenty of remote outreach via their Twitch channel. Geek Girl Con is something you can interact with all year round from any distance that is safe. I really appreciate all the work they do to make a safe vibe for a convention. Just really positive and light all around.