My Coverage of APE 2010

APE 2010, the first convention I did, I learned was more about selling prints, tee shirts, buttons, etc, and less about selling a small independent comic. If you had posters, people were more likely interested. However, even a pretty poster with eye-catching colors didn’t mean sales. A fabulous award-winning artist had a hard time making the final sale even though many onlookers came to visit the artist who had frequented the convention many times the past three years. From my observation and conversations, by Sunday, many in state creators did make profit, but a lot of out of state creators were lucky to break even.

A big reason to do APE is to join the point system for the other conferences of Comi-Con International. The point system leads to better positioning and a chance to get in the over pact San Diego comic-con. In California, San Diego Comi-con remians the best conference to sell original work after accounting for the massive markups and costs during the convention. Wonder-con also in San Francisco is also part of Comic-Con International.

None the less, APE 2010 according to many professional posts on Webcomics.com’s “Convention Dish” has been a more shirking market for comics in general. My onsite observations also had a startling revelation this Saturday, where were all the kids or teens? The demographic for APE did not lead itself to many different types of age groups.

On aside note, although inexpensive alternatives such as Comic Xpress are good for many creators, often creators will choose to print in places like china to lower their overhead and maximize their sales. Nonetheless, This sill means spending a lot money with little guarantee of sales in a year. Often creators have to sit on product for years until they sell out.

Other conventions to consider, Emerald City in Seattle Washington and STAPLE in Austin Texas, which seems to becoming another Emerald City Con, have more attendees hungry for product. Emerald City as a convention is a perfect example of a small comic convention that slowly grows over time because there is enough of a market for comic-books in that town.

In state, there are other conventions such Long Beach Con. In the Bay Area Zine Fest seems to be a great spot to sell alternative comics, but once an event develops a good name for itself, it becomes harder to get in if there are sales to be made. Thus APE, in relationship to Wonder-Con and San Diego Comi-Con, is a good conference to start to get into the swing of things, because it is a convention it gets you in larger convention. However, the lack luster sales for many artists who flew in to do APE often give these creators negative sales and negative attitudes about the show.


Unfortunately, aside from networking and meeting many wonderful artists, I did not sell many of my and my writer’s books. In this sense, if we had more eye catching swag, we could have sold more products; however, we wanted to focus on creating and telling a good story. In this sense, before we even consider to start-making t-shirts, we have to stick to the core product that is the pre-teen to adult graphic novel we intended to create. Still, I’m going to work on my ability to create high contrasting eye catching prints for other events where our project may be more appreciated such as Zine Fest or other local events.