Comment on Some Artist Alley Information... by AnimeIowa-Club
Unfortunately I just missed the Anime-Zing artist alley, I agree on the price hike. I have done both vendors and artists table in the past and it's still quite a bit of money without at least getting your badge with the table.
Geek.kon has a special badge, and the vendors & artists are in the same room. We worked with their Artist Alley head to make sure that things would roll smoothly and that we still could try to retain our artist status, even though we have been finding ourselves pushing towards vendor at other conventions simply because of space and set-up. It is nice to be able to leave our stuff locked-up at night. I think they could have easily done a small hike on the artist and vendor tables seperately and achieved a much better outcome. Many of my friends who were planning to go no longer can.
To be honest, the summer crowd is hard for me. I sell a lot of fleece hats, which doesn't earn as much. Already the hotel is pretty expensive, as is the drive from WI. Many of the other hotels booked full because of other events that weekend and have jacked up the rates on the remaining rooms. This makes it crucial to get into the main hotel. They were booked all the way to Debuque last year. Parking is another thing to contend with all together.
I will probably only be able to break even at best with the changes this year, provided I am able to match my sales from last year. The economy of conventions and artist alley has slowly been declining. I think that the hardest part is that we are pretty much stuck in the vendors room for the duration of the convention, thus its hard to go to panels and enjoy the rest of the convention like a regular attendee. This is why it's good having the special badges, at least it alleviates the pain of buying a full priced badge on top of table costs. Really think that things could have been handled differently in the conversion but I don't see them changing it.
Will have to suffer without electricity for one weekend.
Geek.kon has a special badge, and the vendors & artists are in the same room. We worked with their Artist Alley head to make sure that things would roll smoothly and that we still could try to retain our artist status, even though we have been finding ourselves pushing towards vendor at other conventions simply because of space and set-up. It is nice to be able to leave our stuff locked-up at night. I think they could have easily done a small hike on the artist and vendor tables seperately and achieved a much better outcome. Many of my friends who were planning to go no longer can.
To be honest, the summer crowd is hard for me. I sell a lot of fleece hats, which doesn't earn as much. Already the hotel is pretty expensive, as is the drive from WI. Many of the other hotels booked full because of other events that weekend and have jacked up the rates on the remaining rooms. This makes it crucial to get into the main hotel. They were booked all the way to Debuque last year. Parking is another thing to contend with all together.
I will probably only be able to break even at best with the changes this year, provided I am able to match my sales from last year. The economy of conventions and artist alley has slowly been declining. I think that the hardest part is that we are pretty much stuck in the vendors room for the duration of the convention, thus its hard to go to panels and enjoy the rest of the convention like a regular attendee. This is why it's good having the special badges, at least it alleviates the pain of buying a full priced badge on top of table costs. Really think that things could have been handled differently in the conversion but I don't see them changing it.
Will have to suffer without electricity for one weekend.
Yeah, I know where you're coming from.
Some good news is they've lowered the price of power to $40. Josh said so on the forums.
Some good news is they've lowered the price of power to $40. Josh said so on the forums.
even so- will have to pool more $ before I decide to reg for vendors, at least I have my regular registration & hotel booked.