YESTERDAY'S Southend Book Fair was a very low key affair - 25 exhibitors and around 150 punters through the doors all day. Suffice to say, I didn't have to fight off customers with a stick. Despite being held at the local college, there were very few students in attendance, with most browsers in the 50+ age bracket. I waited three hours to sell my first comics and almost kissed the bloke who bought them. From what I gather, though, none of the exhibitors will be retiring on what they made from the day.
Still, despite the lack of sales, I had a good time and met some lovely people. A local artist even turned up specifically to see me and point me in the direction of his website. He's a really talented bloke and I intend to send him a script to see how he handles sequential work.
I also talked to a woman from the Southend libraries department who seemed keen for me to do some sort of workshop there. I'd even get paid!
If they run the event again next year, I shall probably give it another go. Selling my stuff at Birmingham and Bristol is a piece of piss (you're surrounded by comics fans all weekend with money to spend) but a book fair really takes you out of your comfort zone and that's something I rather enjoy.
* THE week off was fairly successful. After a number of false starts I'm finally making real progress with Kurse and it's shaping up nicely I think. Sometimes you can spend so long on something that you get fed up with the entire enterprise but I'm having no such problems at this point.
1 comment:
strange that,no students turning up...you'd imagine they'd all be hungry to learn more about the world of local publishing.
i guess they were all too busy taking drugs and committing crime.
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