ROCK THE WIZARD WORLD
I have a small cassette cabinet that I saw at a pawn shop a few years ago; it was impossible to resist. On the front of it is handpainted "ROCK THE WIZARD WORLD" with lightning bolts and various bits around it to really drive the point home. On the back of it is a stretch of scotch tape with a sliver of paper (the tape essentially laminates it to the wood) that has some dots and dashes on it. It could be Morse code, but it's more fun to let it be a mystery. The paper, to add to the mystery, is face down.
I think of it whenever I ponder convention tables. We go to the Wizard World Chicago con every year (it's that magic combination of large and close), dating from when it was the Chicago Comicon. We have done Artist Alley tables there for most of that time, although 2 years in particular we did small press booths.
The tables in Artist Alley would be familiar to anyone--it's the same eight-footer used for everything from cons to bake sales all over. Designing a presence at one isn't so hard--you've got books, right? Put those on there. Tell them who you are. If you stand back and look at a good table design, you can appreciate much about a book and its creator(s). Now stick that table in a room with a hundred or so others just like it. Ouch.
I've seen a lot of tables, but only a few attempts to fundamentally change the space. It's a tough nut; no ceiling, in most cases no wall behind. There's that table. People are milling around with a thousand yard stare on, their faraway look masking a very sensitive bubble of personal space that many folks will guard with their very dignity. Some walk very quickly, hoping to scan tables before rousing the table to their presence; others block attempts at communication, looking down at the table at all times; some will accelerate away if the table recognizes their presence. These aren't unwarranted responses.
Last year I went to Book Expo America in Chicago, and let me tell you that is a convention. All the big book publishers are there; the Expo is mainly for wholesale book buyers, but also bookstore owners and librarians. No "general public" allowed. You have to own a store, work in the book industry, be an author, something. They also have their equivalent of Artist's Alley there. It's curtained off, tables are a grand and you enter at your peril. These folks have the same problem as Artist's Alley; they have a table (and to their advantage, a solid curtain on three sides) and traffic that mostly doesn't know who they are.
These authors and smaller publishers will pounce on you if you enter their domain. There was a a lot of money spent of decor and layout, although the one I remember best is the lady dressed as an angel in the middle of the aisle asking folks if the wanted to be touched by an angel, sugar. She reeled folks in with that touch and took them right over to the table with the angel book. She wasn't annoying; she move and spoke with supreme confidence, not arrogance (the familiar "buy my book or you're a jerk" m.o. being a good example of that; or there was the supremely annoying guy we had as a table neighbor once who noisily deflated balloons when people walked by to get their attention--that cleared the whole aisle fast). Okay, I'm wandering.
Point was that the Expo's version of Artist's Alley, while initially frightening, was actually a very welcoming place. There weren't people throwing bits of old meat in baggies at people, people who think abuse is the way to sell anything you'd want to read, or even a hint of the carnival barker drone. They'll go after you, but if you rebuff them, it's fine. It was refreshing, really.
But no matter how well you prepare, sometimes your neighbors can flat sabotage your whole area. Last year a couple table pirates selling silk roses and quasi-goth art perched next door to us and acted like they'd never been out of the house before. They knocked over other people's displays and cackled at their own genius. Years before, Carter had to goon a jerk that positioned himself in front of our floor display to hand out flyers. Urgh.
Anyways, we're pondering our own table layout this year, making some changes. So I think about the ROCK THE WIZARD WORLD cabinet, and the little piece of paper on the back that I can't see with a message on it that I'm not sure I want to decode.
I think of it whenever I ponder convention tables. We go to the Wizard World Chicago con every year (it's that magic combination of large and close), dating from when it was the Chicago Comicon. We have done Artist Alley tables there for most of that time, although 2 years in particular we did small press booths.
The tables in Artist Alley would be familiar to anyone--it's the same eight-footer used for everything from cons to bake sales all over. Designing a presence at one isn't so hard--you've got books, right? Put those on there. Tell them who you are. If you stand back and look at a good table design, you can appreciate much about a book and its creator(s). Now stick that table in a room with a hundred or so others just like it. Ouch.
I've seen a lot of tables, but only a few attempts to fundamentally change the space. It's a tough nut; no ceiling, in most cases no wall behind. There's that table. People are milling around with a thousand yard stare on, their faraway look masking a very sensitive bubble of personal space that many folks will guard with their very dignity. Some walk very quickly, hoping to scan tables before rousing the table to their presence; others block attempts at communication, looking down at the table at all times; some will accelerate away if the table recognizes their presence. These aren't unwarranted responses.
Last year I went to Book Expo America in Chicago, and let me tell you that is a convention. All the big book publishers are there; the Expo is mainly for wholesale book buyers, but also bookstore owners and librarians. No "general public" allowed. You have to own a store, work in the book industry, be an author, something. They also have their equivalent of Artist's Alley there. It's curtained off, tables are a grand and you enter at your peril. These folks have the same problem as Artist's Alley; they have a table (and to their advantage, a solid curtain on three sides) and traffic that mostly doesn't know who they are.
These authors and smaller publishers will pounce on you if you enter their domain. There was a a lot of money spent of decor and layout, although the one I remember best is the lady dressed as an angel in the middle of the aisle asking folks if the wanted to be touched by an angel, sugar. She reeled folks in with that touch and took them right over to the table with the angel book. She wasn't annoying; she move and spoke with supreme confidence, not arrogance (the familiar "buy my book or you're a jerk" m.o. being a good example of that; or there was the supremely annoying guy we had as a table neighbor once who noisily deflated balloons when people walked by to get their attention--that cleared the whole aisle fast). Okay, I'm wandering.
Point was that the Expo's version of Artist's Alley, while initially frightening, was actually a very welcoming place. There weren't people throwing bits of old meat in baggies at people, people who think abuse is the way to sell anything you'd want to read, or even a hint of the carnival barker drone. They'll go after you, but if you rebuff them, it's fine. It was refreshing, really.
But no matter how well you prepare, sometimes your neighbors can flat sabotage your whole area. Last year a couple table pirates selling silk roses and quasi-goth art perched next door to us and acted like they'd never been out of the house before. They knocked over other people's displays and cackled at their own genius. Years before, Carter had to goon a jerk that positioned himself in front of our floor display to hand out flyers. Urgh.
Anyways, we're pondering our own table layout this year, making some changes. So I think about the ROCK THE WIZARD WORLD cabinet, and the little piece of paper on the back that I can't see with a message on it that I'm not sure I want to decode.
posted by John Ira Thomas at 8:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home