DemonCon 9.

It's the start of a new year of Comic Cons.
We now have an ongoing series on its 5th issue and another just starting out.
We've listened to the advice of our friends, both competitors, customers and our printer (Stuart Gould) and have decided to heed their advice and change the look of our table.
We've decided to move away from having a table full of all sorts of comics to having one that focuses on displaying the ongoing series, and whatever we might have that's new.
This meant putting all of the old books into a box on the table, making them harder for potential customers to spot when passing the stall.
DemonCon 9, being our first Con of the year, was where we tried it all out.
We had some new WesterNoir Standees.
We took my little Accent UK modified Lego figures.
We had Gary's great sketches.
We had to try it.

Gary awaits the first customer.

It was a long drive down, and we met Graham owner of the Grinning Demon comic shop and DemonCon event organizer as we were setting up. He was worried that the event wouldn't have as many customers as last year, there had been a problem with printing the fliers in time, and he wanted to apologize up front. We were pretty relaxed about it though, we were here and we were going to enjoy ourselves.
We were happy with how much less cluttered the table looked, and in fact I'm not sure we could have fitted everything on if we set it up as we had in the past.
The standees were great...

...giving a nice third dimension to the table. We will certainly be getting more of them made for future Cons.
The whole WesterNoir side of the table was a pleasure to look at. It's amazing having 5 issues of a title on sale, and interest in them was pretty constant throughout the day. A good number of customers bought all 6 titles (they picked up Tales of WesterNoir as well), and it was great to have customers from last year pick up the latest issues with a contented smile on their faces.
It did seem a little quieter than last year, but the customers that we did have more than made up for it and by the end of the day we'd increased our sales by 10%.

WesterNoir 5 ... can't wait for Issue 6 now :o)

The box of back issues also seemed to work, with a good number of customer looking through it and some pulling out and buying our older stock.
So, all in all I think the new layout is pretty successful. We'll no doubt play with it over time and modify it here and there, but on the whole it'll stay pretty much as is.
My little modified Lego Figures were also a success and drew a lot of people to the stall. The kids had great fun matching the figures to the comics, and also demonstrating their knowledge by telling me which bits of which figures I'd used in their construction. I also got a top tip from a father who was often trying to find that illusive final figure without spending a fortune and amassing hundreds of doubles.
A great day. A great little Con.
We'll be back next year for certain.