New artists might find themselves in an Artist’s Alley at an Anime/Comic/SciFi/Fantasy/Furry/Whatever Con. The AA can be both a good and bad place to be. Today I’m going to talk about that, how to make it work for you, and more specifically, what not to do.

In my experience, the AA differs depending on what kind of con you are talking about. There are fan-run cons and pro-run cons, as well as different genres of cons. For the sake of brevity, I am going to have to speak about this generally and focus on fan-run cons. These types of cons are much more common. Keep in mind that what is true for one con may not be true for another.

Fan-run cons often are less organized due to everyone working on a volunteer basis, but they often cost less to rent a table. They are very popular these days since anime fandom has become more mainstream. At fan-run cons, table prices can be low so it goes to follow that there is no skill or maturity level that you have to achieve to get into the AA. All you have to do is apply while there are spaces available. So you could be sitting next to an obnoxious kid that needs a large dosage of Ritalin, or a professional working artist. Sometimes cons also put their guests in the AA.

At the fan-run AA, you usually do not get any extra setup time for your booth, or any security. If you plan on going to one, bring a friend with you. You will need to leave your booth at some point to use the bathroom and eat, so another person is helpful. At large cons, you may need to stack boxes around the perimeter of your booth for security, since oftentimes the people setting up the logistics of the AA don’t take theft into account. I was at one con where the tables were arranged in a horseshoe shape with the artist’s facing inward. The problem with this was that while customers were walking around inside the horseshoe, nothing stopped anyone from walking around outside the horseshoe and stealing things.

Be sure to get exact measurements of your table. Sometimes the tables provided may be wide, but they could be abnormally thin. If you need space, be sure you get all of the details. Do not expect that the coordinator is going to give you all of the information you need, because they may not.

What NOT to Do in the Artist’s Alley

I find that having a good experience at the AA is the same as not doing the things listed on my “Don’t” list below. To most of you (I hope) this is going to sound like common sense. It should! Believe it or not, people do these things very often. I’ve had to sit next to these people. They angered me so much that I remembered them for my list.

In no particular order:

- Don’t go into an Artist’s Alley and turn a boom box up so loud that no one can hear anything except for their skull being pounded. A little bit of music is fine, but not full volume. If you overpower your neighbor’s music and everyone’s voice, then turn it down! At one con, our neighbor’s music was making my pants vibrate.

- Don’t scream and yell like an idiot to draw attention to yourself and distract people from other artist’s tables. All you are is obnoxious, you are turning away more people than you are getting, and making a lot of enemies. I repeat: DO NOT distract people from other tables.

- Don’t massively undercut other artists’ prices or say anything bad about your neighbor to your customers. This is just tacky. Not only does undercutting prices tell everyone that you are probably a hack that has to sell cheap stuff to get sales in the first place, but it angers most of the community because you are reinforcing a stereotype that artist’s should be underpaid. Talking trash on other people in the field is a blinking red sign that you have the maturity level of a gnat. I actually was on a panel with one such bitter person. It did nothing to help their career and made everyone uncomfortable.

- Respect your neighbors’ personal space and do not climb behind their table and start talking to their customers. No, I am not making this up. Some guy really did this to me.

- Don’t be a jerk. Talk to people. Be pleasant, even if it’s just for the weekend. You aren’t competing against each other. Art is not Big Macs.

Most of this just points to different ways you can hurt sales, whether it is specific to one person or in general to the community, it’s a really bad thing to do. If you do this, I can guarantee you that people are probably plotting your death behind your back, and you are barely tolerated to your face. Remember, no matter how much we like our profession, we need to make money so that we can eat, just like you.

Enough said. Go out and rent a table already!

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