February 12, 2017

Sticky Institute Zine Fair II


Oh, happy, happy, joy, joy! Today was Sticky Institute's Zine Fair and for the second year in a row I had a table there (exact same table, too). Last year was not a very enjoyable one, in that I sold bugger-all. Zilch. Nuffink, guv'.

I was rather skeptical about setting myself up for a second session of this annual tedium. But then I began to think about the reasons why I never sold anything last year. It was a zine fair, and primarily I make comics. I hadn't understood the audience of this event. So I actually produced a number of zines by hand, meaning that they were not printed, they were all lettered by hand onto pre-stapled A6-size booklets. I had ten of them. And I sold all except one!

Another customer was kind enough to purchase Airbury Vol. I, so in making ten sales, my sales numbers were up 1000% from last year. And that, dear reader, ain't bad.

To be honest I was beginning to lose the enthusiasm I originally had for producing humour-based illustrative works, since no one seemed to give a damn, and who reads this comic crap, it's all insignificant pablum anyway. But this was a step in the right direction and it increased my confidence once more. It was a pleasure talking with the various people who stopped by my table to talk to me and buy my zines, especially my friend Chris, who was at the table with me for over an hour, and also Steve and Antoinette from SCAR who were once again at the table next to me and keeping a beady eye on how I was doing sales-wise.

So unlike that dismal day in February 2016 I am actually looking forward to doing it all again next year.

One final thing, on the train home I noticed Metro trains have replaced the fabric on the train seats. The old familiar pattern that has been there since before I moved to Melbourne is now gone, and has been replaced with this. But my question is –


How come 'Brunswick' gets to be so big?

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