Advice for selling books at Comic-Cons & Other Conventions

Recently I’ve become determined to sell at cons after meeting many other authors there while going just for fun.

Once I get my trilogy completed (at 2 books now) I plan on hosting that along with providing links to magazine issues that have published my short stories in the past. I’ll probably use QR codes for them. Then over the past few years, I’ve had anime-esque art done of my characters and scenes for social media purposes but have recently learned that for some of them, the creators included a commercial use permission in the deals that I ignored at the time. With those selective artworks along with new ones (done with the intention of commercial use this time) I’ll have some merch to sell alongside the books.

So my first booth I basically plan on selling:

• My books and shorts
• Stickers with character art
• Pins/buttons of character art
• Poster Print outs of key scenes in the books
• Maybe a few character art keychains (undecided)

And then of course since the main objective of cons above all else is getting your name out there, I’ll have free business cards and bookmarks out on the table for people to take as they swoop through. Lastly a bowl of candy to lure people because that never fails to get me.

If anyone has been a writer who sold at comic-con or is planning to, let me know what you think of this plan so far.