Currently, we have booked tables number 63 & 64 which is just at the top. Behind us is Tom Siddell and the forever improving Gunnerkrigg Court and over in the corner is Canadian history maestro Kate Beaton.

We'll be sitting here!

But we'll focus on who is turning up later, for now we're going to talk about the initial stages of how the preparations for the convention are going.

Initial considerations

When I first sat down and thought about what to do, I couldn't think of anything so after consulting with The Coach (identity witheld) I split everything into three groups and these were:

1. Presentation - table, posters, covers, etc.
2. Giveaways - badges, postcards, book tokens, etc
3. Sellables - Books & merch.

The first two kind of interchange because they involve putting money down for stuff that you're either going to give away free or use for strictly promotional purposes only. After all, the main role of running a table at a convention is to promote your work and network with fans and other creators. So for the first two catagories I thought of basic things which would be pretty cheap combined:

1. Presentation - table cover,  poster with comic name on and stands to put books or free merch on.
2. Giveaways - badges & postcards.

The third isn't going to be covered until later so for now we're going to focus on posters, badges and postcards.

Posters

My thinking behind having a poster is that you can have something to grab people's attention with and then you can ply them with sweet talk and freebies and hopefully they'll follow you to the ends of the earth. Whether that works well for real I don't know but it is better than nothing.

A poster would be a standard 24 x 36 inch size (resolution 175 DPI) and after going to several UK sites (such as Zazzle.co.uk and Vistaprint) the basic price for such a large poster is about £25 (exluding P&P) which is very pricey for what is a very very big poster. Another idea would be to go for the smaller A2 size which weighs in at 594mm x 420mm (or 23 x 17 inches) which is cheaper. Another consideration is what kind of paper and print which I guess would depend on whether you want to reuse the poster at multiple conventions. Something like a basic print would damage and fade more quickly than one which is a matte or gloss print.

I used Zazzle to experiment and while it was very easy to set up your print it does look very expensive and could eat up my budget.

Badges

Come on, we all love badges and we can't get enough of them. Most gigs or conventions I go to have them. Even beer festivals give out free badges! So this seems like too much of a good idea to turn down.

Scanning the web produced much better results than anything in print with lots of UK based sites offering competetive deals on 25mm and 35mm badges. I may as well list them all for you all to check:

• Bestbadges.co.uk
• Badgeplanet.co.uk
• Simoney.co.uk
• Koolbadges.co.uk
• Awesome Merchandise
• Badges for Bands

All of the above sites make it relatively clear and easy to submit designs and to pay by card or paypal. No idea about delivery and quality but we will find out in due course. Prices for bulk (100 badges) are very cheap and if you bundle them in a kind of gift pack (badge & postcard) then it may have a better impact than just doing postcards or business cards on their own.

Postcards

This idea came to me relatively late and I took advantage of OptimalPrint's 10 free postcards offer. Using a basic B&W image from one of my comic's pages, I received the 10 postcards around 2 weeks after I had ordered them and P&P was about £5 (shipped from Sweden).

The initial test card

The quality of the postcard was outstanding and apart from one or two design issues (bigger domain name? Should it go on the front or back?) the initial test run was a success. The next step is now to take it into colour and decide how many I want to print. 100 postcards (double sided, glossy) would cost about £38 which is very good value.

In the next few weeks, we'll go over the books and the updated postcards. Until then, hope you found this interesting!

Back in July, Prestwick and Majic13 mused on the possibility of getting a table at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing 2010. Majic13 had visited the 2009 event and came away very impressed and as he already runs an interesting and successful webcomic felt it'd be a doddle to get a table underway. Soon, Kyethn of Red Moon Rising fame was on board and up for giving it a go. The issue was...how exactly should we do it?!

We knew we wanted to create a loose grouping of some sort so we decided upon a loose Co-operative and then we set about a name. Several names such as "The Bellingham Club" were suggested before "Flag of Convenience" was suggested. An instant hit, it was immediately adopted and Majic13 complemented the name with a superb logo:

After that it was just a matter of putting together a website which was done in surprisingly double quick time and then we found ourselves ready to book our first tables at a con! As of 09:45 GMT on the 22nd of September, 2009 this milestone was acheived and now we're all set for the Webcomix Thing 2010!!!

Follow our progress here as we prepare for the first con of our lives. Hopefully we'll all post short updates about how we're preparing, printing stuff and then we may liveblog the event when it happens in the new year (March to be exact!)

Three people, running webcomics in different parts of the UK, deciding to get together and use their resources to drum up publicity as they prepare to hit some UK conventions to display their wares to an eager public. This could be a collective but it is a very loose one, hence the name but that doesn't mean that this won't be a good place to come and see what these three are up to.

Before we start however, a brief introduction to our three intrepid creators:

Dark Places is a monochrome webcomic created by Steve Dismukes. Using interesting and exciting ways of mixing black and white, he has created a moody and compelling webcomic. When he isn't drawing, he is usually writing about webcomics and also runs a good forum where webcomic creators swap tips of the trade.

Hard Graft is a gritty and generally violent present day thriller written by Peter Vine and drawn by German Erramouspe. It is an Anglo-Argentine collaboration which so far has bourne considerable fruit (or blood).

Red Moon Rising is a dreamy steampunk fantasy webcomic created by Rose Loughran. Known for her tireless energy for drawing webcomics (doing five pages in five days is not unheard of on Planet Kyethn) or playing the strange trumpet she has, she brings up the Scottish contribution to the group.

Well, now we're all introduced, we'll look forward to seeing what the three have to offer!

Since I like webcomics so much I'm putting together a plan that will, with hard work, perseverance and luck, eventually allow me to turn this enjoyable activity into a full-time job - nay, a career. A lucrative one, if possible.

From here on in this plan and related topics will likely form the bulk of this blog's content, so hopefully it'll be of interest to other webcomic creators - even comic creators who eschew the term "webcomic" but still want to find a way to present their work online in a way that provides income.

I can't claim to be an expert on this stuff since I'm only just starting out; I can claim to have a fairly well-developed brain and a full set of opposable thumbs which have proven themselves helpful for problem-solving and tool-using applications respectively. This should come in handy when trying to make a living from webcomics.

My methodology is going to be pretty straightforward: I intend to break complex situations down into less-complex pieces, try to understand them, and come up with ways to rebuild the situation to be more to my liking. There will likely be a lot of identifying problems and applying general principles to come up with potential solutions, and I do not doubt that on occasion I will be wrong. If you notice me being wrong then please do correct me, but be prepared to back up your point. The idea is to use discourse and debate to come up with better ways of doing things, not to point fingers and call people names. That doesn't help anyone.

There won't be much by way of detailed analysis of statistical data - mainly because that stuff bores me to tears and I'd much rather spend my time drawing my comic or promoting it to an audience than poring over tables and spreadsheets. Instead I'll be speaking in broader terms, and applying more general principles of human behaviour to the problems presented by this goal of Making It In Webcomics. Soft squishy human stuff rather than hard crunchy mathematical stuff. Yeah.

What this blog isn't going to be is an authoritative, foolproof, 100% guaranteed treatise on Making It In Webcomics, because no such thing exists. There are some publications which offer examples of how the authors managed to find a modicum of success with their webcomic, but their methods may not work in all situations. When reading this blog, please remember that everything I say comes with a caveat that I am not an expert. I actively encourage readers to make their own investigations and (ideally) let me know if their findings confirm or refute my own.

Above all, it's a voyage of discovery.