The Word on the Street Sales

The Word on the Street is funny because there are exhibitors that pay a huge sum of money to exhibit there, and then there are the littles guys like us who essentially are the "artist alley" of the festival. Unfortunately, the artist alley / fringe beat section isn't on the street, but on grass amongst the trees in the park.

The day didn't start off promising because of heavy rain in the morning. What made matters worse, we were in a dingy tent facing a tree! The time schedule for the festival was from 11am - 6pm. The first hour of the show was slow as usual. I only sold 3 books. The second hour began when I sold 3 books and then decided to break the rules and leave my tent to sell on the street corner where most of the people traffic was. As a result I sold Crozonia like hotcakes and lost track of how many I sold! Eventually some other exhibitors took notice and moved their tables up to the curb, and so did we. Soon there were 12 tables along the side of the road. We kept selling untill some security guard and organizers found out, and pushed us back to our tents. They said it was illegal and would revoke our previledge to sell next year. Yeah right. So we were back in the tent from 4-6 and sold only 6 books.

After deducting our float cash, we ended up selling 87 books! This means we sold about 75 books in 3 1/2 hours! Next year we may spend more money on the expensive tables on the street. The highlight of the day was selling a copy to NDP leader Jack Layton and Olivia Chow. Those two are great and honest people.

And that ends our summer tour of Crozonia Issue One. It's time to get busy and get Issue 2 out for February for the innaugural New York Comicon.