265. Event Review: AwesomeCon with Kenton Kilgore and Taylor Gonzales

Author Kenton Kilgore, Jennia, and her PA Taylor Gonzales review the highs and lows of D.C.'s AwesomeCon from both a vendor and attendee perspective.

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Visit Kenton's Website:
https://kentonkilgore.com/

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https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kenton-Kilgore/author/B008F95POO

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Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D' Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to writing and editing. We're starting something new today, and that's event reviews. We're going to start with AwesomeCon, which describes itself as Washington D.C.'s Comic Con. So joining us to do that are author Kenton Kilgore, who had a table there, and then my PA, who is also an excellent copy editor, Taylor Gonzales.

Jennia: All right, well, thank you so much for both being here!

Kenton: Thank you!

Taylor: Thanks, Jennia!

Jennia: Welcome. So I am going to divide some of these questions up so we can look at what it was like both as a vendor, someone selling, and as an attendee. But before we get into those, I just wanted to see what were each of your first impressions like?

Kenton: This is my second year at AwesomeCon as a vendor, and it was pretty much exactly what I had experienced before in 2022. In that, Friday was very sort of slow and casual. Not a big crowd. Most of the crowd appeared around like four or five o'clock when people got off work. And not a lot of buyers, per se. I had quite a few book sales, but mostly people were just walking around looking at stuff very sort of casual and relaxed. And then Saturday was the very busy day as far as selling went. You know, most of the—most of the people who were interested in purchasing things did so on Saturday with gusto. And then Sunday was again very sort of relaxed. I think the time change threw off a lot of people on Sunday.

Jennia: Yeah, didn't think about that.

Kenton: Yeah, the con opened at ten on Sunday, but it really didn't start getting busy till like noon. I know I was certainly dragging Sunday morning, so I was—I was fine to have an awfully slow Sunday. And Sunday—Sunday was a little bit more busy than Friday, but nowhere near like Saturday.

Jennia: Yeah. Great! Taylor, as an attendee, what did you first think when you walked in?

Taylor: I thought there was a lot, but, like, a good a lot. You know, we walked into—we tried to walk into, A Hall and they swiftly informed us to go to B Hall. And as we descended the stairs, you could see the vast sea of just everything. Comics, books, art, cosplay. There was something for everyone. As an attendee, it was kind of overwhelming, but once you start walking around, you just, like, start appreciating everything there. You don't want to stop. You kind of need that whole weekend to do it. But what we saw was just kind of amazing.

Jennia: Yeah, completely agree. It did feel a bit like a maze when we first got there, and I know that they had the app that you could pull up on your phone, but the problem that we had, we couldn't connect to the WiFi easily or we'd connect and it would keep dropping. So then every time we needed to pull up the map, we had to go through the whole process all over again. And then, you know, keep our fingers crossed and pray that would actually connect that time. But, yeah, you do start to get your bearings in, especially once someone points out, like, "This section is over here and then this is over here." You quickly acclimated to wherever it was you needed to go.

Taylor: Absolutely.

Jennia: Yeah. So Kenton, what was the setup process like? And then what sort of information did they give you prior to that?

Kenton: I guess I could go all the way back to, you know, the application process. It goes out several months ahead of time, and they don't just take, everyone who applies. There is sort of a review process, and then about a month or two before the actual con, you get confirmation if you've been accepted or not. The staff are very good about communicating. They send you very extensive emails, where to go, what to bring, what's required, where to drop off stuff, where to pick up stuff. It's very comprehensive. And if you're a listener and you're thinking of applying to be a vendor at AwesomeCon, it is very well organized. I've been to some cons that are not nearly as well organized. That said, it is a large operation. It's a huge scale. I mean, they have somewhere north of 50,000 people attending. They have hundreds of vendors. So there are some, you know, you can't help but have some issues. Stuff happens, you know. We went to check in and they said, "Okay, your spot is down there," again, you know, with the sort of vague directions. So I walked around for a bit, pushing a hand truck with a lot of heavy books, and I was wishing to myself that I had gone into, like, I don't know, macrame or something light. I don't know why (Jennia laughs)—I don't know why I decided to bring, like, 800 pounds of books to this thing. But we found our spot and set up, and it was, it was very easy.

Jennia: Yeah. And so I would guess that it's successful for you since this is your second year doing it, and just whatever you're comfortable even sharing about that and how your sales compare to maybe some of the other cons that you've been at.

Kenton: Yeah, very. It was very successful. I'm very happy I went. When I went two years ago, my first time there, I sold 80 books, I think, which at the time was like a personal record for me. And I never know if my numbers are good or not because writers don't really talk about how many books they sell. We're very tight lipped about that. That you can't really compare, because, you know, it's not like we're all selling apples there. We're selling apples, oranges, pineapples. You know, some books are more popular than others. There's an element of time there where you have to talk to somebody and introduce yourself and explain your books and see if people will want to buy them. But two years ago, I sold 80 books. Last year at Richmond Comic Con, I sold 88. So this year, I said to myself, "My goal is 100 for the weekend," and I wound up selling 109. So I was very happy about that.

Jennia: Yay! Congratulations! We're so proud.

Taylor: (distant) Woo!

Jennia: Happy for you.

Kenton: Thank you! Yep.

Jennia: From an attendee perspective too—so we heard maybe there was a little confusion with just finding your table, but I think that's just partially because of the size of the space. I don't know if you'd agree with that or not. Some of the feedback we got from another attendee who wanted to have it shared on the show was that she wished they had somehow separated the authors and other creators from the people who were selling items that were mass produced or more of a storefront. I just wanted to see what you each thought of that.

Kenton: They did have that to some extent. They did have an Author Alley set up, which is where I was, but I noticed that's not where I was two years ago. But I did notice this year, like you say, they did have some authors, like, right next door to people who made jewelry or made costumes or whatever like that. You know, I really didn't get any sort of choice about where I was. They sent me an email and said, "Okay, here is your spot." And it was a corner setup, which was actually $100 more than what the regular spots were charged, because there you are on a corner. You know, you have more visibility.

Jennia: Right.

Kenton: And, you know, I'll tell you flat out, it's not cheap to be a vendor at AwesomeCon. I think they start at, like, $350 a table for the weekend, and mine was about 475 or something like that because I was on the corner, but that's what there was. So I asked, "Are there less expensive places?" They said, "Nope, this is it." Sort of take it or leave it. And they have plenty of, you know, people who are applying. So I was like, all right, I'll take it and I'll do it.

Jennia: How much time did they give you to make that decision to decide whether or not you wanted that table?

Kenton: About 48 hours, I think. Something like that. I mean, you know, it was fine. It was fine. Actually, I enjoyed it. I did like the extra visibility. You can also purchase end cap spots for, like, 900 something odd dollars, but that's way outside my price range. But I was in, like, an Author Alley sort of situation that they call it. I don't know why all the other authors weren't put there.

Jennia: Yeah, we did notice that some that were just sort of randomly sprinkled throughout other areas. You'd be walking along, there was suddenly a table with books on it. Because we'd had authors ahead of time that we were hoping to see, including you, and we didn't find all of them. Taylor, what did you think about that as an attendee? Did you like that there was a variety of creators and sellers, or did you wish that they'd been grouped together by what they were selling?

Taylor: I mean, I definitely enjoyed that there was a variety. You know, there was something for everyone there.

Jennia: Yes.

Taylor: But I do think that the grouping was a little random at times because we did have that trouble. I can't remember. We were trying to find, was it Kimberly Lemming?

Jennia: Yeah, and then Alix Harrow. We wanted to see her too.

Taylor: Yeah. And we just were not doing it. We zigzagged through a couple aisles by Author Alley. So sometimes the placing was definitely a little confusing as an attendee, just trying to figure that out. But I guess overall, it was pretty decent. We walked—

Jennia: a lot (laughs).

Taylor: —(also laughs) a lot. We walked a lot, period. That's the end of my sentence (Jennia and Taylor laugh). No, but we saw, you know, a bunch of different anime artists or manga artists. And there's the people selling the Pedro Pascal pillowcases. There was a lot of variety, and I did enjoy all of it. Even if I wasn't part of a lot of the fandoms, I still could really appreciate the art or see how someone from those fandoms would really enjoy going to this event.

Jennia: Yeah, I agree. And it was even fun just seeing how the different vendors were dressed up to maybe match their table or to match whatever it was that their overall theme was at their table too. I mean, that alone was fun just to go see, I thought.

Taylor: Oh absolutely! All the vendors and the attendees that were dressed up, it was phenomenal. They went all out. We saw someone with a droid, a little R2D2, I'm pretty sure, or R2D2-adjacent but you pat it on the head.

Jennia: That I did! (both laugh)

Taylor: There was Chewbacca running around. There was a bunch of different people dressed up, and it was honestly amazing. I could have just sat there and just talked to all of them.

Jennia: And if anyone wants to see photos of some of these people, Kenton has photos on his Instagram account of the people at least that stopped by his table, including the Jawas, who are adorable.

Kenton: Yeah, the Jawas even had, like, they had something that, like, made the Jawa noises too. So I wish I had caught them on video, but, yeah, they're walking along, and they're making the little jabbering noise right from the movie. It was very cool.

Jennia: Yeah, we saw some people standing in line for some of the pricier celebrity photo ops, and they were in full on costume. There was one that was Sully from Monsters, Inc. I think they had Bowser from Mario Brothers. I mean, like, just full costume, which goes to another thing, which is the lines. So, I mean, I think, granted, you're going to have to just assume there are going to be long lines for some of these things, especially with that many people in attendance. But Taylor, how did you think they handled the queuing?

Taylor: Specifically for the photo ops, the queuing for those started out fine. Like, we got through our first photo op, and it was just a fine process. They called us up. We went into this little race line that looked like they were about to—

Jennia: —go on the horse track.

Taylor: Yeah! (laughs) As it got to the more popular photo op opportunities, it seemed to get a lot more crowded, a lot more backed up, and a lot of the times were getting pushed back from what was originally sent out to attendees. And so you could hear the frustration from the emcees, who were just trying to get people through to get their photos. You could see the frustration in the crowd. So there was a little blockage. Though, everyone got their photos in the end, and they seemed happy.

Jennia: But they did do a good job, I thought, with photos, because they would even stop if you blinked or something. Or, like, they were very conscious about the glare on my glasses and telling me exactly how to pose to avoid that. And then if they caught something like that, they would tell you, and then they would retake the photo. So it wasn't like you were going to pay all that money and then get stuck with a photo where you've got, like, one eye half open. (laughs)

Taylor: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, shout out to the AwesomeCon staff that was manning the photography. Y'all were great.

Jennia: Yes. And then even the line too, for picking up your photo. Like, you barely walked out and the photo was ready for you, and then you didn't have to approach them, even, most of the time. They would say, "Your photo is ready," and then hand it to you. I think that helped too.

Taylor: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, once you got through the actual line to get to the photo, the process was really quick. You got your photo taken. You got your photo. Then you were able to get reprints or a sleeve really quick. They were on it.

Jennia: Yeah. And the sleeve was only $5, but it seemed like a really nice quality sleeve because I threw it in a bag the rest of the day, and that bag was getting thrown all over the place (Taylor laughs). And the photos were not even slightly creased or bent in any way.

Taylor: You heard it here, folks! AwesomeCon has great sleeves.

Jennia: (laughs) Yes. Worth it for the $5 sleeves. So then we have the other queue, which was food.

Taylor: As an attendee, from what we could see, on the main floor where everything was being shown, there was one place for food, and there was a very long line. You had to make about a seven mile trek to get to the back.

Jennia: (jokingly) Yes, over mountains covered in snow (both laugh).

Taylor: (continuing the joke) Uphill both ways! But once you got in the line, and after you looked through it and sighed contemplatively, looking at the food—

Jennia: All four choices (both laugh).

Taylor: —the line actually moved pretty fast. We got there from pretty far back in, like, 15 minutes, maybe less even.

Jennia: Maybe, yeah, it might have been even less than that.

Taylor: It was pretty fast. The food that we had, in my opinion, was pretty good. I enjoy a good french fry. I'm a french fry connoisseur (Jennia laughs), as my best friend likes to say. So, despite the very long line, it turned out okay.

Jennia: They did have a vegetarian option, and that is not always the case, especially at, large events, where it's usually a slice of pizza, hot dog, or a hamburger, and they're usually all laden with meat in some way or another. So I did appreciate that they had a beyond burger as an offering, but I did cringe a little at the $18 price tag (laughs), and that is why I had french fries.

Kenton: I did have the beyond burger, and it was actually quite good, yeah.

Jennia: $18 worth of good? (laughs)

Kenton: Well, you know, they've got you. Like you say, I mean, they only had, like, did they even have four choices? It was bacon cheeseburgers, beyond burgers, chicken tenders, I think that—and fries, I think.

Jennia: Yeah.

Kenton: That's just it.

Jennia: That might be three. Wow (laughs).

Kenton: Yeah. No cheese pizza, no hot dogs, no nothing like that, so—

Jennia: Yep, not even at baseball stadium level.

Taylor: If they had more food places, we didn't see them. There weren't any more on the main floor. It was just the regular . . . 

Jennia: Yeah, but it might be okay for someone who is there longer and could afford to take those breaks. So that's the other thing too, with the photo opportunities. When you book your ticket, you don't get a set time. And for us, at least, those times came out, what, like a week before? And so we weren't able to stagger them or to build in a block of time so we could leave, get lunch, and then return. And then while we were there, or that morning, one of our times also changed. And so it brought some of our times even closer together. So that was a little difficult to just work your day around, especially if you were inclined to leave for whatever reason and return. But again, another reason why you should go all three days and not just Saturday like we did.

Taylor: Yes! (Jennia laughs). I think attending all three days is necessary for this kind of event. We didn't even make it into C, like the C Block. I would say if someone wants to attend, either go for two days or just go for all three, because there's so much to see and witness.

Jennia: Kenton, what did you notice about attendee traffic during the different days? So you mentioned that it was lighter during some days, but did you notice, for instance, it was busier, like, any time of day?

Kenton: The mornings are always—were lighter. You know, Saturday and Sunday morning were light, and they kind of tapered off maybe an hour before closing time. But otherwise, Saturday was just wall-to-wall people all the time. And, you know, going back to the three days thing, if you're a vendor, you have to be there for three days.

Jennia: Ah.

Kenton: They don't have options for one-day vending, because, you know, I think that'd be great to just, like, come in on Saturday, swoop in, you know, make a bunch of sales, get out. But you do have to be there as a vendor all three days, and you do have to be there all the times they are open. It's a big time commitment, and it is sort of physically grueling. Friday, you actually have to be in your spot—you don't have to be set up, but you have to be checked in and in your spot—by 11:00AM. And you're not out of there until 8:00PM when it closes. So that's just Friday. And then Saturday is 10:00[AM] to 7:00PM And then Sunday is 10:00[AM] to 5:00PM. And they have attendees who are, like—I think they're called, like, premium passes or something like that, who are allowed in a half hour before the con officially opens. So really, as a vendor, you have to be there an hour before it opens anyway. So it's a lot of time there in the building.

Jennia: Mhm. Wow.

Kenton: Yeah.

Jennia: Do you have any tips for someone who's thinking about being a vendor next year as far as alleviating even some of that?

Kenton: Oh, definitely. I can tell you what not to do. Right? (Kenton and Jennia laugh)

Jennia: That's a good start, yes.

Kenton: Learn from my mistakes. When I went two years ago, that was my first time, and the big mistake I made was I overestimated how many books I was going to sell. So I brought in, like—I brought in just hundreds of books, you know. And I had them stashed under the table, they're just jammed in. And the problem with that is that, you know, come Sunday, when you close, you have to haul them all out of there.

Jennia: Ohh yeah.

Kenton: If you have a lot of stuff, you have to go in and out through the loading dock.

Jennia: Mmm.

Kenton: The loading dock, you know, there's like a wait time. You know, people lined up to, you know, load up, unload, things like that. You have to wait for somebody to come and collect all your stuff on a cart and take it back. The convention center is a union shop, so if you have a certain amount of stuff, you can't just haul it all yourself. Somebody there in the union has to come take your stuff to the loading dock for you, you know.

Jennia: Right.

Kenton: And that eats up a lot of time. The two years ago, it took me about 3 hours to get out of there on that Sunday night. This time around, I was like, "I'm going to stagger how much I bring in, you know, now that I'm more experienced." When Sunday came around, I was out of there in like 15 minutes. I just packed up. I had sort of carefully sort of plotted out how much merchandise I had sold and had brought in, and I was able to put it all in a hand truck, go out the front door, boom. You know, very easy, yeah. And there was a parking garage like two blocks away, so that was easy too.

Jennia: As a vendor, do you get discounts or anything on things like the food or parking or anything else of the sort?

Kenton: Nope, nothing like that, I'm afraid.

Jennia: And are you able to ship items to the venue, or do you have to bring everything in yourself?

Kenton: I think you might be able to ship items. I'm not quite sure. I hadn't looked into that, but I believe you are. And that would certainly would seem to be the case for, you know, the larger vendors who have, you know, bulky stuff, like boxes of figures and posters and things like that. Some of those displays that some of the vendors have are just huge. I mean, you know, I'm just a guy with some books (Jennia laughs), and other than being heavy, they don't take up a whole lot of space, but some people sell some really large stuff. There's a whole company that sells those, like, life-size R2D2 droids. I'm not sure how they get them all there, but they must be pretty involved.

Jennia: Yeah, you'd think so.

Kenton: Yeah.

Jennia: Well, any parting thoughts or even just a general reading? Worth it? Yes? No?

Kenton: Definitely worth it as a vendor. If you are a vendor, if you're thinking about vending at AwesomeCon, there's two things to consider. There's a big cost investment, not just the vendor fee for the table. They also require liability insurance—

Jennia: Ohh.

Kenton: —which for me was like another $50 in case somebody, I don't know, got a paper cut on one of my pages. But, you know, there are low cost options for vendors to have liability insurance for, you know, two or three days. You know, you're going to hopefully sell more stuff than you normally do. So you're going to have to purchase all those things ahead of time. There's a big time investment, and there is sort of an element of competition there.

Jennia: (surprised) Oh!

Kenton: I mean, we writers, like, we're generally a friendly bunch, but you are investing a lot of time and money in this. You want to get a good profit off of this. So it is a job. You have to take this very seriously. You have to show up on time. You have to put in the hours. I was very thankful to have my youthful ward, Dylan (Jennia laughs), with me to help me out and keep an eye on the table and talk to people while I ran to the bathroom. And Dylan would go and stand in those long food lines and bring me something to eat. But, yeah, it's a job and you have to treat it as such.

Jennia: Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because I've heard reviews from other people, from other conventions or bookish events, where they had a table and their experience was similar to the person you were describing, where they might complain that they didn't make the sales they anticipated making. But then when you talked to them and you tried figuring out why, or even if you had seen them in passing, they might not be there, or they might look like they were bored, or they might look like they just weren't interested in trying to talk to anyone. And I think that's just such a big part of it too, that when people are considering whether or not this is something they're interested in doing, they need to really weigh if they're going to be able to sit at the table that long and be invested in selling what they're writing.

Kenton: Yeah, definitely. You need to put in the hours and time. You need to make an effort to reach out to people without being pushy and talk to people and engage people. This is not a place where you can just sit there behind your table and poke your phone, and ignore people, and hope to make money. You have to put yourself out there and, you know, let people know about your stuff.

Jennia: Yes, so well put. Any parting thoughts, Taylor?

Taylor: I say (tries to do the Colosseum Gladiator thumbs up or down)—oh, they can't see me, but (Jennia and Taylor laugh) I say, I think people should attend. We've said multiple times, there's a lot. There's something for everyone. Specifically, if you like anime, manga, fantasy, Star Wars, this con's for you. There's lots of cosplay, lots of options for comics and stuff like that. Some of the photo ops they had this year were people who have starred in Star wars. Rosario Dawson, Hayden Christensen, Natasha Liu Bordizzo. So if you are interested in people like that or in subjects like that, I recommend going. Even if you're not interested, I also recommend maybe going for, like, a day, just checking it out. Because the authors there, including Kenton, [have] very interesting books. The people I talked to were phenomenal. I didn't meet a bad person there, personally. Everyone I talked to, or was sent to talk to, by (Jennia and Taylor laugh)—they were all amazing. Great vibes. I recommend it for anyone who's curious or is on the fence. Go for it. As an attendee, it's a really great experience. There's a lot to see.

Jennia: Agreed. And if you have any other parting remarks you'd like to make, now is your time. (waits)

Jennia: Well, I also—

Taylor: (finally unmutes) Shout out to RJ Mitte! (both laugh)

Jennia: Yes, he was a sweetheart! Oh, my goodness, yes.

Taylor: He was amazing. Loved him!

Jennia: You can bring your whole family too, which is something that I just realized we've been remiss in mentioning. Lots of kids there. Lots of stuff for kids to do. And not just walking around the vendors, but actual activities to keep them busy.

Jennia: Right, thanks again, both of you!

Kenton: Thank you!

Taylor: Thank you, Jennia!

Jennia: And that's all for today. Thank you for listening! And please check out the show notes for more information. And then please join me next week as author Eli Bernstein visits to talk about the specificity of language. Thanks again!