I have some many doubts as to whether anyone really reads blogs anymore, much less this blog in particular, but anyways... It was useful to me to read a few other people's rather old blog posts that I could find about this event, so I am trying to pass on the favor.
Small Press Expo (SPX) is a two-day convention centered around independent comics. It takes place in Bethesda, MD, near White Flint station. There are a lot of independent artists there as well as a few indie publishers. I am not hugely familiar with the indie comics scene and this was really my primary introduction to it, basically.
I attended SPX this year because my friend was an exhibitor and I wanted to see what it was like (congratulations to him; I admire his work ethic). I ended up helping him at his table for most of the day I attended, the second day. I wasn't able to make it on the first day, but I wish I had more time to really look at all the other stuff there a bit more thoroughly. I would like to attend again next year as a guest.
Exhibitor tables are distributed via lottery, so there's no absolute guarantee my friend would get a spot next year. This year, the fee for for a half table (which is what my friend had) was $195.
Overall, I'd say it's really overwhelming the sheer amount of stuff there is at all the tables, and it was a lot to take in especially as a first-time attendee. I didn't get to look at everything that closely, alas. There are also panel sessions and workshops you can attend, though I didn't go to any of those.
While a lot of people were selling various original comics, there was also a decent amount of people selling art prints and things of that nature, rather than only comics. There were people selling stickers, pins and buttons too. I saw a couple tables with some tote bags or t-shirts, even one with some bandanas in original designs. I wanted one of those but I have TOO MANY bandanas already.
It's easy to see a lot of stuff you might want to buy, but at the same time, you probably also want to be mindful of your budget, so you ultimately have to pick and choose. I only ended up buying one comic, from a publisher's table. It was $15. There was another comic at a different publisher's table that caught my interest, but it just seemed a bit too expensive ($40) for an on-the-fly purchase. It was hardcover, quite large (like a coffee table book) and printed in color, so the price isn't that unreasonable, but I had already bought something else.
If I had a much larger budget to spend at SPX, I could easily see myself finding like $200+ worth of things I might want to buy. I might try to save up and set aside some money specifically for next year's SPX so I can buy more than just one thing and not have to limit myself so much.
One of the publishers did a 50% off everything sale in the last hour on Sunday, but they didn't have anything that particularly interested me. The $10 to $20 price range seemed pretty typical for smaller comics like the one I bought (128 pages, paperback, about 6" x 8").
In terms of from an exhibitor's (assistant) perspective, it's important to have an eye-catching display at your table. Have prices and any other applicable signage or labeling clearly displayed. And make sure you don't run out of business cards. Additionally, having a friendly and welcoming demeanor to interact with the people passing by your table can potentially help with sales. Don't sit back and hide awkwardly behind the table.
It was my friend's first time exhibiting at this particular event, although he had done other conventions before. The audience tastes of SPX didn't seem quite aligned with my friend's comic, so he didn't do as well in sales compared to when he sold the comic at other events.
I'm not sure to what extent his table location affected things in this case. Overall, the setup of tables in the convention hall seemed laid out pretty well. I think maybe it could be a detriment to end up right next to a really impressive exhibitor's table that would grab all the attention in that little area and cause people to look at that table instead of your table, but this is just speculation on my part.
The next day, we went to a used bookstore which had a comics section. The comics there were primarily or entirely more mainstream. Many of them were from the publisher Image and they all had a very similar art style, like the traditional Marvel or DC comics. Personally I find that style unappealing, so I'm definitely more drawn to some of the work you see from indie comics artists.
There is definitely a difference between the styles in indie comics vs the styles seen in more mainstream comics, whether that's classic superhero franchises/series or original yet still mainstream work. While there are certain styles that seem prevalent in indie comics, there's a decent wider variety and you can see some that are more unusual or distinctive in some way.
ETA: a little more about the distinction between mainstream and indie comics. I think the division between what you see in indie comics and what you see in mainstream comics is a lot starker than the division between other media that has indie and mainstream versions (ex: music, books, contemporary art, maybe even film but to a lesser extent). There are some more mainstream books and music I like, even if I also like more obscure/indie stuff.
I noticed that none of the mainstream comics at the used bookstore from Image seemed interesting to me at all in terms of actually wanting to read them. Whereas at SPX, that wider variety of art styles and subject/thematic matter in the indie comics there is way more interesting to me. All of the Image comics have that stereotypical western superhero comics style, which I just associate with superhero subject matter. The typical mainstream superhero comics stories do not interest me at all.
Maybe the original non-superhero comics published by Image actually have interesting stories, but my mental association with that art style makes me assume the story won't be any good, it'll just be some cliche mainstream stuff, so I dismiss those comics at the outset.
As my friend described it, mainstream comics (or Japanese manga) take up all the oxygen in American comics audiences and people assume that mainstream superhero-style comics are what all comics are, that that's the only thing comics have to offer a reader. So it's tougher to carve out a space for indie comics and experience more of that side of things, whether as a comics artist or a reader, or both.
In a way, I think that I got a mistaken impression from SPX of what contemporary comics are like -- there was so much more uniqueness and variety in the comics I saw there. So I kind of thought if I looked at a comics section in a (used) bookstore, I might be able to find some similar stuff. But alas, no. This is a criticism of what's more available mainstream, not SPX! The Scott Pilgrim series is an indie comic that gained more mainstream popularity, but ultimately it has indie roots in terms of the style and thematic material.
Back to the previously scheduled programming though, SPX 2024:
Some things I'd like to know are which items, vendors and/or comics ended up being the most popular in terms of sales? Not that it means those things are inherently better, but just for the sake of curiosity -- what things resonate more with the people attending SPX? How much did a typical attendee buy?
It is interesting to think about it from the frame of how a given person is not going to buy something from every vendor at SPX. They might purchase something from a few of the vendors out of the hundreds that were there. How do you make your work/items be the thing that someone decides to buy instead of that other person's comic?
Obviously, different people have individual tastes and not everything will appeal to everyone, so even if your work doesn't interest Charlotte and Phillip, maybe it will interest Jessica. But hopefully you can find enough people to be interested in and buy your work to at least break even on the event fee and production/printing costs.
ETA also: I'd also like to find some places online, if possible, where there's more meta discussion about indie comics in general. It was difficult to find much information about the experience of SPX as I mentioned earlier, so there might not really be anywhere that people tend to discuss indie comics in general. I can always talk to my friend, but I really would like to hear a wider range of other people's perspectives too.
I admittedly have a terrible sense of work ethic so it's very much a gamble as to whether I could finish some comics material to exhibit at SPX next year, but perhaps at some point in the future I might do it. At the very least, I do want to attend next year as a guest. There is a similar indie comics focused convention in Minneapolis, which is called Autoptic and it'd be cool to attend that one year if possible.
ETA 3, regarding terminology: I found out some new-to-me information that clarifies some terminology. "Cartoonist" refers to someone who does both the art/illustration and writing of a comic. Comic artist, more specifically, refers to someone who does the art for a comic that was written by someone else (a comics writer). Cartoonists are both comic artists and comic writers, but a comic artist, in the strictest sense, is not necessarily also a comic writer (and therefore, a cartoonist).
As far as indie comics go, I'd assume it's more common to have cartoonists who write and illustrate their own work, rather than splitting that between two or more people. Previously, I had assumed that "comic artist" was more or less synonymous with the actual definition of "cartoonist" -- casually, it may be, but strictly speaking, it isn't necessarily.
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