Well, looks like Wondercon has officially decided to NOT include me in the festivities – if you’re an independent comics creator, this can happen a LOT. You lose the popularity contest and shows that are more competitive say “Thank you, next.”
You can register, pre-register, sit on a waiting list for years and still not get in from time to time. It’s become a much more competitive show of late and since 2014 or so I think I’ve managed to get into the show floor on a 50% ratio.
That said, it’s still the show I do best at and the show I like the most.
But like many shows, the year to year organization is always tweaked somehow. Before the end of the 2018 show I took advantage of the ability to register before the show was over. However, one of the people I contacted this year said they threw out all of those registration forms and everyone needed to register again during the normal registration period. When I did so, the waiting list was … uh … waiting.
SO hopefully no one forgot to hit the paper shredder during that audit (the staff’s word, not mine) because that’s a lot of credit card information.
Anyway. I wish the organizers were more transparent about what that registration process was for in 2018 if not for actually registering. Looks like it was just an head count of interest for people registering for the next year. My friend called it population control. I get the idea of selecting the floor carefully to maximize publicity and sales and also to keep the show fresh. I don’t do a show unless I have new content – I was getting two books finished for this show.
I spent the past year getting these books and prints ready and now it looks like I’ll just be publishing them online first without a public debut venue to coincide. I admit I liked the timing of Wondercon and a subsequent Comixology date. That staggered release schedule worked well.
So If I get into the show, it’ll be quite last minute notice since I contacted everyone I could, hassled them repeatedly and still nothing. The squeaky wheel in this case isn’t getting greased, as the saying goes.
