“Welcome all you horror honeys!” announced the Crypt Keeper himself.
Crypticon was one of the best run conventions we’ve ever attended. The staff was available, knowledgeable and courteous. The facilities were spacious and we had a great booth location. The events were well planned and professionally announced. There were good demonstrations and skits in the middle of the vendor’s area (we’re still singing “Time Warp” and “Thriller”). There were scads of guests stars that you actually KNEW and even more scads you didn’t unless you were deep in the genre — scream queens, writers, actors.. EVERYONE in the genre.
All of that being said, I won’t be going back (and I wish Crypticon would give lessons to other conventions). My products didn’t match the customers wants.
At a normal convention we am interacting with the public continuously — either bringing people in with a casual flirt or talking to someone who is showing an interest or even to booth vampires that just want to talk the day away. At Crypticon most people wouldn’t even meet our eyes. Very few folks engaged. We spent most of the con sitting there trying to think of a way to get folks to just come in and talk. It was obvious by watching their eyes that they had discounted our product, and thus us, before even getting close to our booth.
We had our worst single day convention sales (zero) and by far our worst 3 day con sales (a paultry eight books, six of which were “Toy Wars”). To our great surprise, not a single Demon Holiday or Demon Ascendant sold… at a horror convention.
On the plus side we did meet some great people… Special shout outs to Ronnie of SciFi Monkeys, “just shorten it to” Al, and some of my other writing colleagues Evil Girlfriend Media, Eloise Knapp and Tony Monchinski.
