"What I Did/Am Still Doing On My Summer Vacation."
The Summer of 1989 (which for me started in March and will extend through mid-August) has been the busiest, businessiest season in my and ELFQUEST'S history.
Let me tell you about trade shows. Trade shows are not conventions. Conventions are very good for ELFQUEST business, because I (and occasionally Wendy and I) get to meet the fans and readers of the stories and let them know what's happening and what's on the EQ horizon and raise awareness and interest and answer questions -- and then party my/our socks off (which has little to do with ELFQUEST business but is good for the soul).
Trade shows, on the other hand, are pure 24-carat push. They are days of competition, salesmanship, and unabashed hype. They are generally for booksellers and other trade people and not open to the public, so probably very few of you have been on the inside of one. They can be large or small, but they serve, for this publisher, a very important function: letting the larger world know about ELFQUEST. For while there are perhaps 3,000 specialty shops in these United States that cater primarily to fans of comics and science fiction, there are more than ten times that number of general book stores whose customers have never heard of the local comics shop. And since I would love it if ELFQUEST were read and enjoyed by everyone in the world, it's important to make all the owners and buyers who work in all those other book stores aware of the existence of Cutter and his elfin band.
And that is done at trade shows. Lots of them. Like the annual American Booksellers Association exhibition, usually (and mercifully) shortened to "the ABA." This extravaganza is held each year around the Memorial Day weekend. It runs for four jam-packed days and is this country's largest book buying and selling event.
Imagine a building -- the convention center -- enclosing an area the size of several football fields, filled with exhibitors' booths, fifteen hundred to two thousand of them. Picture in your mind some 25,000 people milling about in this space from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm Saturday through Tuesday. Imagine those people wanting every piece of information and freebie that you can give them. Envision the carnival atmosphere as buyers stream past your booth and you, like a circus barker, try to persuade them to stop, look and listen to what you have to say (and all the while your feet are killing you because you've been on them for hours but you don't dare sit down). The constant babble of commerce. The concession stand hot-dog lunches. The lines at the phones and rest rooms. The air conditioning that fails because of all the warm bodies. I love it. It's business!
Book store awareness, however, is a long time growing. The six-volume COMPLETE ELFQUEST has been available for several months now, yet many stores don't carry the books. You can help, by patronizing all the other bookshops where you live, and asking them to carry the EQ volumes. If they haven't heard of ELFQUEST, tell them what it is and that they can special order it -- participate in your own miniature trade show! And maybe we will get everyone in the world hooked on elves!
--Richard Pini