Conventions!

[Rozmdan]

Greetings everyone,

For the sake of curiosity and what not, is anyone planning on attending any conventions in the U.S. this year? There are plenty of them all across the states and given the potential crowd here, I imagine most of the people who read this post are either in to anime or gaming cons.

I'll be heading out to Sakura Con mid April this year and depending on finances, potentially the new Crunchyroll convention that is starting in August.

If anyone has any conventions they would like to highlight or point out, feel free to share.

[Terrence]

I'm going to Pax East video game convention in March. I've lived in the area for years, but never gone. The tickets were a Christmas gift. =]

[Rahul Balaggan]

• Anime Expo (In my opinion the best convention for anime and manga fans)
• Crunchyroll Con (this depends on how fast tickets go on sale, August is not far away and I don't like booking airplane seats and hotels right before a convention)
• New York Comic Con (my hometown)
• AnimeNYC (still my hometown)(let's see if this one can compete with Anime Expo)

I really wish I could go to Sakura Con, or Anime Boston. Sadly those always happen within Tax Season so I can't get time off from work. (Insert sad face)

[Sam Pinansky]

This sounds like a good place to ask:

If J-Novel Club were to participate in a convention, what kind of things would you like us to do?

Some ideas (tell me if any of these sound cool to you, or maybe rank them)

1. Bring over an author or illustrator as a guest.
2. Hold a panel talking about our service and pushing our titles, with title announcements.
3. Hold or host a panel about light novels in general, bringing in bloggers or people from the community.
4. Run a booth in the vendor's area and sell... stuff? Or at least have demo ebooks.
5. Hire cosplayers to go around the con promoting our stuff.
6. Sponsor events like cosplay masquerades, karaoke rooms, etc.
7. Hold an all-day, multi panel seminar about the intricacies of interpreting Little Sister Literature and the thematic significance of different colors and patterns of panties.

[Terrence]

@Sam-Pinansky Free bookmarks. x)

Maybe some kind of cross promo with Crunchy or something? IDK? Never been to a con, so IDK.

It'd be nice to see people cosplaying as stuff too, though hopefully nothing too degrading. x)

Cosplay outfits:

1. Pink Haired Aiko.
2. Siskan's Odaira (either version). xD Yuzu is cool too.
3. Yume + Ranta from Grimgar.
4. Realist Hero's Princess in her uniform.
5. We gotta have an alien or future girl from Little Apocalypse.
6. Lizardman from Mixed Bathing... Ah, who am I kidding.

Those are the designs that stand out to me so far.

[Rozmdan]

@Terrence Some of the bigger conventions have lots of cosplay. Sakura Con usually has about a (estimate) 20% cosplay ratio to attendees.

@Sam-Pinansky Out of the list you presented I'd say for a relatively new business, the 2nd option seems like a good starting point. A few years back when Ponycan created a US branch they started with a panel discussing their service and titles, etc. and it did seem to help raise awareness.

I remember in another forum you mentioned that your based in Japan, so another potential idea is if you ever contact a convention over here, most have a "grab bag" that you could probably slip in something advertising J-Novel. The grab bags usually run out every day so it would be a good way for your info to get out.

[Rahul Balaggan]

@Sam-Pinansky

In my opinion the top 3 in order would be:

1. Bring over an author or illustrator as a guest. (Help me add to my signed Shikishi collection)

2. Hold a panel talking about our service and pushing our titles, with title announcements. (I enjoy hearing about what companies have been up to, and where they are headed, and the Q and A is always super helpful, then again I can't wait to participate in your AMA next week)

3. Run a booth in the vendor's area and sell... stuff? Or at least have demo ebooks.(I greatly encourage this, you bring stuff to sell and I will buy, if you had any merchandise for any of the series you currently publish, I would buy it up. Poster, blankets, keychains, towels, and this is me thinking out loud but seven seas will be selling the books you licensed if you guys sold variant dust jackets for the books...well I can dream can't I)

Depending on how everything goes from now until your first convention appearance, if you can commission a work from an author and illustrator that will be a hit.

When someone (myself included) hears the words, "convention exculsive", for the most part price becomes irrelevant and some sort of primal instinct to buy whatever product it is takes over.

Like I am just spitballing here, but let's say you brought over the Author and illustrator for The Faraway Paladin, if the author wrote up a small side story for the book, and some illustrations were included then let me just say I could care less about the price, and I am sure I am not alone in this.

Here is an actual example of what happened last year at Anime Expo, FAKKU! brought over an artist Saitom, and they worked with Saitom to reproduce all of his original Doujinshi in English. Super high quality stuff, and it was an $80 price tag for 118 pages, and not all color pages. They printed 500 copies which flew off the shelves, and they even held back a small amount to sell to those who couldn't attend the convention. Which in turn didn't remain on sale for longer the 10 minutes.

Also I know I have actually discussed it with you before but Bookmarks go a very, very, very, very, long way, especially when considering everyone on this site enjoys reading.

Also complete side not #1: it would be very nice to meet some of the J-Novel team at a convention in the states.
Complete Side Note #2: I think Anime Expo would be the best place for your convention debut.

[Aruseus493]

@Sam-Pinansky

1. Bringing over authors and illustrators are a huge plus. I love trying to get my books autographed. :3
2. Panel about title announcements and stuff is always a good standard for industry panels. I always attend the publisher panels at Sakura-con (My local anime convention.) to hear about new licenses asap.
3. Panel about LNs in general while bringing people in? Sounds like it might be time for Aru's Crash Course in Light Novels. No promises I won't try to push my harem agenda. :3
4. Sell stuff at a booth? lol. That might be kind of weird. I know a bunch of industry booths tend to give away stuff like posters of the series they're publishing/streaming. (Which I will definitely collect.)

Yea, those 4 are really just the biggest things for me. If you actually get cosplayers to do characters from the series you publish, that'd just be cool considering how little variety this is in cosplay at American conventions. You can only see so many Luffys and Narutos before you wonder if there are any hardcore fans at all.

[the green death]

1-4 would hold my interest!

I'm going to Anime Expo for the third year running this year. It's a great time! I hadn't been to any big cons for many years but have found the crowd to enthusiastic and not as annoying as western comic cons (what I used to hit)

[Bryan]

@Sam-Pinansky Selling Light Novel related merchandises would be awesome! Sadly I won't be able to attend any conventions anyway, so if possible also sell on your site after the convention would be great!

[ImIlyaz]

I assume all this conventions are all in America right? That's so sad because I really want to experience what attending a convention feels like as I'm new to the community...

[Terrence]

How about an art contest?

I'd pretty much just copy the cover art or draw stick figures if I had to go from memory though. xP

[kuuderes_shadow]

@ImIlyaz There are plenty of conventions elsewhere in the world. Just American companies (which includes basically every English language manga/light novel publisher) don't tend to attend outside of America.

[ImIlyaz]

@kuuderes_shadow yea that's sad. Though I'll try to go to one of these conventions in America in the future. I hope. But for now I'll see what I can find around me

[Sam Pinansky]

Well I'd have to fly from Japan in any case so I don't see why I'd limit myself to US conventions.

I've always wanted to go to Australia or Singapore...

But yeah, maybe once we get rich ;)

[Rahul Balaggan]

@Sam-Pinansky said in Conventions!:

But yeah, maybe once we get rich ;)

Everyone start buying premium credits like there is no tomorrow, I will start.

[Bryan]

@Rahul-Balaggan id do that if there was fan service illustration bonus for premium ebooks on all the books I read here lol. Sadly they won't happen anytime soon either.

[Sam Pinansky]

@Bryan Does it have to be male fanservice?

[Rahul Balaggan]

@Sam-Pinansky can't speak for everyone but it's good to be open minded I suppose.

[Bryan]

@Sam-Pinansky I did say for the books I read. Which in that case yes it most likely should be male fan service. But I don't mind a girl and guy in the same scene. Personally have no interest in males myself.