And we finished with a bang. People kept telling us they'd come back and buy stuff on Sunday and lo and behold they did. We sold a lot of three-book sets (common at ALA but rare this weekend) and some people bought multiple copies as gifts. Even though Sunday's exhibit was three hours shorter than Saturday we had almost 50% more revenue. We had been very aggressive about handing out flyers for the previous days, but as an experiment we just gave them to people who really stopped and looked at our booth. I think it worked better.

I had lots of people come up to the booth and thank me for starting the WebComics School. I also got lots of great feedback about how to tweak the format and my moderation to get the most out of the panels. We had an extra half-hour for the last panel ("Making Money") and we covered a lot of material. Cartoonists Scott Kurtz, David Willis, Steve Troop, and Raina Telgemeier were joined by Robert Khoo, business manager of Penny Arcade. Every day had its issues, and todays was that the big guys (Scott and Robert) tended to dominate the conversation. It's probably somewhat inevitable, because they are the ones who have really succeeded and so we are interested in what they have to say. But I tried to cut things off whenever the conversation got a little too irrelevant for those folks in the audience just starting out. I confirmed a belief I've had - that the amount of books we sell is vastly disproportionate to our audience size compared to most webcomics. My thanks to everyone who showed up on all three days - panelists and audience members. I hope we can do it all again next year.

Update - here's a nice summary of the panel.

In the waning minutes of the show I bought a few gifts and said my goodbyes. After the show ended Gene and had dinner I reflected on the show and what worked and didn't work. I signed us up for a corner booth (no guarantees we'll get it) in the Independent Publisher's Pavilion again, and we have a year to figure out how best to use that space.

At the airport I had a nice chat with Tycho from Penny Arcade, who has never been anything but friendly, cordial, and supportive. And Gabe's wife drew a fabulous robot for my Spouses of Famous Artists Sketchbook. On the plane home I had a fascinating conversation with Mark, a creative guy who runs a branding company when he's not helping his brother's film distribution concern (the reason he was at ComicCon). I'm hoping we'll get a chance to work with him on the Unshelved business, which at this point could use a little guidance.

I got a ride home from John Lustig and his wife Shelagh and collapsed into bed around 1:30am. A short night later I was up drawing today's strip and getting ready to go to that day job thing. Goodbye Comic Con, see you again next year!