Attend a zine festival
This week, I tell you about the day I attended a zine festival.
What’s a zine?
A little background if you haven't read previous articles. A zine is a paper publication created by whoever wants and distributed on a small scale. So a zine festival is an event where zine creators get together to sell their zines to the public. In the article Signing up for a zine fest (even though I did have a zine yet), I explain ... well how I registered for this zine festival, and in the article Create a photographic journey zine, I retrace my adventures to get the 5 zines I created. They are little booklets with photos I took in New Zealand, each one about a particular place and some of them include a scavenger hunt.
My first creators market
This was my first time participating in a zine festival but more generally in a creators market. I come from a very creative family so I pretty much knew how it was done. But it was new for me to want to sell things that I had made.
Sweet organizers
From the beginning, during the discussions before the event, the organizers were very nice and answered all my questions. On the day itself, I was welcomed with open arms and very well accompanied. I have the feeling that in France, event organizers are always stressed, running around and that it is almost expected of them. But to see the organizers calm and smiling, it gave me confidence for the rest of the day.
Zines and more
Even though it was a zine festival, we were invited to bring more of our creations if we wanted to. Obviously, my brain went all over the place. I thought about making postcards, printed versions of my photos on photo paper, linocut reproductions... before I calmed down because I had already spent 3 weeks making my zines. Finally, I arrived with 10 copies of each of my zines, original linocuts that I had already created before the festival but that I put on paper for the occasion and some small paintings that I had in stock.
Booth preparation
To prepare the booth itself, I already had an idea of what to bring but to make sure I didn't forget anything, I asked for help on Tik Tok, on zine festival discussions and from my family. I also went to a designer market that is held in Kroad on a regular basis to see if there was anything specific to New Zealand to consider. I came out with the following list, knowing that the organizers gave us access to a table and two chairs. I bought some very small easels so that the zines would be visible to people passing by. I wrote a text to explain who I am and what I do, for the shy ones who wouldn't dare to ask questions and I brought the essentials to make sure I would be comfortable during the day, a sweater, food, water, a pillow, a lip stick, a cell phone charger. To complete the set up, I had planned some reading copies with a small insert for the public.
Booth layout
When I arrived at my table in the morning, I must admit that I had a little stress about the layout. How to arrange the zines, lino and paintings so that it would be most visible to the public and most eye-catching? I ended up putting everything on the table and trying different layouts until it felt cohesive and pretty enough.
Tablecloths
What really made the difference between the booths of novices like me and the regulars, in addition to the material to hang the works, was the tablecloths, it hides the stains of the tables on which we were, it unifies, it gives cachet. I had thought that it could be the case, but I didn't think about it. Clearly if there is an investment to go up a level, it is this one.
Wind and paper are not friends
The difficulty with paper art is the wind. The event was indoors but the doors were open so every time there was a gust of wind my zines fell off the easels. Which makes me think that outdoor markets would be difficult to manage.
Payment methods
The organizers had warned us that there was no way to pay by card on site so we had to bring change because the public would be paying in cash. So I went to the bank to ask for coins because cash is so rarely used here that I haven't touched any in 4 months. Through my research, I also learned that bank transfers are very easy and widely used here. So easy and instantaneous that there are no third party applications like Lydia or Venmo. Here everything is done on the banks app by just entering the account number to send the money to.
My artworks’ prices
I wondered about the prices of my work until the morning of the event. After a quick tour of the other booths before the festival opened, I decided that the prices I was thinking of were about right. So I put my zines at $5 knowing that they cost me $2.5 to print and my lino and paintings at $10 because they are originals.
Talking to people
During the event, it was very important to pay attention to the public because many people asked questions and I added information about what was visible on the booth.
One or two people told me that they would have liked to buy prints of some of my pictures to frame. So that's probably something I'll offer next time.
Counting money
In the end, I sold for $85 in 4 hours. I'm glad because I came in with the mindset that my goal was not to sell as much as possible but to have the experience of the day. I sold 4 linocuts and 9 zines. The one that did best was the one on Kroad, which is a street in Auckland. Which makes sense because with the scavenger hunt, people wanted to be able to do the activity proposed by the zine. And the scavenger hunt was a success. It's clearly what made people go from "oh, nice picture" to buying, so I'm very proud of this concept.
Lost money?
To finish on the sales aspect of the day, I tracked all my sales as they happened on a Notion board I had created beforehand. Notion is an app in which you can add text, tables with data, links, images. In short, you can do many things with it. It's been very useful for me to calculate the total for each sale, because I suck at mental arithmetic, and to analyze what worked best. I also had a stressful time because the day after the event, which was on a Saturday, I hadn't received all the transfers I was owed even though people had shown me the validated transfer. It was simply a question of bank opening hours and I received my due on Monday afternoon. Small administrative detail to finish, in New Zealand, if I understood correctly, you can sell your works and services very easily without declaring it to anyone. As long as you don't reach $60,000, which corresponds to 35,000 €.
Great experience!
I am very happy to have participated in this zine festival. I fulfilled one of my goals for the year which was to sell a lino and I saw that my photos were liked and that my concept of scavenger hunt was a good idea. I also met some other creative people who were very nice. While trading with people, I picked up some riso posters that I need to frame to put in my home. It's made me want to participate in other creative markets and I just found out that I'll be at the one at Studio One Toi Tū on April first.
What about you?
Thanks for listening to this episode. Let me know on Instagram @elisabnfs if you've ever been to a maker's market and what new thing you did this week.
Next week, we'll talk about improvisational theater.
