Alright, here's the "dealio" in a nutshell. I've got a few RPG products I want to have available for sale at GenCon2010 in Indy. Last year, I went with the GPA's package, but found it was not a good match for my needs (though the people there were fantastic). Basically, I will probably only sell a handful of books throughout the course of the convention. Last year, I barely recouped the cost of the shelf space (I ended up slightly in the red after I paid the state sales tax). I'm at the early point with most of my products, where turning a profit is not the principle goal, rather getting my product out and recognized is. That being said, I need to recoup costs to stay in the market long enough to achieve product expansion and eventually profitability. I spend most of a convention running demos of my games and trying to learn/network, so I've never had much time to be in a booth, doing actual sales. In fact, my own experience has shown that running demos is the best promotion I can do for the game, afterwards I get a lot of positive feed back and questions over the availability of the game within the exhibitor's hall.
I think what would work best is if I could strike a deal to sell by consignment -The booth owner would take ~1/2 of the cover price and pay me the other half in some yet to be determined manner. I could provide product a little at a time (checking in each day to what has sold and what hasn't). I don't predict that my games are going to have huge sales -I'm shooting to move maybe 10 copies between the 3 products I'm hoping to have available. Basically this would give me a place to send my players after a gaming session when they ask where the games are available at. In this sense, it could be some good cross-pollination for the booth owner too.
My products include books for my Century's Edge Victorian Era role-playing game, and the book for my Movies Till Dawn game (a pseudo-role-playing game/party game where players take on the personalities of B-movie stars playing hackneyed roles in late-night features). The content of these games is easily PG, and all the books/materials are shelf-ready -professionally produced. I live in Lafayette, IN (about an hour from Indy) so I might be able to help out with any sort of set-up/tear-down, storage or transportation needs the booth owner might have as well. Let me know (either in response or by private message) if you have a booth and are interested in making some form of deal. Thanks!
Louis Hoefer
Whole Sum Entertainment
www.wholesumentertainment.com (http://www.wholesumentertainment.com)