I'm the dealer liaison again for the Dragonflight convention (http://www.dragonflight.org), which will be August 26-28, 2005 in Bellevue, WA.

That's right, we're not in Seattle this year, having arranged to move to the Sheraton hotel in Bellevue, which has many advantages.

The main reason for this post is that I'm trying to work to make Dragonflight a local center for indie gaming. It seems like there are some great conventions out there on the East Coast supporting small games and not nearly as many on the West Coast. Last year, we had many indie games run by folks from the SGA (Seattle Gamers Assemble), but I didn't have some of the tools I needed to try to entice publisher support in the dealer room.

So, this year, I'd like to set up a program geared specifically to small, independent publishers. We will have a consignment table, run by myself, my wife and possibly some volunteers. It will work basically like this:
1) Make sure that someone will be running an event using your game system, whether that be you or another attendee. We will not accept products at the consignment table that don't have events associated with them - they won't sell, and the convention is really about playing games anyway.
2) Ship us some copies of your books.* It's your choice how many to send, but I'd recommend something like three copies or less of each title.
3) Get us promotional information. Since the people at the table may not be entirely familiar with your game, give us something to pitch customers with. My sales approach will be to ask people if they're looking for a particular genre/style, and then try to match them with something that fits their needs.
4) If you will be at the convention, please feel free to hang out at the table to help sell your own games.

Now, there will be no up-front charges to participate in this program. If we sell copies of your book, you will receive 70% of the value (we keep a 30% commission), paid by check or PayPal within two weeks after the convention. You will need to specify the disposition of any unsold books. We can 1) give them away as prizes, 2) donate them to MSG, a Seattle gaming center run by Dragonflight, 3) ship them back to you at your expense.

Also, if you're attending as a publisher and will run four games during the convention, the convention director has agreed to give you a free pass to the convention, further reducing the cost to you. As an added benefit, we're often able to schedule related games at the same table throughout the convention, which can give you a sort of base of operations.

* I specified books above. There's a possibility that we can also sell PDFs, since the convention center has wireless internet access in the area we'll be selling from. I have not had time to figure out the logistics on making the sale and delivering the product, however. If you're interested in stocking a PDF with us, or have ideas as to how I might sell them at a convention, please post here or message me. Conventions encourage people to buy, so I think having the ability to buy on the spot will help.

Anyway, all of this is still in a somewhat formative stage and is largely based on my own marketing efforts at conventions. I'd really appreciate any feedback you folks have on how we can maximize the effectiveness of this idea. And, if you're planning to take advantage of it, definitely let me know as soon as possible.

Last year, it was really hard to tell from the website what games were going to played. If you have anything at all to do with that, even a tenative, fragmentary list is better than nothing at all, or a dead link.

I'd be interested in volunteering, since I've gotten a lot of enjoyment from Forge games without giving anything back (other than some money).

I'll make sure to bring the issue up to the committee at our meeting next weekend. I know that we have a much better team of people working on the website and database. I also know that a lot of our events came in at the last minute last year. The RPGA didn't submit theirs until a month before, and something like 30 more came in the very last week from various people. But still, there were a lot of events submitted early.

Were you a member of the convention mailing list? I know there were some announcements and discussions through there regarding planned events.

As for volunteering, is there anything in particular you'd like to do, or that you're experienced with? We can always use people, especially if you're familiar with some of the indie games around here and would like to run demos. PM me if you'd like.