Convention Recap: Hilltop Oktoberfest 2023

Most of the events I cover in depth are the larger ones, like Dragon Con, or ConCarolinas. But I figured why not show one of the small events I do as well, to show both sides.

Hilltop Oktoberfest was the first of its type in this area. Also, it was a ticketed event, outdoors. So I knew going in that attendance would likely not be super high. Outdoors, somewhat rainy day, 25 dollar ticket for a beer focused event: that is not exactly a book vendors recipe for success. But there was no setup fee, so other than my time and gas I knew there would be no cost, so I decided to risk it.

The event ended up with, at my guess, around 225 attendees, with another 20 or so folks involved with throwing the event. And this wasn't really an arts focused crowd, it was beer focused. So there weren't a tooon of folks to be foot traffic, and what foot traffic there was was typically hanging around the beer tents. Because duh. If I wasn't battling an awful earache, its where I would have been.

So with the deck stacked against me, how did I do? Pretty good I think! I ended up selling 177 dollars worth of books and stickers. 90 dollars worth of book 1, an omnibus bundle, a bunch of sticker bundles, and then a few single stickers. So I earned about 30 bucks an hour, once I factor in setup and tear down. Which, hey, is more than my day job lol.

The highlight though was a man who came up and told me that he saw me downtown when I was dressed up as Howard Marsh, and that prompted him to investigate, and he was reading book one and loving it. So it was neat to see that debacle paid off at least a little bit!