Brooklyn Zine Fest

Thanks to everyone for coming to the Brooklyn Zine Fest on Sunday! It was great to see returning customers from previous zine fests and other cartoonists like Kenan Rubenstein, Darryl Ayo and Bill Roundy all made it a point to say hi. It was also nice to hear a few people say they'd seen Urban Nomad previously either at Desert Island in Brooklyn or at one of the Zine Libraries in the city.

I had a birds' eye view of the main show floor and it looked like this for most of the day. So many people had nice things to say about my signage and display despite being in a non-visible section of the dark stage. Luckily I'd brought some alligator clips and was able to hang my sign from the curtain behind the table. Once we got some lights clipped up at both ends it was much better. It was difficult for people to maneuver with my table having a steep precipice on one side and the other side being perpendicular to my neighbors so that anyone in front of either of our tables was blocking the other. I angled the books on the right so that people could still see if they were craning to look over others' shoulders from the side. Most people were patient and it seemed like the majority of the giant crowd came up the stairs to see what we had going on.


Despite the non-ideal table placement, I sold out of all the Urban Nomads, all my $1 zines and all but 3 copies of Counter Attack that I'd brought with me. Ah-mazing! This was also my first time using Square register on my phone and I made 3 sales with it, so that was a bonus. Definitely my most successful zine fest to date, rivaling the combined sales from two days of last year's CAKE Comic Convention in Chicago. The Brooklyn Zine Fest was packed the entire time and I had a blast. Hope I'm able to table there again next year!


I only had a few minutes before the Fest started to quickly walk through the second room (which also had a much better lit stage) and the main hall to say hi to A.J. of Syndicate Product, Ayun Halliday of East Village Inky, Malaka Gharib of Runcible Spoon, and later Robin Enrico of Jam in the Band. I wish I'd had more time to discover new work and say hi to some of the other zinesters I've met before.


I know there were a few people who hoped to pick up a copy of Urban Nomad after I sold out at the fest but unfortunately I have to reprint Urban Nomad #3 now! I just put Urban Nomad #1 up in my online shop along with my Conan the Librarian print which has a limited run. I'm running a sale until Sunday April 28th to match my convention price in the online shop for this week only! If you're in NYC and prefer to shop locally, Bluestockings Bookstore on Allen St in Manhattan and Desert Island in Williamsburg both carry them on consignment.