Our last MCM event of the year reviewed.

I've just posted my report on the London MCM event over on Strangestoftimes.blogspot.co.uk.

MCM London.

These weekend, well actually Friday as well, Accent UK will be at the MCM event in London's Excel, Royal Victoria Doc.
We've had a great time at previous events and met a lot of new people along with those returning to the stall for the next issue of WesterNoir or Stephenson's Robot. The good news is that WesterNoir issue 6 will be available for the first time as I'll be receiving copies on Wednesday from our printer Stuart Gould.

I've seen the proof copy and it looks great.

We will also have a limited number of sketches from the series co-creator, co-writer and artist Gary Crutchley that will be free with the WesterNoir issues 1-4 plus Tales of WesterNoir #1 multi-packs.

The Troll is in the August Previews.

Well, a friend from the good old US of A has Tweeted that The Troll (by Martin Flink) is in the August Previews ... we knew it would be but it's great to have it confirmed.

and perfectly timed (by Jeremy Briggs) there's a great review over at Down The Tubes.
Accent UK are at the Manchester MCM this weekend, so you'll be able to see how good it is for yourselves.

London MCM reports.

Accent UK had a great two and a half days at the London MCM Convention last weekend.

You can read Colin's report on his blog and mine over on Strange Times.

There Can Be Only One
report.

London MCM... here we come.

Accent UK have a table is the MCM Event in London next weekend.
Well, actually it starts on the Friday and Colin and his son Scott will be setting up and manning the stall on Friday. I'll be travelling down with my daughter Jemma on Saturday (very early) to join them.
As always, if you're at the Con then do pop over and say 'Hi'.

Manchester MCM...

... our reviews of a truly great event can be found over at Gary Crutchley's blog, Dave West's blog and Colin Mathieson's blog ... in short though it was awesome.

Also you'll find a great review of the first three WesterNoir books over at www.geeksyndicate.co.uk.

MCM Belfast report.

There's a report of our days at the Belfast MCM event over on strangestoftimes.blogspot.co.uk and also Accent UK get a mention over on the report at downthetubes.net.
A great event.

Next stop... Belfast MCM.

Next weekend we'll be at the MCM Event in Belfast. Our first trip to the event, be sure to pop over to the table and say hello if you're passing.

Our most successful Convention yet...

Well, we'd hope for a really good convention and that's just what we got.

The last London MCM we attended was a year or so ago. We'd always done OK at these events but the cost of getting down to London from Manchester, and staying in a hotel, always meant that we lost out financially. So, despite having a great time we'd decided to try other Cons, closer to home.

Recent MCM events though, apart from the Birmingham show where we didn't do great, had tempted us into trying London again and so there we were at 10am, stood behind our stall, wondering how we'd do.
The MCM events are really quite amazing. A real spectacle, made so by the thousands of fans dressed up like their favourite characters, and there were all sorts represented.

My personal favourite was this Dan Dare. Amazing detail and great to see that the old heroes haven't been forgotten.
The problem with the MCM events from a 'selling comics' perspective is that a huge percentage of the people who come are coming just for that. They're not really interested in seeing any comics, they're just there to dress up and be photographed.
The good thing about the MCM events from a 'selling comics' perspective though is that the small percentage who are looking for comics still make for a pretty big number of potential customers.

The thing that struck me however as I had a quick wander, leaving Colin to man the stall, was that we had a serious amount of competition. There were rows and rows of talented people looking to sell some very nice looking books and art prints.
I remember hoping that the people who visited the Comic Village brought plenty of money with them.
By the time I got back to the Accent UK tables I found that it looked like they had, as Colin had already sold a good number of comics.
I took my turn, allowing Colin to pop off and see if he could find 'his hard to find' Cyborg figurine...

... and continued to sell to a lot of new customers.
The anthologies were reduced, which is something we always do at the MCM events, attempting to draw in interest from people not traditionally comic book readers, and they sold really well. The one shots also did great, with strong interest in WesterNoir and Wolfmen in particular.
By the end of the day we'd sold more comics than we ever had in a single day, and were looking forward to a beer ... or two.
A nice evening with Sumyra and Darren of Lucky Target comics, Chris and my daughter Jemma where we enjoyed some Greek food, if not their music, and a few pints, and then we were heading off to get some rest and hopefully wake up refreshed for another successful day.
Typically we do less than half on Sunday what we did on Saturday.
Not so at the MCM events in seems.
We had another great day and as it ended we realised that this was our best Con to date. We sold out of a number of books, and must remember to bring more number 1's with us in future, and had only a few boxes to take back to the car.

We'd spent the entire two days, pretty much, meeting new people and hopefully making new Accent UK readers...
Thanks to all who visited the stall and spent some time chatting with us, we had a great time, and thanks to the organisers of the event, it just gets better and better.

The 2014 Event season starts...

..with the DemonCon7 event in Maidstone, Kent on the 16th February.
We've been wanting to make it to this event for a year or so now but it's always either clashed with something we'd already booked, or been the week before or after. This time we put it to the top of the list. We are aiming to launch issue 4 of WesterNoir at this event, and all is on track to see this happen. Pop over to Strange Times blog to see the cover development for Issue 4 and Gary's blog to see the first three pages.
..we've also book a table at the MCM event in Birmingham on the 22nd and 23rd of March.
It's looking like it's going to be another busy year.

Manchester MCM Madness.

Wow.
How busy was that ?
We decided to try something new at yesterday's MCM in Manchester. We'd done pretty well at previous events but found that we weren't tempting the non-comic reading attendees. People who were there so that their sons or daughters could meet the Knights fom the Merlin TV Series. Whilst chatting to them last year we had the feeling that they might have been tempted by the Anthologies had the price been lower.
The other consideration hitting us at the moment is storage. We have a lot of the old anthologies still in boxes in lofts and need to make space for new titles.
Combining these we decided to try out MCM Madness, where everything on the table was £3 (except of course the WesterNoir three issue sketch packs).
A simple pricing structure that was easy to talk through with potential customers. It did mean however that we'd need to leave Zombies 2, Thaddeus Mist and my little hard cover books at home.
We decided to give it a go.
It worked.
We shifted a few boxes of the anthology titles, and a good number of the one shots during a very busy day.
This was a record breaking one day event for us in terms of books sold, but due to the prices was probably equal, or close to, other events in terms of cash taken.
It certainly tempted those people who liked robots (as an example) to part with £3 and pick up a great anthology packed with short stories and pinups.
The hope is, of course, that they'll come back for more, and maybe be tempted to pick up some of the one shots. Only time will tell.
All in all it was a great day. We met a lot of old friends and returning customers, many of whom are also Facebook Friends and members of the Accent UK Comics Facebook Group. WesterNoir #3 sold really well, and a number of customers picked up all three copies. It's great to have an ongoing story and character, and having artist Gary Crutchley at the table to sign and enthuse was great.
Highlight for me though was selling a copy of Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man ? to someone who'd heard the story outline from a friend some 4 years ago and failed to track down a copy over the years. When I explained to story to him as he looked at the table he was shocked that here it was. He'd stumbled across it after all that web surfing and forum posting.
Yep, Accent UK had a great day.
Thanks to everyone who came to the table.

Manchester's MCM.

We missed the MCM Con in Manchester last year due to it clashing with an event at a Library that we'd already committed to, and so we had no idea whether it would be good, bad or indifferent.

What it had in its favour was that it's a very local event for us, so no trains, no hotels to sort out, no lugging heavy bags of stock across city streets. No, it took us only 30 minutes from Colin's house. Which is why we were late.

What never ceases to amaze me at the MCM events is the colour, the costumes and the sense of fun from all the people who take the opportunity to dress up like their hero. Colin would love to dress up as Captain America, I know, but we've told him there's an age limit, and he has yet to find out that there actually isn't. There should be, but there isn't. I can rely on the fact that he rarely goes online and so will never see this posting.

And so there we were. A nicely stocked stall, a banner telling everyone who we were and Colin dressed normally. But would it all count for anything ? We know that the percentage of actual comic readers at these events is quite small, probably around 10%, but with 5000 or more people coming through the door (and they were still queueing to get in at 2pm), that's ... err ... at least 500 potential customers. So, signs were quite promising.

We know that the queue was still there at 2pm because Gary Crutchley was in it.
Once behind the table though he was in fine form. Doing a fab job of selling all the Accent UK books, that he was in, and giving away free sketches and signatures if the customer began to show any hesitancy.

Shauna, The Space Girl from Starburst, teleported down to say 'Hello', it turns out that she's the girl who puts my copy of Starburst in the addressed envelope, for which I thanked her. Actually I think she's employed to pack more than just mine but it was nice to meet her anyway, and give her a copy of WesterNoir as a small 'Thank You'.

Business was steady all day, with 2OMBIES (Zombies 2) being our best seller, closely followed by WesterNoir, which is great.
Gary got to meet the winner of the KAPOW raffle for his original artwork (I still owe you that £10 Daniel) and we then realised we'd forgotten to raffle of his new one (it was an honest mistake .. really .. although it does look very nice on my wall), which we'll take with us to MegaCon.

...and then it was 5pm. The show was over and we'd managed to sell more books than at any other 1 day event before it. A great day, a great range of independent comics on display from all manner of publishers and great sales ... who could ask for more?
We ended the day talking comics over a pint in the oldest pub in Manchester, apparently, with Steve 'Timebomb' Tanner, who had also had a great day. Hope you managed to catch your train OK Steve, see you at Thought Bubble.