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artist alley

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Today's lunch reading (and probably tonight's reading as well, if my net access is still out) is Paco Underhill's* Why We Buy,

Just opening the book and reading random pages gave me ideas about artist alley tables - there's a section where he talks about how people don't like to bend over to get items from shelves, which illustrates why I think so many AA people are now getting elaborate setups at their tables which raise their products to eye level, and there's also info about how people don't like what he calls the butt-brush: if the display is in an area where people are jostled or bumped, they'll shorten their browsing and buying time.

Which made me think ... what about if I created a questionnaire/survey sheet/whatever to be filled out at AAs by various people? If you're an AA artist would you be willing, for a free look at the data generated, to fill out forms that ask you to do things like make tick marks for the number of people who browse at your table, and then for the number of people who buy things? And whatever other quantitative data I can come up with? I can't do a thing about qualitative data, like how good your art is or whether you've hit the sweet spot for series to draw fanart of, and so on, but I think there's good info to be found in the quantitative range, like how much sells in the $1-3 price range versus how much sells in the $8-10 range, etc. All identifying info would be removed, obviously, and I wouldn't ask things like how much profit you made. (I see perhaps, eventually, crunching the numbers and putting it into a PDF that I could sell for download at $1-2/pop to cover bandwidth etc., but all participants would get free versions and would have access to the anonymized data.)

Not sure if I'd get off my duff and do the forms, but it's a possible project. The more buy-in I get, the more I'd be likely to do it. :D Thoughts? I am VERY MUCH not a statistician or professional marketing analyst, just have a bit of background in anthropological and sociological fieldwork, but I think some broad conclusions might be able to be made.

* He's not a hobbit, but a marketing anthropologist. :D

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i'm not an artist, but as someone who works with them, i'd be greatly interested in seeing something like this.

and now i will leave you alone :)

Cool. :D I suspect a lot of people would be interested. XD

I would be fascinated by this (but am not an artist)! Perhaps you could find a hungry geeky grad student to do the drudge work as an Academic Project.

Con-shopping is inevitably crowded, but the last time I was made aware of it was at AWA at a busy doujinshi booth. I'd found the one overstuffed box of hentai/yuri to browse only to be instantly squashed by the looming crowd of guys pressing in also. I ended up grabbing handfuls and escaping to look through them at the other end of the booth, where it was also crowded but without the LASER-FOCUSED MALE ATTENTION. And none of this has anything to do with artists' alleys, except maybe as layout advice for adult material. "Don't put all your smut in one basket?" "Don't crowd people who are looking for porn?" "Don't crowd a woman while she's flipping through 'rape plot, rape plot, rape plot, oooh consensual Temari/Shikamaru, rape plot with tentacles'?"

I'd have to get the hungry geeky grad student to come up with the questions, then, to make sure they actually measured real things. XD

That is very true. Very few people like to search for porn with an audience.

Which makes me wonder how well the REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING yaoi guy* does, and if he'd do better if he just SHUT UP. (He also apparently was making fun of some people at the con, but I've forgotten what few details I heard from the artist next to me. Can't have done his sales much good)

* Anyone reading this, if you've been to a con he sells at whose dealers' room staff doesn't shut him up and sit on him, you know EXACTLY who I'm talking about. He was at Tokyo in Tulsa.

RED HOT YAOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-

Yeah, I think I know. XD;

Oy, unless he's got twins I'm pretty sure this guy comes up to Katsucon, too.

(Anecdata FWIW -- I browsed through his booth in spite of the annoying LOUD SNARKY SALES PITCH IS LOUD aspect because, unlike far too many of the other sellers, he had all the doujinshi vertically stacked in bins so they were easy to flip through, and ORGANIZED BY SERIES. Non-annoying quiet sellers are all well and good, but when your wares are just dumped in a giant pile on a table so I have to shuffle through the teetering stacks one by one, with no guarantee I'll even find a series I'm interested in? I'll hit the annoying guy with the more organized and easy-to-browse table first, no contest.)

Yeah, I've seen him for sure, and he's deeply annoying but his dojuinshi are much easier to flip through than at a lot of stalls. I still don't usually go, but that's not as much because of him as because -- at least at the cons I go to -- the booth is swamped, and I got tired of being aggressively elbowed out of the way by someone who wanted to see the same box I was looking at RIGHT NOW.

But before I gave up because of that, it was where I went, because I could home straight in on the series I was interested in.

(Perhaps another lesson that could be applied to Artist's Alley types: if you have a print catalog/binder/display, organizing by fandom is a Good Idea.)

(Perhaps another lesson that could be applied to Artist's Alley types: if you have a print catalog/binder/display, organizing by fandom is a Good Idea.)

Yes, that would be great -- nice clearly-labeled tabs, say, so that even if the binder is open to some other section, there's something to catch my eye and say "look here, there's stuff you will like!". I'm generally looking for art/DJ/other swag from older and/or more obscure series, so I know I'm going to have to do some wading through tons of stuff from the more popular Flavor Of The Month new hotness, and that's fine -- but the sellers who at least take a moment to indicate that they've got some of what I'm looking for in the back of the binder or the middle of the DJ stacks is guaranteed I'm going to look, and so long as I'm there I will probably check out some of their other stuff. The folks who have stuff just all mixed up in a disorganized heap -- I may look there too, but if time is short and I'm tired and people are elbowing me on either side, I'll also give up looking relatively quickly. The folks with labelled, organized stuff that's easy to browse, even if all the same time/energy/crowd negatives are in place, I'll at least put up with the elbows long enough to check out just the specific sections where they're most likely to make a sale to me.

Yes, that. I bought a lovely piece from someone, and it was of a character from a fandom that's pretty old/rare. I really wanted to find out whether she had more from that same fandom, but there was no easy way to find it in her book of prints (and she was busy enough that getting her attention for questions would have been nontrivial).

It also makes me wonder how much they hurt the potential sales of other artists. I've seen some younger kids there with parents, and I don't doubt that some have left when someone starts screaming "Getcha hot man love right here!"

And making fun of people at the con? Wow. Just... wow. I've had my moments, as probably anyone behind a table at a con has, of wanting an eject button for a conversation every now and then, but it's part of the business.

I don't sell art, but I find the idea of putting Why We Buy information in play at an Artist's Alley really fascinating -- as someone who both read (and enjoyed) the book, and who regularly drops $100+ at Artist's Alleys.

And yeah, some of the things seem really relevant: I definitely prefer when people have displays where I can see the art without having to get up close and bend over the table. This is partly because it's easier to stand back and go, "Oooh, that's an awesome Edward Elric... and I like that shot of Sakura... okay, I'll head in closer to see the sizes/prices," but it's also because (and I suspect this is an anime con-specific issue) I went to two relatively recent cons dressed as Kairi-from-Kingdom-Hearts and Etna-from-Disgaea respectively, and in both cases my skirt was kinda short, and bending way over while being crowded from behind when you're wearing a very short skirt is, uh, offputting. (And yeah, the inconvenience was my own damn fault, but it's not like I'm the only potential buyer in that situation....) So being able to see things without bending was good.

I also second the point about wanting to look at more risque art without being smushed. I buy doujinshi, except I don't buy it at cons anymore because elbowing my way through a big crowd in order to riffle through a whole range of potentially-embarrassing comics was offputting; I just buy online now. The corollary for an Artist's Alley person is that I'm more likely to look at risque art if it's in a binder that I can pick up, so that it's harder for people to peer over my shoulder at what I'm looking at. And I'm much more likely to buy it if the artist either marks them in some way so I can say "I'd like print A-13" or lets me tilt it toward her and point. If I have to say, "I want the one with the naked Reno," I'm probably not going to buy. ;)

...And even though I'm not (yet) selling art anywhere, I'd find the results of any such study fascinating, and would be willing to shell out some money for them!

There's one thing I think I may try for AFest - the book mentions that when an area is full of visual clutter, a display made of one solid color really focuses attention. I've been using a table cover printed with elephants that I got from an Indian grad student who worked for me, but I think I'll buy a plain one-color length of fabric for the table and one to cover my set of shelves that I use for display and see if that works.

(I'm also going to wire/zip tie a mirror to the shelves, as (a) the book says mirrors attract people and (b) people trying kanzashi on keep asking me for one.)

Oh, hey, speaking of kanzashi sales, did you ever get your hands on a wig to go on your DD display head? I picked up a bunch of ultra-cheapie ones on eBay for some experiments and can pass one along if you need it (and if I have the right size...)

Cool, thanks! The only wig I've got is slightly too large for the head. :D

I've got extras in 8" or 9" -- doublecheck the head's measurements when you get a chance and drop me a note at Gmail if it looks like one of those will fit.

(If the wig you have right now *almost* fits, there are a bunch of tricks you can use to keep it in place. The doll vendors sell special wig velcro and silicone wig caps that both work fairly well; or for inexpensive DIY, you can just wrap the head with a bit of athletic tape, or even a wide rubber band like the kind grocery stores use produce -- both approaches add a little bit of bulk and friction to help secure the wig. And there's always glue, of course!)

I think this would probably be a huge help to AA people, and it's something I'd find real interesting to take a look at. Another thing to consider, especially given some of the factors you've mentioned, would be location of the table. We were at TnT, on an end table. While some people might assume this would HELP our sales, I suspect that being in a main aisle of traffic might've kept browsers moving by faster.

I do think, depending on your goals with the study, a total sales amount would be helpful. Could you make it a completely anonymous survey? Also, while you couldn't get down to "this person has great art, and this one doesn't", I think some demographic detail might be helpful. Things like whether or not an artist has been published, and the size of the audience for their publication, would help define the numbers a little better. Type of art might help as well.

One thing I've always been curious about, since we've done the AA thing, is whether or not seeing a particular kind of art might turn off a potential buyer. But it'd be a lot trickier to survey the buyers, unless you did it online.

Yeah, I was trying to work out how to ask about table location while eliminating as much of the subjective viewpoint as possible - since each AA is laid out differently, it's hard to do. For example, the endcap I was on at TNT was along the main corridor to the dealers' area, but the other end of my island was along a not-so-main corridor, so traffic patterns might be different. I might have to ask for a simple sketch of the space, with major entrances and exits and locations of any major attractions like panel rooms, gaming, dealers' room, etc. Or at the very least ask if there were any major trafficways from or to one of the above nearby.

There's also asking about setup - do you go high, how high, is the table crowded or sparse, do you have a colored table cover, do you play music, do you remove or move the table, etc. Also, what merchandise is sold.

Hmmm... a Survey Monkey survey of AA buyers would be eminently possible. First to work out what information I'd like to know before formulating questions! (I know that if I have a particular print, a humorous one with Light and L in bunnysuits, visible, I see people actively repelled from my table. But they'll look through things and laugh at it is it's NOT visible until they shuffle prints around. XD)

ETA: I think what I'm getting at with sales is that it depends on the individual person -

the_z's sales goals are higher then mine, and mine are higher than the first-year AA person across from me at AnimeFest, so I'd have to put questions in there to work out what expenses and goals are, I think, so the data can be used to figure out how best to help. Or something. Er, my thinking iz fuzzy enough here that I'm open for suggestions. XD

Note to self: don't forget commissions, what media, at-con or for later, etc.

Edited 2009-07-15 13:46 (UTC)

One thing I've always been curious about, since we've done the AA thing, is whether or not seeing a particular kind of art might turn off a potential buyer.

As just one buyer (so totally anecdotal) I can say yes, but it has to be pretty darned blatant; just art that I don't care for won't put me off. Part of it is that I love to buy pictures of female characters who look strong/interesting/badass; if a high enough proportion of the prominently-displayed art features female characters who are clearly there purely for fanservice in a way that doesn't seem at all in character -- or, worse, makes them look submissive/humiliated -- I'm going to assume that the stall is Not For Me and move on. And sometimes I'm dead wrong and the artist also does great pics that I'd love to buy, but I'm being put off too much by the displays to ever see it.

The same thing happens if a lot of the displayed art looks bloody/gory, but that's rarer.

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