Feb. 23rd, 2026 12:41 am
Zine Fair
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who_is_pageVended at a zine fair this weekend and somehow no one noticed I had not slept in 2 days or that I skipped dinner-breakfast-lunch into it to get everything done. Got that golden retriever charisma in me babyyyyy
Also we were legit the only people with long-form fiction stuff? If you can even call 1000~ word microfiction "long form," but other people at the fair were. That made me sad when I finally got to scope things out. There was one fiction/nonfiction anthology I found at a table and that was it, nobody else was really doing it. :( A lot of tables barely had any zines or had mostly really professional stuff that wouldn't really count as a typical punk zine and I was like... I think some of the vendors are treating this like an art fair instead which is a lil strange.... The person we were next to had a publishing company that sold all the way up to the Midwest, which was REALLY cool, but iirc none of it was their own work; it was the work of artists in the publishing house. I wasn't sure the artists were necessarily even local to our state? Which ain't a bad thing, but I feel like I went into it expecting a lot more nearby artists at my skill level of "creating everything by hand at home" than there actually were. It was intimidating and made me feel kind of out of place and outclassed! But I've never let that stop me.
We did get to see some familiar faces that made our day, and I watched an older middle schooler buy and read my horror story Unfair about a mirror demon right at the table and yell in delight at everything that happened, which felt AMAZING. I think I gotta write more horror with kids in mind (so basically, just regular horror with less cursing :P), cuz that was so fun. Someone compared that same story to House of Leaves for the way I did the mirror script, which was swag as fuck. A LOT of people were totally overjoyed and screamed when they picked that zine up from our table and realized what I'd done with formatting, and it was one of the top sellers. Think we did like 10 copies? 15? And everyone wanted to trade for it or Territorial.
Territorial was, predictably, the best seller. Everyone loves cave diving horror, and everyone loves Florida horror. One person was REALLY excited about the lighthouse horror story I'm working on set at a FL lighthouse, I wish I had finished it in time for the fair. Moon Flower barely sold at all, which sucked, but people were enthusiastic to trade for it when they heard my pitch. I think I didn't go hard enough on the cover, because it's genuinely one of the best-edited pieces and is a ton of fun. Daily Dragonsbane did good, but not as good as last time; I think it held at around 9-ish copies sold. RUN DOG RUN did surprising numbers considering it's a therian story that's partially in Esperanto, while Dragon On The Court didn't sell even once iirc, despite it being a short comedy story entirely in English. They both sold for $1 so it wasn't even the price point: it's just my weakest seller. Aw well. You live and you learn.
Sometimes people would stand there and just read through an entire zine and I'd internally be like. Hey man. C'mon now. It's literally only 8 or 16 pages long and a few bucks. Please pay me if you're gonna read the whole entire thing. But I've been told that's normal for the event... Alas. Seeing everyone's reactions in real time was still a lot of fun, and people gushing over my work was really genuinely wonderful, even if they didn't buy anything. I'm just happy people like what I make! I got a surprising number of questions about my process and my writing programs that I didn't expect, but it was really lovely to share resources.
Either way. It really was a total blast. I got a T-shirt and some incredible zines about eels and cicadas, among other goodies. Wahoo! I crashed really hard right after the fair so I'm going to eat some leftover wedding cake and go back to bed now. <3 I have work later today
Also we were legit the only people with long-form fiction stuff? If you can even call 1000~ word microfiction "long form," but other people at the fair were. That made me sad when I finally got to scope things out. There was one fiction/nonfiction anthology I found at a table and that was it, nobody else was really doing it. :( A lot of tables barely had any zines or had mostly really professional stuff that wouldn't really count as a typical punk zine and I was like... I think some of the vendors are treating this like an art fair instead which is a lil strange.... The person we were next to had a publishing company that sold all the way up to the Midwest, which was REALLY cool, but iirc none of it was their own work; it was the work of artists in the publishing house. I wasn't sure the artists were necessarily even local to our state? Which ain't a bad thing, but I feel like I went into it expecting a lot more nearby artists at my skill level of "creating everything by hand at home" than there actually were. It was intimidating and made me feel kind of out of place and outclassed! But I've never let that stop me.
We did get to see some familiar faces that made our day, and I watched an older middle schooler buy and read my horror story Unfair about a mirror demon right at the table and yell in delight at everything that happened, which felt AMAZING. I think I gotta write more horror with kids in mind (so basically, just regular horror with less cursing :P), cuz that was so fun. Someone compared that same story to House of Leaves for the way I did the mirror script, which was swag as fuck. A LOT of people were totally overjoyed and screamed when they picked that zine up from our table and realized what I'd done with formatting, and it was one of the top sellers. Think we did like 10 copies? 15? And everyone wanted to trade for it or Territorial.
Territorial was, predictably, the best seller. Everyone loves cave diving horror, and everyone loves Florida horror. One person was REALLY excited about the lighthouse horror story I'm working on set at a FL lighthouse, I wish I had finished it in time for the fair. Moon Flower barely sold at all, which sucked, but people were enthusiastic to trade for it when they heard my pitch. I think I didn't go hard enough on the cover, because it's genuinely one of the best-edited pieces and is a ton of fun. Daily Dragonsbane did good, but not as good as last time; I think it held at around 9-ish copies sold. RUN DOG RUN did surprising numbers considering it's a therian story that's partially in Esperanto, while Dragon On The Court didn't sell even once iirc, despite it being a short comedy story entirely in English. They both sold for $1 so it wasn't even the price point: it's just my weakest seller. Aw well. You live and you learn.
Sometimes people would stand there and just read through an entire zine and I'd internally be like. Hey man. C'mon now. It's literally only 8 or 16 pages long and a few bucks. Please pay me if you're gonna read the whole entire thing. But I've been told that's normal for the event... Alas. Seeing everyone's reactions in real time was still a lot of fun, and people gushing over my work was really genuinely wonderful, even if they didn't buy anything. I'm just happy people like what I make! I got a surprising number of questions about my process and my writing programs that I didn't expect, but it was really lovely to share resources.
Either way. It really was a total blast. I got a T-shirt and some incredible zines about eels and cicadas, among other goodies. Wahoo! I crashed really hard right after the fair so I'm going to eat some leftover wedding cake and go back to bed now. <3 I have work later today
