All I can say is I could have brought more books.
This week's Comic Art Masterclass tour of Northern Ireland is one of the longest consecutive run of classes away from home that I can remember. I am doing 6 days of classes, in Newtownards, Omagh, Enniskillen, Belfast, Limavady and Larne, which entails 7 nights away, flying on Sunday out and Sunday back.
This time last year I did a 4 day run here, then had to return for a one-off visit to Belfast. So I was pleased this year to be able to co-ordinate the trip so well (that was mostly down to the helpful art centre organisers themselves) ensuring one return flight and one hire car took me to six paying events, with no dead days.
The other angle that I am now exploiting, having simply not bothered to for far too long, is selling books. You will recall that, after my classes in Clevedon this June, I discovered that parents watching from the back of the room were a perfect audience to sell my books to. Unlike kids, who have no money, these guys have just watched me being brilliant for two hours, and of course they're the very people who think graphic novels about Shakespeare are the very thing their kids should be reading. Thus a roaring trade stepped into the gaping hole of missed opportunity, and I have since sold a good amount of books at my events in Braintree, Ludlow, Beverley, Cockerton, and Peterborough.
So I knew I could sell books at these classes in NI, but how? How could I get them over there. At an additional expense of £45 I booked an extra 15kg hold bag and packed it with books. I discover that amounts to thirty books. Well, I thought, that should do.
After my first day of classes, in Newtownards, I had sold 11 books and was on my way to running out of stock early. After my second day, in Omagh, I had sold 9. Then when I got to my latest B&B and got into conversation with my landlady, who was interested in art, I'd suddenly sold another 3.
Only have 7 books left to sell, and if those don't all get snapped up by the end of today's classes in Enniskillen I'll be most surprised. Which means the poor parents of Belfast, Limavady and Larne will end up book-less. I'll be trying the fallback option of showing them the QR code to scan that takes them to my website where they can buy books, but I know for a fact that absolutely none of them will do it. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and no people from my classes have gone on to buy books from the website since the days of lockdown and Zoom classes, when there was no alternative.
I sounded out folks on Facebook for how I could do this. Many suggest posting books over. But how much does it cost to post potentially 100 books over? And what if I'm left with most of them unsold by the end of my class, on Saturday afternoon, ahead of a Sunday morning flight home? What am I supposed to do with them then?
It seems the best option, if I do a trip like this again, is to take my car on the ferry from Fishguard to Belfast. That way I can load it up with books to my heart's content, and take them all back if no-one wants them.
UPDATE: Jesus! The ferry from Birkenhead to Belfast (there isn't one from Fishguard after all) cost £400! Sod that for a game of saving money. That is pretty much ten times what the flights cost.
Wednesday: The kids at my classes at the Ardhowen in Enniskillen weren't accompanied by their parents (I secretly refer to these as 'creche' classes) so there was less opportunity to flog them comics. Even so I sold four copies, leaving me with only 3 copies of Findlay Macbeth to sell, the other two p.o.s. displays standing empty and forlorn. Sigh. Still, when I've done these classes before, I'd never even given a thought to selling books, so it's no different. And I have, as the saying goes, washed my face. I paid £45 extra to put 30 books in the hold. I've sold 27 books at between £5 and £5.99 each (all 3 books is £15) netting about £150. So I've made a profit.
I've made profit enough to cover the unexpected cost of the week: a parking ticket. I never get parking tickets. But I fell foul of JustPark and its very annoying app, which it would appear I hadn't used before. You park, and this wheel starts spinning round on your screen. I just want to type in "7 hours parking" and pay for it, but it keeps scrolling round, without explaining what it's doing. Looking closely I think I've worked it out, have you?
I work out that the screen is scrolling round by one second for every minute. So I wait until the screen shows 7:00, slide the button across, and pay for my 7 hours parking. It is a surprisingly reasonable 68p.
After my day of classes, with its reassuring abundance of book sales, I get to my hire car to find a parking ticket on the window. You, dear reader, have probably already spotted my error. But I, in the haste and flurry of rush hour early morning parking, certainly hadn't. This Just Park app wants you not to book your allotted time in advance, but instead it wants you to keep the app open, and running, in the phone in your pocket for the whole rest of the day. It then wants you to, when you return to your car, slide the button over. Then, and only then, telling them the length of time you wanted to park and then, and only then, paying for the parking. So instead of paying for 7 hours parking, I'd paid for only 7 minutes worth.
I now know.
For the whole of my drive from Newtownards to Omagh I was fuming, and incensed at the thought that I faced a £90 parking fine for not understanding what this very unclear app was doing. As it happens, arriving at my destination and reading the small print, it turns out the fine was only £45. Which was covered by the books I'd sold that day. The books I would sell the following day would pay for the hold bag. And the remaining sixty quid's worth of books? Pure profit. (No, I am not joining the 20BooksTo50K league yet.)
For the record, as I type this is my hotel room in Belfast, I am under the shadow of a Just Park app problem of a different type. I'd booked by parking in advance, so I can park from Weds night to Thurs night. But then, when I entered the car park I - mistakenly - pushed the button as I enetered, and acquired a parking ticket. This leaves me in danger of paying twice for the same parking. I've phoned them, and they say they'll let me out without paying double. But I'll believe it when I see it.
Oh yes, and I appear to be developing a cold. Ain't I a bundle of fun? Coupled with that, the programme I was using to colour comics while away with my travelling laptop, an online photoshop called Photopea, won't work all of a sudden. The browser tells me the clock setting is wrong (oh, don't ask me to explain, I've sounded people out on Facebook, and it seems my OS is out of date, so no colouring programmes will work). So I can't colour the kids comics every night after work, and will have to do the whole lot, a dozen of them, when I get home. Just leaves me all the more time to nurse a cold at night, as well as driving for 90 minutes between venues. Ooh, listen to me moan, the classes are actually really good fun. And selling the books I have has been a bonus. Parking tickets and colds are just part of life. Onwards and upwards.
Update: Saturday 12th, I've just completed my sixth and final day of classes and I have no voice left. Remember I said I was getting a cold? Well, I was, and I have, and today it got to that point where my voice was giving out. I managed the morning class with a husky growl, but after lunch it was almost gone. That's when I tried something I've ever tried once before - my Scottish accent. It sounds crazy, but when I stop trying to use my plummy English accent, which come from low in my throat, and change to my "cod David Tennant" which is much more nasal and bounces off the hard pallette, I was able to carry out the whole two and a half hours of the class without it giving up. A similar thing happens when I've lost my human voice, but as still able to do the Scottish Falsetto Socks voice. That said, all voices have now gone, as I type this in my last hotel room of the trip, and I've managed to buy petrol and food, and checked into my hotel, all on a whisper.
I look forward to colouring these comics when I get back. But, more than that, I'm looking forward to getting back. It's been a good week, but too long to be leaving Hev and home, especially when, at this time of year, we'd normally be in Edinburgh, and we're both painfully aware of it.
My Books and where to get them:
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