I had a really enjoyable weekend at The Lakes Comic Festival, and it was another very interesting and ambitious event, as has been its way since the start. The Lakes is the event that gets Arts Council funding, and this year's major endeavour, to put itself a cut above the contenders, was The Rights Market.
The Rights Market had been planned some time in advance, and involved a number of international publishers coming over for two days of meetings with UK publishers (and, in my and a few other instances, self-publishers) to discuss publishing our work in their territories. At the last Zoom meeting that was held in preparation, I and a couple of other publishers discovered that we'd not received an email telling us how to book our meetings. So it was that, having shorter notice than most, while some were meeting as many as a dozen publishers, I only had meetings with four.
In order to make these meetings I travelled up on Thursday night and stayed over. Then my four meetings, about which I was quite nervous, were with a French publisher Nathan, Scholastic USA, VigeVage from Slovenia (all on the Friday), and WSOY from Finland on the Saturday. Three showed some interest and asked me to send PDFs of my books. So who knows where that will lead? I won't get my hopes up. I left them with these sheets explaining what we'd been talking about...
I was rather disappointed that the evening fizzled out then, and that I got back to my room in time to watch Graham Norton. Imagine how much more disappointed I was when, the next day, someone told me about the launch events drinks party that I'd missed! Apparently everyone else had known to go to the Arts Bar after the opening event, and I missed the memo. I can't find it in the programme or in any emails.
At this point I have to confess I suffer rather bad Comic Con FOMO. Way back in July at an event in London I thought we were going to go out for a drink together with some friends, then they let me down by going out for a meal together without me and Hev, which I didn't realise had happened till I caught a glimpse of them through a pub window. (This had followed last year's NICE con in Bedford, when on Saturday night, there had been a meal for the comics guests, to which I hadn't been invited, and I couldn't find anyone in any of the hotel bars so had a miserable night there. On top of which there is the Thought Bubble con coming up, for which I didn't manage to make the cut for a table, so won't be going, and which famously has a good Saturday night party, which I've yet to see, because the one year I did make it there, 2021, was the one year the party didn't happen!)
This is one of my big nightmares: Twinkle's Picnic Syndrome. This is a name I coined years ago based on a strip in Twinkle comic, read at the time by my sister Jude. In the strip, Twinkle misses out on a big party with all her friends because she's ill. But it's okay, according to the strip, because Mummy and Daddy take Twinkle out for a picnic all of her own, and that makes it alright. Ever since I saw this strip, over fifty years ago, I've railed against the injustice of this. Of course it's not alright, Twinkle's Mummy & Daddy! A party with her friends is the greatest thing Twinkle can experience. A consolation-picnic with you two just rubs salt in the wounds. What could conceivably be worse? I suppose if Mummy & Daddy threw Twinkle their feeble second-fiddle picnic, and then halfway through Twinkle realised that her friends were all having a party that she hadn't been invited to, which she finds out about cos she catches a glimpse of it over the hedge from the horror-show runner-up losers picnic that she's having to endure? Yes, I guess that would be worse.
Whatever, there being a party that I hadn't been invited to made me feel pretty miserable when I found out about it the next morning. My mood was slightly lifted when Simon Miller (who I see at these events every year) came to my table and said "didn't you see your Facebook messages?" They'd seen me walking glumly past the window of the pub they were in (en route to watch Graham Norton) and messaged me to invite me in. Of course I don't notice Facebook messages so totally missed it. But that cheered me up. Knowing you're wanted makes all the difference. And I bet the drinks party was shit anyway.
The Comic Book Marketplace (known at other events as The Dealers Room) had suffered last year from being in a tent without a floor, which meant that exhibitors' books and artwork got damp overnight. I think this had led to a number of people not re-booking for this year. This year we were in a tent which was, on the plus side, water-proofed thanks to a solid floor, with a carpet even. But, on the minus side, it was half the size of last year's tent, making one feel that one was at a smaller scale event than before.
Small scale was also the appropriate term for describing the tables. At such events, we're used to 6 foot wide tables. But here the tables were only 4 feet wide. This meant we were a little squeezed in, but whatever, we got on with it. And my mood and temperament improved when, by the end of Saturday, I'd sold a healthy amount of books. You can see my totals here. I even had time to deliver a Comic Art Masterclass down the road at the Jetty Museum from 3.30 to 4.30, after which there was still brisk trade going on right up until 6pm.
The Saturday evening, in contrast to the washout and FOMO of the Friday, was an absolute delight. There was a quiz, run by the Thorps from Viz, and my team came second. I'd been on the winning side last year, but this was just as much fun. On my table, to all intents and purposes The Scottish Table, was Stephen and Ro Slevin, who'd had me up to Paisley for the last two years, John McShane and Pete Renshaw from Glasgow, Stevie White of Tara Togs fame, Stu Gould the Nuts man (and my printer for all my Shakespeare books), and John Jackson of Wallop and Spitfire.
Inbetween quiz and karaoke, I went through to the bar and met a chap called Mark Fuller, who has very interesting plans for the future of the comics industry. We enjoyed a long drunken chat, putting the world to rights, soon joined by John and Stevie for one of those pub conversations that I don't have often enough these days. You know, the ones where you can't remember the next morning a fraction of what you were talking about. But you know it was really important.
For the karaoke I sang Drive In Saturday in a Northern accent. I was the last number of the night and it was midnight already. Now that's what I call a comic event Saturday night.
Sunday fair flew by, with me selling a good few comics, and a bit of original artwork, which all served to make it worthwhile. The five hour drive home afterwards was pretty painless too.
Oh and one joy, just as I was packing up my books, was this lad...
His name's Isaac Thompson and he came over to thank me for kick-starting his career. I taught him in my Comic Art Masterclass at his school ten years ago, and now he's self publishing. And quality work it is too. It's a book called Killjoys Never Die: Vampires Death and Guns, and it looks a million dollars. There you go, twenty years of my classes, and someone's finally taken it to heart.
So all in all an excellent weekend, with highs that far outweighed the lows for me. I must say, looking around the Comic Martketplace, that I'm not sure if everyone did the roaring trade I did. The punters this event attracts are not the big body of die-hard fans that you'll get at Thought Bubble or TBC (the rebranded Bedford con, still one of only three comics-only events on the calendar), and I'm not sure the kids and families, who dropped in on the off chance, were going to be so interested in the high-ticket art books and the niche comics that a lot of people were offering. At least one family thought they'd come into a food market and were surprised to find very little was edible. Me, doing Shakespeare for kids, this is my target audience. But most publishers, I'm not so sure.
The Rights Market was a magnificent achievement, and I'd like to hear what people have made of it. And whether they'll come again. I'd like to hope that word of the waterproof marquee will reach those exhibitors who came last year but cried off this time, so that next year they could justify twice the exhibition space. As for the total attendance, that's the hardest thing to assess. The Friday night event was a sellout, there were lots of punters passing through the marketplace tent, but with the talks being in scattered venues across town, it was hard to work out how many were there in total, and whether it was a popular event.
I know three years ago, when it was still in Kendal, that The Lakes festival felt busier, because we had The Brewery venue to ourselves, the perfectly positioned Town Hall space for the public to drop into, and people like The Phoenix came along and made a big show of themselves. This time there was no sign of them or their ilk, and I think there were fewer events all told. But there was, as I say, The Rights Fair, and maybe that makes up for a shortage of other attractions. Who knows?
I'll give them my feedback, and we'll see what happens for 2025.
My Books and where to get them:
Richard The Third - Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Paperback
Space Elain - Amazon - Lulu - iBooks - Barnes & Noble
Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories - Amazon
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon
