BY JESSICA SHEN
We are back from an amazing weekend at Teslacon, and boy did we leave with some great memories! This is a little belated, but I wanted to take the time to collect all my impressions before writing up this blog. First, here is a quick recap of our weekend:
Thursday: Diane Jortner of our Marketing team and I met up with the inimitable Penny Freeman, Editor-in-Chief Extraordinaire, at our vendor room late Thursday afternoon. We spent the evening setting up our booth for the opening of Teslacon 5 the next day.
Alyson Grauer, author of On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (OISW) , stopped by for a quick minute to say hello, and we also introduced ourselves to our booth neighbors and met some of the lovely Teslacon staff. We were all pooped by the end of the night with all the travelling and set-up, so we went back to our hotel rooms for some much-needed rest.
Friday: We opened up our booth at 10AM. I finally got to meet Scott Tarbet, author of A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk (AMNS), as well as “Tombstone” in Shades and Shadows, “Ganesh” in Terra Mechanica, and, in upcoming anthologies, “Year of No Foals” in The Toll of Another Bell, and “Nautilux Redux” in Mechanized Masterpieces 2: An American Anthology (MMAA); as well as Megan Wiseman, author of the short story “The Clockwork Ballet” from Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (MMSA) and “Downward Mobility” in Legends and Lore. One of Megan’s short story will also appear MMAA.
Many of the con-goers were still at work at the beginning of the day, but traffic picked up considerably as it wore on. We had a game planned out to get patrons more involved in our booth as well as those of our neighbors, and also had drawings each hour for a free e-book (the entry fee was to sign up for our forthcoming newsletter).
Friday was the first day anywhere that we were selling On the Isle of Sound and Wonder* (as an exclusive pre-release to Teslacon), and man, did it fly off the shelves! By the end of the day, we were down to a measly one cpoy of the thing (our display volume). We had particular luck selling it as a twofer with Scott’s A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk, another Shakespeare-inspired novel (as you might have guessed by the title).
Our three authors were there at varying times of the day to sign books, which also helped with our sales. I modeled leggings printed with Egle Zioma’s gorgeous cover art for On the Isle of Sound and Wonder, and was able to sell a couple pairs, too (If you want to buy ‘em, let me know! We also have art posters available). After we closed up shop, Penny treated us to a lovely team dinner.
Saturday: The big day! We started out the day with much fanfare, all of us bedecked in our Steampunk finest. As we had sold out of all our copies of OISW, we pushed our other Steampunk offerings hard—MMSA, Terra Mechanica, another Steampunk anthology, AMNS, and Pete Ford’s Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. We had another game to play, which involved several of the Teslacon cast members, but it required a significant amount of effort from the patrons, and so it was not as successful as our vendor game from the previous day. We were able to sign up more people for our newsletter, though, which was great.
We left our booth in the capable hands of Diane’s husband (thank you for your help, Larry!) and headed off to hold our panel, Voyage of Discovery: From Inception to Published Work**. Unfortunately we had some technical difficulties and were not able to load our PowerPoint presentation, but luckily we were able to work around that with the help of Google Drive. We talked a lot about how to get published and what to expect during the editing process. We had a good number of attendees, and had the chance to interact with many of them during the Q&A session as well as afterwards.
Aly’s presentation, Sound and Wonder: Steampunking Shakespeare in Fiction***, came directly afterwards. As a high-profile cast member and all-around cult personality, Aly had a large audience at her panel. She discussed the process of writing and editing her story, as well as how she handled the source material, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. After answering some questions from the audience, she read an excerpt of her novel. All in all, both presentations went smashingly well. We wrapped up the night with presales of the hardcover edition of her book, and said goodbye to Diane, as she had to make the long drive back home.
There was a ball to cap off day two, but Penny and Scott and I were too tired from the eventful day, so we had dinner together and then called it a night. Aly and Megan had far better things to do.
Sunday: Our last day 🙁 We were able to push our Steampunk offerings some more, as well as getting some more presales of OISW. The highlight of the day: we met a family of a mother and father and two young boys who were the most excited I had ever seen anyone of their age be about books and reading and writing. They chatted with me for probably five to ten minutes, words tumbling over each other like they couldn’t talk fast enough about what they were reading, and what stories they wanted to write. They gave me hope for the younger generation!
The Vendor Room was open until about 3PM, but we ended up taking down our booth around noon, as both Penny and I had afternoon flights to catch. We ended up with significantly fewer books than we arrived with (just a few small boxes—unbelievable!), which meant that not only did we get our books out to the people, but Penny didn’t have to lug home an extra piece of luggage! After we got all cleaned up, we said goodbye to Teslacon, and Penny took me to the airport.
Whew. Well, that didn’t end up being very quick, did it? If you can stand it, stick around for a little bit longer to hear my impressions!
Xchyler Publishing’s first foray at Teslacon was an amazing experience. The Teslacon staff was incredibly helpful throughout the entire process, from submitting our presentation months before, to helping us get customers to our booth (shout-out to the Bob the Barker, the best in the business [James Nettum], we couldn’t have done it without you!).
Teslacon may not be the biggest Steampunk convention out there, but it certainly has the most heart. The event was very family-friendly, and there was a wide range of attendees, from babies to grandmothers—and everyone was dressed to the nines and acting in character, from Steampunk Iron Man to period-accurate Suffragettes. The variety of panels and activities was unparalleled, and the vendors had obviously been chosen by the quality of their wares rather than their quantity or low price. All in all, Teslacon was very well-organized, and the draw was such that even some of the hotel staff was dressed up!
We at Xchyler learned a lot during those few days. One of the biggest takeaways was the power of a new book release—hyping the release of On the Isle of Sound and Wonder, and Aly’s star power, drew a lot of people to our booth. Among the other lessons we learned, having authors at the booth available to sign books also worked very well in our favor. While we were very happy to have sold out of all our copies of OISW, we wish that we had brought more so that we could have sold out on the third day, instead of the first.
With the technical difficulties that we experienced, we now know to bring backups upon backups, so that we don’t have to be at the mercy of the fickle tech gods. We had also concocted personas for ourselves and for our team (X-ISLE: Xchyler International Society of Librarian Explorers!), but did not push that as much as we could have.
We met so many wonderful people, and most importantly, we were able to get our name out there! I hope that we have created some lasting fans, and I’m sure we met some future authors. It was the first time that many of the Xchyler team had met, and what a way to do it. I am so thankful that I get to be part of such a fantastic team, both in staff and our authors. Until next time, Wisconsin!
(l-r) Penny Freeman, Megan Wiseman, Diane Jortner, Scott Tarbet, Alyson Grauer & Jessica Shen. (Yes, you can buy those nifty t-shirts on the wall! Email us for more information).
*Don’t miss out on the worldwide release of Alyson Grauer’s On the Isle of Sound and Wonder on November 21st! Check out the trailer and attend our release party here!
**The video of our full presentation will be available soon! Don’t forget to check back!
***Watch Aly Grauer read an excerpt from her novel at her panel!