Between Two Cons was hosted by the Between Two Cairns podcast on June 26 & 27 in Portland, Oregon. I’d been stoked about this since last summer, when co-host Brad Kerr had told me it was in the planning phase.
I’ve had two adventures featured on the pod:
- Ex Inferis. Written by Tyler Welch, I provided art, layout, editing, and some additional writing when developing the ‘deluxe’ version. It got a Cairnies 2025 award.
- Beneath the Muckfort. Which earned an honorable mention at the Cairnies in 2025.
I was hoping for stellar sales, since the Between Two Cairns podcast audience has to be the niche where I’m the most well-known. Long story short, sales were good, but I learned through conversations with other vendors that I’ve been developing my table along the wrong axis—more on that later.
The Event
I got to start the con early, managing to secure an invite to the exclusive pre-party via the incredibly benediction of the mighty Tyler Welch. GomezWritesGames and I mingled it up like a couple of socialites, had probably one drink too many, and went to bed late to get ready for our early morning.
The con itself was a bit of a blur, but surprisingly, the vendor hall was pretty slow after the first few hours on Friday. I did around 40% of my sales for the whole thing by noon that first day. I wasn’t too sad about it, I had plenty of opportunities to wander off from my table and make friends with the other creators. (Shout out to my neighbor, Mr. Perils and Princesses Ryan Lynch)
Money Stuff
Expenses
I was lucky enough that I didn’t need to make any big Mixam orders or anything to table, but I went a little crazy on the Food and Drinks budget. No regrets, but I should probably do sandwiches for lunch next time.
The only line item here that I’m bummed about are the prints. I redrew one of my favorite illustrations from The Line in color, and got some 8x10s printed up. I sold one.
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Hotel | $-237.81 |
| Food and Drinks | $-208.92 |
| Stuff I Bought | $-60 |
| New Prints | $-90 |
| Table Fee | $-100 |
| Total | $-696.73 |
Item Sales
Muckfort and Murder were predictable best sellers. Prints didn’t do great at this event—I blame all of the other amazing artists in attendance.
Crucially, my average sale was $21.79 over 35 transactions. From speaking with other vendors like Goblin Archives, I should be looking to get that number to $30 or even $40. I’ve been thinking about trying to attend some cons over on the east coast next year, and wondering if I should try to table or not… I think that the average sale number should be my heuristic. If I can hit that $30 mark or higher, than I can hope to break even on a more expensive trip to table at an east coast event.
| Item | Qty |
|---|---|
| Beneath the Muckfort | 15 |
| Murder at Murder Manor | 11 |
| The Line | 4 |
| Foxtrot Uniform | 4 |
| The Fiend Sworn | 3 |
| Ex Inferis | 3 |
| Diet of Worms | 1 |
| Prints | 11 |
| Total | $745 |
Take Aways
Stop putting off table improvements:
Every time I’m at an event, I talk to whoever else is around about all the stuff we want to do to make our tables look nicer. I’ve got Critcon 2026 and Rose City Comic Con coming up late summer/early fall, and I’ve gotta do some of that stuff I always talk about:
- Make a cute gravy bookshelf
- Design and purchase a pop-up banner
- Buy some cheap stickers I can give away (uprinting.com does 2000 paper stickers for $40, by the way.)
Developing a table where success is possible:
I did a little under $750 in sales, a number dwarfed by most of the other folks at the event, but I had a pretty immediate realization: my product selection can’t do much better than that. I sell individual zines for a hodgepodge of systems, and incredibly cheap prints. Chatting with other creators, I realized that I’ve been optimizing my table for the wrong metric.
I added prints to get a sale from someone who likes my art, but doesn’t play the games, I’m trying to increase the number of sales that I get at an event. It’s not a terrible idea, and they have certainly bailed me out at markets not attended by many gamers.
Instead, I should refocus on looking for ways to increase my average sale amount. Bundles, a deluxe version that includes fold up maps and goodies, larger more premium books with snazzy hard covers. I can’t snap my fingers and have an UVG or a Tankhead of my own, but I have some ideas:
- Bundles of games for one system that include quickstart rules with Gravy art. (Only for systems with CC licensed rules.)
- For systems for which I only have one published adventure, publish another one! Even if it’s a quickie 16-pager, you can’t bundle with one!
- More adventures is good. I have a few projects that I left partially finished, or after developing the outline. I should revisit those, and identify any that can be quickly taken over the finish line.
Panels are where it’s at:
A lot of my real life friends ask me if I run games at cons. I don’t, because I usually never have someone to cover my table for such a long time slot. Otherwise, I figure that everyone at the game would have to buy everything I sell twice to make up for closing the table for hours at a time.
Panels on the other hand, are a much shorter time commitment. It’s something that you can slap on your ‘Tabletop CV,’ it builds cachet, and it gives you a great opportunity to share what you have learned with an audience of interested folks. If you are going to an event, submit a panel.
My hottest tip for running a panel: the time slot is way shorter than you think, and it takes way longer than it seems like to answer questions. GomezWritesGames and I got through about a dozen slides and four questions in our time slot.