White Lightning Productions

This question is primarily directed at Kris, though if anyone has any insight to offer, please post away.

I've attended a couple of gaming, anime and comic book conventions in my time. Once I was even an exhibitor. I pooled together some funds and set up a small booth at a local gaming con, hoping to promote and sell my company's table top RPG. By the end of the weekend we hadn't sold a single copy. In retrospect the organizers really didn't seem that interested in supporting the exhibitors. They didn't clearly mark the location of the dealers' room, didn't print up a list of dealers, offer much in the way of ads, etc. Or perhaps I just wasn't good at drawing in customers. I wasn't the only frustrated dealer, that much I know.

I've also heard quite a few horror stories from both the perspective of dealers and attendees (the infamous Dashcon, for example). So it seems a lot of planning, skill, and organization needs to go into a successful convention. There are also probably some tricks to being a successful dealer. As a convention veteran, what advice would you offer to people who want to organize a convention, those who want to be a dealer at a con and (to a lesser extent) people who simply attend them? The dos, the don'ts, etc.

If there isn't already a book or e-book on this subject, someone ought to write it.

There's a thread in the Dumb Questions forum where Kris gives quite a lot of advice on con dealing. It may not answer some of the more specific questions you're asking but it may still provide some insights.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2987

There are actually a couple of conventions specifically to teach people how to run conventions.

I don't have time to do a full run on the subject now (or energy- it's taking all I have to work on today's PitW update). I will point out, though,that very, very few conventions bother to do a single thing to promote their vendors... and those that do try, usually don't do much good. We vendors consider ourselves lucky when we find a convention that doesn't treat us with outright contempt.