Inviting Us to Your Convention
Tthe first step in getting us to your convention is really to just drop us an e-mail telling us when it is and inviting us to be there as your guests. If our schedule is open, we’ll almost certainly be willing to attend. In fact, we’ll even advertise your convention on our site so our readers will know to find us there, and we keep our official conventions list in easy view on the left-hand side of every page.
Programming
We have several different panels and workshops that we can run on a variety of topics, and we’d be happy to conduct any combination of them at your convention. All of our events are designed for an hour time slot and require no special equipment. We’d also be happy to participate in other events if you have some in mind. For bios, event descriptions, and pictures to use for your program guide and website, please ask us for a copy of our convention packet.
Logistics Details
We are based in Cincinnati, Ohio. In order to attend your convention, we need you to provide our badges and a hotel room, as well as covering our transportation costs. We do not charge an appearance fee, but we may request a per diem for meals if you do not already have something else planned. We’re flexible when it comes to travel and usually prefer to drive ourselves. In some rare cases, such as if your convention is overseas or there is a significant scheduling concern, we may need you to provide us with plane tickets instead. Typically, we plan to arrive the day before a con and leave the day after a con so that our travel and recovery time aren’t conflicting with your convention.
IMPORTANT: We do not generally operate on a reimbursement model. In most cases we will expect guest relations to book a hotel room, and we will charge a fixed rate for our travel costs of $0.40 per mile for the round trip from Cincinnati, 50% of which will be due on signing the guest contract, the other 50% on arrival. If we have agreed to a per diem, that will be due on arrival as well.
Vendor Space
We are unable to accept vendor space in lieu of reimbursement for travel and hotel costs. A vendor space requires full-time effort to yield any significant income, and we’d already be putting that effort into being your guests. However, we would still be delighted to accept some vendor space at your convention if we’re already attending as your guests, since it is an excellent way for attendees to talk to us between panels. As a significant portion of our time will be spent at panels, though, we would prefer to minimize setup and teardown by being in a vendor space that is secured after hours.
Convention History
For more information about some conventions we’ve attended as guests in the past, please see our bios here and here. These list only the conventions we have attended as guests, conventions that we have attended as panelists, juried artists, or vendors are not listed.
Have more questions before inviting us to your convention? Please feel free to ask us for more details. We’d be happy to answer all your questions about travel, media interaction, panels, and anything else that may come up. Thanks for wanting us to be at your convention… We look forward to working with you!