Several folks we know have already booked their hotel rooms for the 2007 San Diego con. And at least one person has reported that his hotel of choice is sold out already.

Another thing we’ve heard is that the convention has also raised its booth prices quite a bit for 2007. Several artists and small press types were squawking to us about this. The booths are only going up a few hundred dollars, but in some cases that’s enough to eat into profits enough to cause second thoughts. We predict everyone will bite the bullet and show up anyway, but it’s worth noting.

Also, even though SDCC was big, it is still not nearly the biggest. ComiPress reports on The Hong Kong Ani-Com/ 3rd Hong Kong Game Fair:

…this year’s attendance figure is the highest ever. 80,000 showed up on the opening first day, the average attendance number over the weekend is 112,000, and the final night of the convention saw 78,000 fans attend. An estimated 490,000 people attended this year’s Hong Kong Comic Fest over the course of 5 days, which is 16% higher than last year’s numbers.


Whew!

1 COMMENT

  1. I was under the impression that SDCC counted its attendance as total _actual people_ rather than tickets per day as this con does. That is , a person coming four days counts as one person at San Diego, but counts as four people at Hong Kong. If this has not changed, then the cons sound comparable in size.

  2. How many rooms does Comic-Con reserve, I wonder? I booked a room for 2007 one week BEFORE this year’s Con, and ended up with a more expensive room than I wanted– I was told that all the cheaper rooms were taken by Comic-Con.

  3. HellCar has been exhibiting at Comic Con in Small Press for four years now. We have never made a profit on the show–we’ve never broken even, as far as that goes. HellCar flies in from North Carolina and the UK, so it’s not likely we ever will make any money at the Con.

    But every year we make better and better contacts and more and more friends. I’m on at least nodding acquaintance with a fair number of medium- to big-shots at this point, including producers, writers and artists at DC, Adult Swim, Nickelodeon, etc. The show is about networking and connections, in my view–it’s a marketing rather than a sales event. And we lose less money every year! This year we made enough revenue to pay for the table, all our food and our lodging costs. I’ve already got my plane tix and lodging squared away for next year. See you there!

    Eric Knisley
    http://www.silent-k.net
    http://www.hellcar.com