Poster Printing Costs

I plan to print A3 posters to sell at MCM alongside my book. Although I understand that small, postcard-type prints tend to sell better than larger pieces, I'm willing to take the risk. This is because I feel my design (which is a reprint of one of my humour-based pages) will look better and clearer when printed larger. Hopefully, it will also stand out against the smaller prints in comic village. Due to this choice, I need to remember to take elastic bands to roll the posters.

I intend to print around 25-30 posters, and want them to be relatively high quality. I've checked a variety of sites to find the best price and style for what I want...

pixel2print.co.uk

cheapestprintonline.co.uk

instantprint.co.uk

posterpigeon.co.uk

stressfreeprint.co.uk

Depending on how high quality I want the paper to be, and what quantity I decide on, I will either order through Pixel2Print or InstantPrint.

Meeting Discussion - 13/4

Recently, we've been finding that things have been discussed in class and on our group chat (where group decisions are usually made) have been getting lost and forgotten, and a lot of misunderstandings have arisen. To combat this, we all agreed we should sit down to discuss anything that is on our minds at this time.

To ensure the meeting was as efficient as possible, I created a short list of points to discuss. Each of these, along with basic notes on our responses to them can be found below...

1. Clothing - Wear your bird colour, with badge, when not cosplaying. If anyone wants a shirt or anything contact Gee. Pins to Daniee.

2. Table cloth/layout ideas - Alex black table cloth. Print logo and stitch it on. Easels (for 'read me' versions of books), business cards under these. Lucky dip - free if you buy - stickers, sweets? Paint easels our colours! Test layout before con - Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday before.
   
3. Schedule (who's at table when) - as message in chat states. Send screenshot in chat. Learn each other’s pitch.
   
4. London transport - look for oyster cards we already have and post in chat about it. Daniee to get directions.
   
5. Payment tracking (table counting money/sales) and float - £10 to float each. Alex £10 note. Katy two £5 notes. Daniee £5 note and five £1 coins. Meg ten £1 coins. Gee five £1 coins and ten 50p. Spreadsheet - on phone and on paper. Gee to make spreadsheet. Separate spreadsheet with total spent on group stock.
   
6. Comic Nest merch - everyone draw birbs that are themed on their comics, including colour. To put in freebie jar. Deadline: 30th April.
   
7. General merch - four pieces including comic? Alex - unsure, sticker packs, 2 A6 prints? Katy - just prints (including gothic horror)? Daniee - 1 A5, 1 sticker pack, pins. Meg - 12 sticker pack, 6 sticker pack, stickers. Gee - A3 poster, temp tattoos (?), badges.

8. Comic pricing - Needs to be equal so no one accidentally undercuts. Lil commissions for some people (not Meg or Gee). Books - £5. Meg sticker packs - £2 (6) £4 (12). Indiv sticker - 50p. A6 - £2. A5 - £3. A3 posters - £3. Daniee sticker packs - £2 (5). Pins - £1. Temp tattoos - £1. Badges - £1.

9. Other items - Birb heart LED lights (Gee) for table? Extra money for night outs. Who's out when - Saturday night - Katy, Gee out. Thursday night - Daniee out. Alarms for shift time. Keep phone on loud. Gee needs ~12-3 ish off on Saturday. Laser cut bird to be used for promo photos during weeks before. Gee has camera/can take photos if needed.

Whilst discussing points (2) and (5), I sketched out ideas of what we were planning the table and spreadsheet to look like. Here's what we got from that...

Later this evening, I redrew the sketch digitally to clear up what our layout intends to be. I also did this to scale, as we were all very aware of the fact we were unsure of how to gauge table size. You can see that (with key) below. You can see that there is a lot more red (my colour) on the table than others. This is because, while everyone else has two products pinned up on the con grid, whilst I have one poster which is too large for the grids, so has to lie on the table. I'm also having a cardboard cut-out of my character on the table to attract customers.

Social Media Posts - 9/4

Today's social media post was announcing the winner of the competition. I chose the winner based on which prompt I could adapt into a page as best as possible, and which I thought was funny but also useful. I pulled a post together with some art to hint at the start of the winning page, a caption, and a screenshot of the winning entry. I used some basic editing and a picture of Milton to conceal the identity of the winner in case they didn't want it known on Facebook and Instagram. I quote tweeted the original tweet to tag the winner.

Social Media Posts - 2/4

This week I posted a quick reminder for anyone who wanted to join the giveaway. I felt that this was the most sensible thing to post at this time.

Deciding Which Hacks to Including

Above, you can see the table where I noted down all the hacks I could find, basic ideas on how I'd display them and the likelihood of me using them.

Due to the nature of my book be non-fiction and not having a narrative, this is the stage that is sort of the equivalent of script writing. Before creating this document, I was quite nervous about the current progress of my work, but having it all written down and planned out was really calming and helped me to finally get a sense of what my final book could be!

Correct Social Media Usage

Recently at work, I had a meeting about correct language usage on social media that I found very useful and transferable to this project. I thought I'd note down some key points on my blog to refer back to.

- Overloading with hashtags can be very unprofessional. Between two and four is best.

- Use contractions always. 

- Keep it casual.

- Although there is a higher character limit on Twitter now, try to keep to 140.

- Facebook should be longer and more mature, as the general audience is older.

- The focus of an Instagram post should be the image. Keep captions fairly short.

- Don't overuse filters.

- It's okay to talk about 'irrelevant' stuff, as long as it's something your followers with understand and identify with.

- Interact with responses to your posts.

- Use language your target audience use. Slang. Abbreviations.

- Don't go for the hard sell.

- Don't make yourself seem like you're above your followers.

I went back through all of my Comic Nest posts to check that I'd been communicating sensibly and correctly for each platform. I'm really happy with my overall style of post. I feel I was very lucky to have previous experience in control of the social media for a company with a similar target audience, as this has made the social media side of this project so much easier.

Below are some examples of where I've attempted to interact with our followers in a conversational, fun tone that'll hopefully make our followers remember and return to our page...

Social Media Posts - 26/3

This week I wanted to try something really different. I realised it had been about a month since I'd really encouraged engagement from our followers, so I considered ways I could do this and came up with a giveaway. This could also potentially help me with my book. I'm not expecting a large response to this, but I'm hoping we might get a little more engagement and maybe a new follower or two.