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Travel Thoughts and C2E2 Report
Apr. 26th, 2015 04:07 pmTravel Thoughts
I'm back from attending Rotary District 6450's annual conference in downtown Davenport Iowa. It was my first visit to Iowa, albeit just over the river from Rock Island. The weather was cool and rainy, and the conference was sparsely attended. Still, I had a nice time, met a few people I only see at the conference, and heard some impressive speakers. I stayed at the Hotel Blackhawk, which is a historic property, extensively renovated, and affiliated with the Marriott chain.
I had a lot of down time on Saturday. Since it was raining, I went to the local riverboat casino, a five minute walk from my hotel. I played blackjack for nearly two hours and left $30 up. The casinos are apparently having a problem making money at blackjack, because they invented a side-bet involving your cards and the dealer's up card. I didn't understand it so didn't play it, and watched those that did play it shovel money at the dealer.
C2E2 Report
On Friday AM, I attended the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2), which had an estimated 75,000 attendees. I left profoundly ambivalent about the whole thing.
First, the main feature of C2E2 is the exhibit floor, which maps to my two least-favorite spaces in fan-run cons, the art show and the dealer' room. Of the several hundred dealers, only three were selling books, and the largest book-selling booth (Random Penguin's) was only selling stuff by the authors in attendance. The largest booths overall were T-shirt shops.
Programming, which is what draws me to cons, was okay - five tracks - the equivalent of Windycon - but much of it was focused on movies and the like. Again, not much to my interest. I did see what happened to masquerades at fan-run cons - between 10% to 20% of the crowd were in costumes.
Overall, I'm of the opinion of Eric Flint: All authors only appeal to a small subset of the mass audience, once that mass audience becomes huge enough. Eric uses himself as an example, and suspects that half-a-million people have heard of him. But compare that to the 50 million people who watch science fiction, and he's got 1% of the market.
Slightly off-topic, but too good not to quote, Eric says of the Puppies:
In other words, the difference between Resplendent Popular Author Me and Pitiful Literary Auteur Whazzername is the difference between tiny (one percent) and minuscule (one-tenth of one percent).
Yes, that’s what all the ruckus is about. The Sad Puppies feel that they have been wronged because Their Tininess has been downtrodden by the minions of the minuscule.
I'm back from attending Rotary District 6450's annual conference in downtown Davenport Iowa. It was my first visit to Iowa, albeit just over the river from Rock Island. The weather was cool and rainy, and the conference was sparsely attended. Still, I had a nice time, met a few people I only see at the conference, and heard some impressive speakers. I stayed at the Hotel Blackhawk, which is a historic property, extensively renovated, and affiliated with the Marriott chain.
I had a lot of down time on Saturday. Since it was raining, I went to the local riverboat casino, a five minute walk from my hotel. I played blackjack for nearly two hours and left $30 up. The casinos are apparently having a problem making money at blackjack, because they invented a side-bet involving your cards and the dealer's up card. I didn't understand it so didn't play it, and watched those that did play it shovel money at the dealer.
C2E2 Report
On Friday AM, I attended the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2), which had an estimated 75,000 attendees. I left profoundly ambivalent about the whole thing.
First, the main feature of C2E2 is the exhibit floor, which maps to my two least-favorite spaces in fan-run cons, the art show and the dealer' room. Of the several hundred dealers, only three were selling books, and the largest book-selling booth (Random Penguin's) was only selling stuff by the authors in attendance. The largest booths overall were T-shirt shops.
Programming, which is what draws me to cons, was okay - five tracks - the equivalent of Windycon - but much of it was focused on movies and the like. Again, not much to my interest. I did see what happened to masquerades at fan-run cons - between 10% to 20% of the crowd were in costumes.
Overall, I'm of the opinion of Eric Flint: All authors only appeal to a small subset of the mass audience, once that mass audience becomes huge enough. Eric uses himself as an example, and suspects that half-a-million people have heard of him. But compare that to the 50 million people who watch science fiction, and he's got 1% of the market.
Slightly off-topic, but too good not to quote, Eric says of the Puppies:
In other words, the difference between Resplendent Popular Author Me and Pitiful Literary Auteur Whazzername is the difference between tiny (one percent) and minuscule (one-tenth of one percent).
Yes, that’s what all the ruckus is about. The Sad Puppies feel that they have been wronged because Their Tininess has been downtrodden by the minions of the minuscule.
