Wrapping Up a Con Year: What Actually Worked

Once your last show of the year is packed away, it's tempting to just close the laptop and not think about conventions again until application season starts. But the week after your final con is actually the best time to do a real, honest debrief, while the details are still fresh instead of a fuzzy memory in February.

Go show by show, not just year in total

A single yearly total tells you almost nothing useful. "I made $8,000 this year" doesn't tell you whether that came from one great show and four break-even ones, or was spread evenly across everything. Pull up your numbers per event: revenue, table fee, travel cost, and how many hours you actually spent there including setup and teardown. That last one matters more than people give it credit for. A show that nets $600 in four hours is a very different deal than one that nets $600 over a grueling three-day weekend.

Rank your shows honestly

This is uncomfortable if you love a con for reasons that aren't financial, the friends you see there, the neighborhood it's in, the vibe. Those things count for something. But be honest with yourself about which shows are actually paying you back and which ones you're doing out of loyalty or habit. A blunt ranking, best to worst by what you actually walked away with, makes next year's application decisions so much easier.

• Which show had your best sales-to-effort ratio?
• Which show did you dread packing for, regardless of how it sold?
• Which show introduced you to people or opportunities beyond the sales number?
• Which show would you cut without a second thought if your calendar got tight?

What sold, what didn't, and why

Look at your actual top sellers across the year, not just what you assumed would do well. A lot of artists get surprised here, a print they weren't sure about outsells the piece they were most excited to make. Note it down. Also note the flops honestly. Not everything needs to become a permanent catalog item just because you made it.

The parts of your setup that held up (or didn't)

This is the practical stuff that's easy to forget by application season. Did your display survive a full year of shows without pieces cracking or wearing out? Did setup get faster as you got more reps in, or did you keep hitting the same snag every single time? If your booth felt like it was working against you by your fifth show of the year, that's worth fixing before next season rather than white-knuckling through it again.

Year-end debrief template

Let this year set up next year

The point of this whole exercise isn't to beat yourself up over the shows that didn't go well. It's to walk into application season with actual data instead of vibes. A lot of artists we talk to say the year they started tracking this stuff seriously was the year their con schedule finally started making financial sense instead of feeling like a guessing game.

Curious what a Shapeshift kit actually looks like in person? Head to the Artist Booths homepage to see the full lineup and find the one that fits your table.