I know that there are ~twoish weeks left in May but, frankly, it’s been a whopper of a month already and there’s lots to share and report on.

Let’s start with the two big events that happened in Australia.

1) Launch of Ten Eighty - the first book of my own work published by Tall Poppy Press.

This was a huge success for me. I got to exhibit more interestingly, sold 40 copies of the new book and felt a lot of connection with the people that came.

Overall - very happy!

To some extent, I felt a bit of pressure to do well - I’ve written and said a lot about exhibiting and how I wish photographers would do things a bit more ambitiously and, to be honest, I don’t think I nailed it. I got a bit scared by the costs and took a simpler route.

At the same time, my work is all about inviting people to learn more about something and many folks left knowing more about Dingoes than they ever had. A win!

2) Melbourne Art Book Fair

Well, this was a raging success - our biggest event ever for sales. At the end of the three day weekend we cleared $5000 of sales, which simply has not happened before.

I think that there are a few factors that enabled this really meaningful success.

a) The event brought the right audience - almost everyone was keen to see, buy and engage

b) With more book titles more books reached audiences - the breadth paid off

c) Merch absolutely FIRED ON ALL CYLINDERS - I sold like 45 keychains, 25 posters, 20 mugs, 20 zines, 5-6 hats and a handful of totes. That merch boost was a huge win - without it I think the event would have still been excellent, but with the merch it was fantastic.

I think the lesson here is that trying to have a range of price points and putting cool artsy stuff in front of people who want cool artsy stuff is just a win-win.

3) LA Art Book Fair

The first year I attended LA Art Book Fair there were lots of sales, but with the travel costs, cost of just doing anything in LA and the weak Aussie dollar it simply wasn’t enough.

This year, I split a table with my friend Adam and wanted to see if that was better. I think the answer is clearly no. We sold around $1100 of product which, after shipping costs and the fair attendance fee, means we sort of break even.

Over the last 12 months I’ve tried a few times to have fairs where my books are there but I’m not. Generally these have only been financially meaningful if the fair is local to me (so costs are low) or there’s an enthusiastic local presence, ideally with a book of their own to share. Every other time I’ve gotten someone else to do the fair we sort of break even and it just doesn’t really seem worth it.

At the same time, I’ve written multiple times that the international book fairs are only really worth it if I bring my a-game. That looks like paying extra for a larger table, having a big decorative wall behind me, having a presence that people come to. A cheaper, more humble table with a handful of titles and no merch simply isn’t worthwhile.

Even when I slash costs significantly.

For the rest of May some rest, some re-ordering merch and some working on the next things.

<3