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Learn to Read Korean in 15 Minutes

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My Experiment with Pay-What-You-Want Print Comics

Last week, I was a special guest at AlleyCon, a small English Language nerd-culture convention in Gwangju (South Korea’s 6th largest city.) I’ve sold at a number of Korean conventions, to varying degrees of success, but I was excited for this one. I’m a nobody in the Korean teen comic crowd but English-speaking nerds? Those are my people! Surely I could interest a few of them in my wares.

But there were only 200 attendees! I’d been to cons with thousands of people where I sold only 3 books, so I was scared of another long, awkward day at a card table not selling anything.

I was more interested in sharing my work than leaving rich anyway, so at the very last minute I decided— what the heck. I would try something new. A name-your-price table. I’d had great success online, but when selling real-world objects that cost money to produce, it’s risky business! I was just excited to meet some fellow foreign nerds in Korea and show them my comics, so I went forward with the plan.

I put a bunch of books in my table and decided to see what the market thought they were worth. Would they be more generous than me? Or would I end up losing my shirt after everyone grabbed up my books for less than it cost to print them?

I found out when I arrived that I wasn’t alone in taking on the experiment…

photo by Waygook Photography
I was just across from a pay-what-you-want Banana Bread table. (run by Kiki!) And a few floors below a guy who does pay-what-you-want iPhone repair. Good company to be in.

First of all:

Holy shoot. Everyone at AlleyCon was so amazing. It turns out I wasn’t introducing them to my work- it seems I taught at least 75% of the people there learned how to read Korean with my weird Hangeul comic. I had so many people come up and say such nice things and make me feel like a celebrity and holy shoot that was one of the best days of my life.

It feels kind of crass summing the whole thing up in terms of dollar amounts, but everyone there seemed to enjoy my ultra-nerdy numbers-filled talk about being an independent artist, so I’m sure they’d enjoy this super-ultra-nerdy breakdown of they money that I made there in the building.

So how did I do?

I sold $200 worth of comics (at cover price.) I made $300.

That’s 150% of what I would have charged.

Even better, that’s $1.50 per attendee at the con, including the ones that bought tickets and didn’t show up. 300 bucks might not seem like a lot of money, but that’s like making 2.76 million at San Diego Comic Con.

How to people decide what to pay?

It really did seem to work as it was supposed to. People paid according to the value the book gave them.

The most expensive book at my table, Aki Alliance— which I normally sell for 4 bucks, was the least-earning book. It usually went for around a dollar or two. That’s because it’s translated into Korean, so wasn’t worth a whole lot to an English-Speaking audience.
The cheapest book at my table, Learn To Read Korean in 15 Minutes— which I usually sell for 2 bucks, was the highest-earning book at the table by a WIDE margin. People were paying 5, 10, 15 bucks for that sucker, and getting doubles for their friends. That’s because most visitors had come to my table to thank me for making that very book. They’d already read it, but the purchase was often treated as a sort of tip for helping them adapt into Korean life.
The little card-sized minibooks, that I usually sell in 3-packs for 2 bucks got almost no buyers. Likely because people felt awkward paying less than a dollar while I was looking at them, and didn’t want to spend more than a dollar on something that tiny.
The most generous sales happened right after my panel on how to be an independent international artist. Once again, it seemed to be as a ‘thank you’ for the (hopefully useful) information I’d given them. People were also more generous when asking to buy books at the after-party or at the hostel the next morning.

Did guilt have something to do with it?

Yes, but not as much as I’d expected it to. I made it a point not to take anyone’s money myself, but rather have them throw it into a big red bucket while I made eye contact and pretended like I didn’t peek. People were still generous!

People were even generous when I was nowhere to be seen! Occasionally, when I had a panel to run or an event to get to, I would leave my table unattended with a sign that said just to throw money in the bucket and I would always come back to find it full of more money.

What did I learn from this?
I think what I learned is that every convention is different.

This was MY CON. Many were already familiar with my work, so they placed value in getting it directly from the creator. They are all trying to adapt to Korea, so they place value in a comic that teaches them to read Korean. It was almost entirely attended by college educated adults working as teachers. Therefore they place value in education. Many told me they were stationed in small rural towns. Therefore they had money to spend on geeky things that weren’t available where they lived, and placed value in having geeky things come to them. The convention was largely gaming-focused, so people were familiar with pay-what-you-want projects like The Humble Bundle, so they placed value in seeing it experimented with.

I think the real test would be to try it at, say, Busan Comic World. The reason my cover prices are so low is because that’s where I usually sell them. Those attendees seem to be in their early teens, without jobs or money of their own, from a culture without tipping (service workers are simply paid a higher wage by their employer) and that has no idea who in the heck I am except that weird foreigner who’s always there. They come to the show to get fun, cheaply priced merch from their favorite fandoms. They usually buy bookmarks or stickers, so they’re used to spending less than a dollar. So my weird unfamiliar comics don’t have as much value. If I let people name their price there I would likely end up with a lot more coins than bills. (though I’ll totally give it a try.)

There have been a lot of think-pieces lately about ‘what’s killing cons’ and I have to say that— nothing’s killing cons. There are smazing conventions everywhere, from major cities, to small towns. Each one has its own culture. Some focus on fandom, some on indie creators, some on gaming, some on anime, some on cosplay, some on tv and movies.

Everyone goes to conventions for different reasons and it’s totally cool if noticing you exist doesn’t even factor in at all. People spend buttloads of money to attend cons and no one gets to tell them what they have to care about. If you don’t do well, maybe it’s because you aren’t offering something those people put value in. Maybe your approach needs tweaking, or maybe it’s not the con for you!

Look at the con, the culture, the people who are there and the things they place value in and if what you have to offer doesn’t fit into that equation, try another con! Who knew the most best con I’d ever go to would be a tiny Gwangju, South Korea con that just one year ago consisted of 60 people playing board games in a bar.

(if anyone from AlleyCon is reading this, THANK YOU SO MUCH for making me feel like a star! And if Kiki is reading this, let us know how your banana bread experiment worked out!)

comics comic con conventions pay what you want name your price

I just got back from Comic-Con!
No, not THAT Comic-Con! Busan Comic World in South Korea. Here are a few of the differences I’ve noticed between western and Korean shows.

  • (1) Comic World is twice-monthly. Once in Seoul, once in Busan.
  • (2) No big companies allowed. Only indie artists.
  • (3) It’s more like a DeviantArt convention. A lot of art books and fan art.
  • (4) There are not that many comics! I talked to some artists who told me they stopped bringing comics because they don’t sell well. People are mostly interested in colorful, well rendered anime characters than they are in stories.
  • (5) The last time I went I only found 3 comics in the whole building. This time, thankfully there was much more. The one comic that I always see there: Sponge Bob. (a Spongebob-and-Patrick-as-Humans-Gay-Romance comic)
  • (6) The best sellers seem to be ‘cut out and laminated anime characters with holes punched in them.’ I have no idea what people use them for.
  • (7) Most of the artists are SUPER SHY. And no one really comes to interact with the artists. They build a little wall in front of their table with just a small hole to put money in while comics come out. If you peek through the hole they get super scared. Some artists have their friends come sell their comics for them.
  • (8) Both artists and attendees seemed to be pretty close to 50/50 female/male (if it sways one way, probably more female)
  • (9) Every single month, there is a horse-head man outside holding a bottle of ketchup and a sign that says “I will not eat the ketchup.” When reached for comment, he made hand motions to signify that horses cannot talk.


I think I’m finally going to take the risk and gets some stuff translated and printed so I can start tabling. I may lose all my money but it’s so weird I want to be part of it.

I Hope This Isn’t What Death Is Like, from the book Fusion Elementary. Art by Nam Dong Yoon, from South Korea. Words by Katie Cook of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Star Wars and Gronk fame.

For this book, I sent a bunch of Korean comics to all of my favorite comic creators and asked them to write their own script to match what they thought was going on. It’s available for just one more week as part of The Whole Story comics bundle!

my little pony friendship is magic bronies katie cook mlp pony ponies comics webcomics
So what’s next? The reason we didn’t have a ceremony before makin’ it legal is that with all the important people in our lives spread out over multiple continents, or keeping South Korea safe from North Korea (and therefore their future time off is...
So what’s next?
The reason we didn’t have a ceremony before makin’ it legal is that with all the important people in our lives spread out over multiple continents, or keeping South Korea safe from North Korea (and therefore their future time off is classified information for reasons of national security) we’d rather do something with just the two of us than leave anyone out (or guilt anyone into s
pending thousands to fly out)
So this Sunday we’re jumping on a cruise to Wakayama Japan, where we’ll honeymoon in hotel surrounded by caves where you can sit in natural hot springs overlooking the ocean.
In order to exchange our vows, we’ll either get the captain of the ship to marry us, or we’ll both get registered as internet ministers so we can marry each other.
In the middle of a 5 hour walking trail on Jeju, South Korea, we came across this magical little post office where you can send letters to the FUTURE. You take a postcard below, write your message, and it will be delivered exactly on year later....

In the middle of a 5 hour walking trail on Jeju, South Korea, we came across this magical little post office where you can send letters to the FUTURE. You take a postcard below, write your message, and it will be delivered exactly on year later. Unless you put it in the green box. Those letters will never be delivered. So you can write all your secrets.
And it’s pay-what-you-want!

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Im almost sad……… .. … im in the home stretch of the most recent episodes

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You can always start over.

Alternatively, you can check out @themeatblockade, @arsparadoxica, and the Big Data podcast by @ryanestradadotcom to hear some people who really sound similar to those you might have heard in the Kakos Industries shareholder announcements.

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If you’ve already listened to the outstandingly creepy @kakosindustries podcast and you’re looking to Big Data for your fix, how about this super secret crossover mini-episode that I hid on the site and not many people have found?

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