This past weekend, I attended StratosFur 2025, a furry convention in Houston, Texas. While Friday was a bit of a debacle, I managed to get a seat in the Artist Alley on Saturday, June 7th and Sunday, June 8th. Here’s how it went…
Compared to the weekend before, when I was a vendor at Fan Expo (FanEx henceforth) in Dallas, StratosFur was a breath of fresh air. Despite a bit of disorganization with the event itself, from a vending perspective, it was a reminder of just why I do this. I outsold both days at FanEx within the first 3 hours, for one thing, and for another, as usual with these smaller conventions, the staff was much more polite and personable. I actually met both the Artist Alley lead and her assistant the first day: no one at FanEx ever came around to so much as say hello. I will also say that the venue itself was very nice. Though it made for a split convention in a way with half the event on one side of the hotel and the rest on the other, nevertheless, it worked quite well. If the staff can fix a few internal issues, I could see this convention easily outgrowing the Marriott within a year or two.
Speaking of which, to make one final comparison, StratosFur had 1697 attendees. By contrast, Fan Expo had (based on previous estimates, since they don’t keep track as closely as furcons), 65,000. This once again underlines the fact that when choosing which live events to sell your books at, remember to look at more than attendance numbers: they are not the whole story by a long shot.