Who knew that Publishers Weekly Genreville blogger Rose Fox helps run a con? Well, I guess plenty of people knew she runs Arisia’s green room — and now so do I.
Fox’s January 20 installment “On the Road: Arisia 2009, and Fannish Collectivism” explores the con’s unique dealers’ set-up. Rather than using the typical setup of a ballroom filled with tables, at Arisia they set aside a floor of sleeping rooms where dealers are allowed to sell their wares. (Dennis McCunney explains in a comment that this arrangement emphatically is the exception, not the rule.) Fox notes:
One of the dealer rooms was rented by a group called Hot Chicks with Books: several female writers who pooled their money and time to create a little temporary collective bookshop selling their work. A couple of the participants have said it was extremely successful and they look forward to doing it again next year and perhaps at other cons.
[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the link.]
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Selling out of hotel rooms is also used mundanely by the annual Tucson Gem Show. The TGS has so many dealers, though, from all over the world, that the city’s available function space for “dealer rooms” doesn’t come close to being sufficient.
I also, if my mid-50’s brain is remembering correctly, recall one of the early Balticons (when Balticon was still a minicon, with maybe 200 people tops) that had limited function space and no dealer room where Ted Pauls and several other people were selling books out of their rooms.
The big change with Balticon occured when it moved out of downtown to the Pikesville Hilton in 1975. Prior to that it was in the Lord Baltimore and a few other locations. So … the dealing out of the room was decidely a pre-75 event. I think I did some bookselling out of my room . Heck, I’m even listed on the 1974 concom – not that I recall any of it.
Balticon details here: http://www.bsfs.org/bconhist.htm