TAGS (Tabletop & Graphic Storytelling) Festival is a returning market event dedicated to spotlighting Scotland's small press talent!We’re celebrating collaborative and visual storytelling in its many forms, such as comics, roleplaying games, board games, and zines.TAGS will host 40 independent creators to share their work, with an emphasis on spotlighting voices that often go ignored in the wider convention scene.This event will be free for the public to attend!

Dates and Venue

TAGS will take place on Saturday, December 7th at Fruitmarket, in the heart of Edinburgh.Fruitmarket is an arts gallery located just outside of the Market Street exit of Edinburgh Waverley Train Station. It is easily accessible by train, bus, tram and taxi.Fruitmarket is wheelchair-accessible, and the market will take place on the ground floor. For more information about travelling to Fruitmarket, visit the link below.

• Visiting Fruitmarket

Friendly Spaces

We hope to create a platform that will empower small press creators in Scotland. To do this, we are operating under a policy of inclusion and respect. We expect anyone attending or exhibiting the event to follow it.

• Our Friendly Spaces Policy

TAGS is run by Eve Greenwood of Quindrie Press and Brian Tyrrell of Stout Stoat Press. We are indie creators-turned-publishers, working in the comics and tabletop game industries respectively.We have first-hand knowledge of what the Scottish convention scene is like. We know what our community needs, and our goal is to deliver it!

Feature Artist

This year our feature artist is Letty Wilson, a brilliantly talented comics artist, writer and illustrator originally from the Highlands of Scotland, now living in Glasgow.

Contact

Have questions about the event? Email us at: hello@tagsfest.co.uk

TAGS is organised with help from:

Ancient Robot Games

Quindrie Press

Stout Stoat Press

Fruitmarket

Important Info

Testimonials

Want to be part of the festival? Here’s what exhibitors last year had to say!

• Full details in our '23 report

Policies

We will be using our updated Curation Policy when assessing applications. We recommend you read through it before applying.All exhibitors and visitors will be expected to adhere to the Friendly Spaces policy while at TAGS 24, so please read through that too!

• Curation Policy
• Friendly Spaces

Applications

This year, our applications will be in two parts:

We will be collecting information that will go into public exhibitor profiles. You might want to think about the following ahead of submitting your application:

• Applications open April 29th

Exhibitor Timeline

This a mock-up of how our rich text back up Exhibitors page will look for our 2024 event!

Table 1. Bleebiz. Sticks up for his friend. Part time caravan guard and comic writer.
new talent, autobio, handmadeTable 2. Stryr. Multi-award winning jester and merryment foole. Debuting 'Juggling Act Part 2' at TAGS! Guest panelist at Goblin by Goblin West on trans men in buffoonery.
Light-hearted, queer, clumsyTable 3a. Aabs. Portrait and character artist @ Gobbos Press.
romance, anthologies, portraitureTable 3b. Fytsneesz. Ponderful art for the arcane minded. Showing you're never too old to make games!
solo journaling, BITD, adventureTable 4. Snartzle. Bounty hunter and freelance RPG illustrator. Currently working on G&G5E!
recycled materials, printmaking, mystery

TAGS Fest will take place from
10am to 5pm on Saturday, December 7th 2024
at Fruitmarket, in the heart of Edinburgh.

Fruitmarket is an arts gallery located just outside of the Market Street exit of Edinburgh Waverley Train Station. It is easily accessible by train, bus, tram and taxi.Fruitmarket is fully wheelchair-accessible. The market will take place on the ground floor. The Boardgame Zone will take place on the first floor, which is accessible by lift.For more information about travelling to Fruitmarket, visit their dedicated accessibility page via the link below.

• Visiting Fruitmarket

What's the venue like?

The marketplace will be held in Fruitmarket's "Warehouse", which is a wide open brick hall with painted metal support beams. It is cool, but not cold. It doesn't receive too much natural light, which prevents it from being dazzling or overstimulating. Overhead lighting will be focused on tables, so products will be well lit and readable.  Below is a a gallery of photos taken at TAGS Fest 2023!

This means that we’re looking to curate exhibitors featuring original, story-focused material such as graphic novels, comics, tabletop games, or other projects exploring visual storytelling.

Prioritisation

Conventions and fairs are often inaccessible to marginalised creators for a variety of reasons. Because of this, we will be prioritising applications from:

For those who have exhibited with us before, we’d love to have you back!
Please note, we will be prioritising applications showcasing new projects, or work that is further developed than from the last time you were with us. This is because we expect a higher volume of applications than last year, especially from tabletop creators, and we want to give new applicants a fair opportunity to show their work.

Suitability

Wondering if TAGS is the right show for you? If any of the statements below apply to you, there might be other spaces in Scotland that would be better suited to your work and your needs:

What can I sell at TAGS?

Prints, stickers, pin badges and merchandise are an expected sight at most conventions. While beautiful, they aren't the focus of this event, and we don't want to set the expectation that storytellers need to have these things at their table to be successful.Exhibitors may sell some merchandise, but the focus of their display must be their own original material (comics, games, zines, etc).Here is an example of what we're looking for from an ideal exhibitor:

This is a mock up table display from our 2023 feature artist, Ver! Their table features their latest comics, and a concept art book for their upcoming graphic novel. Around their books are sticks and charms of their original characters.They’ve used a backing grid to hold up prints, some of their characters, and a few from other projects they’ve worked on. On the day, they had a larger selection of their prints in a fold out portfolio book for visitors to flick through.

Public Liability Insurance

If accepted to the festival, all exhibitors will be expected to have public liability insurance coverage for the duration of the event.If you don’t currently have public liability insurance, you can find advice for getting short or long term coverage in Heather Parry’s free book, The Illustrated Freelancer’s Guide.Chapter 1, page 33 covers public liability insurance, but the whole book is full of invaluable advice!

Cancellations

You can cancel your table and receive a full refund (minus transaction fees) up to October 31st 2024, as we will likely be still able to quickly approach other exhibitors on our waiting list.From November 1st 2024, we cannot guarantee a refund. We will attempt to find a replacement for you from our waiting list; if this is possible, we will confirm your cancellation and issue an immediate refund. We do not allow for table swapping (e.g. giving your paid table to an unvetted exhibitor).TAGS is an event with a very small and tightly allotted budget. While we hope to offer refunds even for short notice cancellations, we can only do this once we've assessed our remaining funds after the festival has concluded.Because of our limited administrative capacity, if you do not show up to the event and have not contacted us about a cancellation you will not receive a refund.Please email hello@tagsfest.co.uk if you have any questions.

We want TAGS to be a place where creators of all backgrounds can share their work, and all of their fans can show their appreciation.

This policy will be arbitrated on a common sense basis. Creators or attendees who do not follow these guidelines will be asked to leave the event immediately.If you feel this policy has been broken by anyone, please inform a volunteer steward.

Conduct

Content

Masking and Illness

As Covid-19 is an ongoing problem, and many of our friends and community members are disabled and/or immuno-compromised, we firmly request that you wear a mask when attending TAGS, if you are able to.We will have disposable masks available for free at the welcome table, and in the board game zone. You are of course welcome and encouraged to bring your own mask, as it may be more comfortable!We will have signage at the entrance of the event asking attendees to wear masks. TAGS and Fruitmarket operates according to Scottish Government Covid regulations.If you are sick with a contagious illness (flu, cold, COVID-19, etc) please be considerate of your fellow community members and do not attend the event.

Children and Young Adults

Any attendees under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult at all times. The festival and our stewards take no responsibility for unattended underage participants.

Our first event, the "Tabletop and Graphic Storytelling Fest" took place on the 2nd of December 2023, inside of the Fruitmarket’s warehouse and workshop venues, running from 10am to 5pm.A marketplace ran in the warehouse, featuring 40+ different exhibitors. Exhibitors could arrive for set up from 9am to 10am.A board game zone was run by Ancient Robot Game in the workshop, which featured volunteer run TTRPG games running from 10.30am to 1.30pm, and 2pm to 5pm.

About the show

TAGS Fest 23 was organised with the combined voluntary efforts of Eve Greenwood (Quindrie Press) and Brian Tyrrell (Stout Stoat Press).We dreamt up TAGS as a response to Scotland’s diminishing convention scene, where self publishing and small press businesses are increasingly being priced out of the events that they depend on for their livelihood.We’ve been developing TAGS since April 2022. It took longer to organise than anticipated; we repeatedly struggled to find and confirm a venue that was within a reasonable price range. It was through an existing relationship with Fruitmarket that we were able to rent their venues, and we’re incredibly grateful to them for taking a chance on us.Our aim for TAGS was to curate a show where small press was elevated. All of our exhibitors had at least one self-published project to debut, and the focus of all table displays was on published projects.

Declaring our interests

When organising TAGS, we wanted to create an event that we ourselves would be excited to table at. We did not pay ourselves for organising TAGS, but we did table at the event. Eve’s income on the day was £549, and Brian’s was £670.As you’ll see in our income and expenditure, we’ve actually paid significantly out of pocket to organise TAGS, and invested a significant amount of our personal time.

Income and Expenditure

Tables at TAGS were 2ft by 6ft. We charged £35 for a half table, and £50 for a full table. Our floorplan fit 29 full tables into the warehouse venue. We reserved a table each for Eve, Brian, our guest Artist, and the Welcome Table, leaving us with 25 tables to fill.We expected to receive between 30 and 40 applications; in reality we received close to 100! We wanted to fit as many exhibitors as we comfortably could, offering half tables to solo applicants and full tables to joint applicants.Ancient Robot Games received use of the workshop venue for free, in exchange for organising all of the free TTRPG sessions run on the day.

Total Income

We raised a total of £1,610 in tabling fees. We raised an additional £200 in raffle contributions from online sales and visitors on the day of the event.

Total Expenditure

We spent £1988 to run TAGS, leaving us -£178. Our costs break down as follows:

Unpaid Volunteer Labour

TAGS would not have been possible without a lot of free labour.Both Eve and Brian put in about 150 hours of work overlapping with admin, graphic design, negotiation and liaison. If we paid ourselves the national living wage of £12/hour we would be owed £1,800 each.We also benefited from the help of four friends on the day, who acted as our Stewards. They each worked a 9 hour shift (9am - 6pm). If they were paid the living wage, they would be owed £108 each.

How the event went

Footfall

TAGS saw about 600-700 unique visitors throughout the day. Of those, about 150 visited the Board Game Zone. This data was collected by two stewards whose role was exclusively to monitor visitors and direct traffic.

Anecdotally, our window display drew in a fair few visitors in the mid afternoon who otherwise would have returned home via Waverley Station. Casual attendance was an unexpected boost, so we aim to improve our displays and signposting for our next event.

Total Reported Spend

Based on self declarations from the 29 out 43 exhibitors who responded to our post-event survey, we estimate that about £10,200 was spent across all of the tables at TAGS Fest.

Average Visitor’s spend

Assuming about 100-200 visitors just browsed and bought nothing, the average exhibitor spent about £25 each. This could have been spread out across multiple tables, or spent at a single table.Anecdotally, exhibitors have overwhelmingly reported that books, comics and zines made up the majority of their sales, even when other merchandise was on display. This was a surprise for most exhibitors, as books and comics usually go unnoticed at other events in Scotland. We’re very pleased to hear this, as this was our intended focus of the event.

Advertising

We launched tagsfest.co.uk in April 2023, and began tracking its visitors in August 2023.Eve, Brian and our other friends gave out TAGS fest flyers from our own convention tables at events in Scotland and England from May 2023 through to November 2023.In October 2023 we sent out A2 posters to independent bookstores, libraries, and hobbyist shops that were within a 2 hour journey of Edinburgh Waverley Station. We also took out a ¼ page advert in the Skinny’s October edition, and we took out a ½ page advert in the November edition.Both the posters and the Skinny adverts contained unique UTM QR codes. We saw a decent uptick (30 visits) from posters, but unfortunately received no visits from our Skinny adverts.Anecdotally, we heard TAGS being mentioned by people we had never met, or had the event recommended to us by acquaintances who didn’t realise it was us who was organising it.Overall, our digital analytics showed our website saw a peak of around 50 users before TAGS, and around 100 people on the day. Otherwise the website received a few unique visitors each day.

Unexpected Difficulties

In the week running up to the event, we had several exhibitors cancel their tables, due to personal crises or illness. Where possible we were able to contact replacements from our waiting list, and refund exhibitor’s table fees. However, this was an extra load of admin on top of pre-event tasks. We aim to have a clear policy for cancellations for our next event.We also had a few no-shows on the day, and some exhibitors arriving to set up after the fest had opened to the public. We had to react to this on a case by case basis on the day. We’re hoping to contact other festivals to ask how they handle this sort of thing, and compare notes!

Exhibitor’s Experiences at TAGS

We sent out a post-event survey to all of our exhibitors on Sunday 3rd of December, and received responses from 29 out of 40 exhibitors.

Pre Event

Overall, exhibitors were very happy with how we ran table applications, our level of communication, and the TAGS Fest website.Feedback mentioned how we could improve the flow of the exhibitor section on mobile, which is something we’ll try to address for our next event.

Table Prices

Most exhibitors were happy with our table pricing for the event. While close to all exhibitors said table prices were “just right”, we did receive a range of custom feedback:

"Happy to pay a higher table fee if it allows the entry to the festival to remain free""[...] it was relatively easy to hit as a target so I could focus more on pitching and selling than worrying about making the table fee back.""[...] it was more than we pay for other events of similar size we attend"

Venue and Comfort

Most exhibitors felt safe at TAGS, and enjoyed exhibiting at Fruitmarket. The most common feedback about the venue was about the low temperature in the warehouse. While there’s no central heating for the warehouse, we are considering other methods for helping exhibitors stay warm during the festival.

Additionally, we acknowledge that table placement along the back wall of the Warehouse was quite tight, making it harder for those exhibitors to get out and about. This was an oversight on our part!We did receive two reports of problems faced at TAGS, but unfortunately they were both made post-event. Our stewards want to help however they can, but they can only do so if they know there’s a problem. We’re considering how we can make reporting problems easier for our next event.

Exhibitor Income

Based on self declarations, the average exhibitor made about £300 in sales. This an amalgamation of two averages:

Excluding outliers, the average range for exhibitor income was £100 to £400.

Regardless of income, the majority of exhibitors said their income was similar to or greater than what they would expect at other events that were similar in size to TAGS.

Exhibitor Costs

19 of our 29 respondents declared to have travelled from outside of Edinburgh to attend TAGS. Travel fees obviously varied on where exhibitors came from:

Those Exhibitors that paid for accommodation paid an average of £100 for their stay, though we didn’t inquire if this was for 1 night or for 2 nights.

Final Thoughts

We’re both astounded by how successful TAGS was, for our first time running this event. Now that we have the momentum of one successful event behind us, we’re hoping that we can keep building TAGS to be something that our community can rely on in years to come.

Socialising and Networking

Several exhibitors self-reported earning £101-250, spending close to £200 in travel and accommodation, and yet they still rated TAGS extremely highly across the board and described it as one of their favourite events of the year.A phenomenon we’ve seen talked about in exhibitor forums is that a growing number of small press publishers see conventions as a chance to be social with their long distance peers, to network with other creators, and to connect with new audiences. They intend to (and spend most of their time) selling stock, but their overall goal is to break even, not make profit. This is because customers who enjoy one title will want to return and buy more, usually online and directly from a publisher.We’re curious to see how we might be able to facilitate this ‘long tail’ of returns after an event is done. We do wonder if exhibitors have seen an increase in sales post-event, as visitors return to purchase online what they browsed in person, or passed on to friends via word of mouth; it’s not something we asked about in our post-event survey.

Average Income

In terms of sales, most exhibitors reported that they made as much as they usually would at other similarly sized events.While we are proud of this as an achievement for our first event, we can’t help but feel a little disappointed, especially as some exhibitors said that making £100-200 was an average-to-good event for them.As creators who rely on conventions to bridge income gaps between big project debuts, we personally want TAGS to be an event that its exhibitors can rely on. We would be happier if our average exhibitor’s income was closer to £500, and the lower band of income was closer to £300. We want TAGS to give exhibitors a relatively sized nest egg for an end-of-year convention.

Balancing the Books

For our first year putting on the show, we had to make significant compromises from our full vision, and we still didn’t break even. We did expect this would be the case — very few things go perfectly the first time. However, with the cost of living crisis and uncertainty in our practise, we can’t afford to foot the bill for an event we’re also spending a lot of our personal time organising.The raffle was a bigger success than we expected, with many visitors buying multiple tickets to support the show. The income from the raffle definitely helped us cover the overspend in our budget. For next year, we hope to put together more books on offer (Quindrie and Stout Stoat bundles).Fellow exhibitors in the Scottish scene suggested they would love to contribute original pieces to some kind of ‘silent auction’, as a way of helping us keep the other costs of the show as low as possible. We definitely wouldn’t turn down their generous offer, but we’re aware that we don’t want to create a culture where exhibitors applying to TAGS feel pressured to help the show out by making art for it.Our goals for next year range from:

We’re planning to apply to Creative Scotland for funding for our next event, and to reach out to companies for sponsorship (though frankly we don’t know where to start with that).We’ll also be evaluating what worked to support the show, and what didn’t. Perhaps new tactics next year can be used to more efficiently spend what we can bring in from tabling fees.

Tables and Space

We agree with feedback from exhibitors that table placement felt densely packed, and that some exhibitors couldn’t easily get out from behind their tables throughout the day.While the warehouse is large, the placement of its support pillars restricts how we can lay out tables. Providing more space for exhibitors would come at the cost of reducing the number of exhibitors we fit into the space. It would also mean that unless we get some form of subsidy, table fees would probably increase by £10-15.Moving forward with this, we’ll have to be extremely strict about our next event’s curation policy, and how we implement it. We hope that so long as we continue to curate a wide range of media/themes on offer, there will be an increase in the average income, as the total income for the festival is spread across a smaller pool of exhibitors.

This a mock-up of how our Exhibitors page will look for our 2024 event!Visitors will be able to search exhibitors by product categories or by tags. The gallery is also flexible, so it'll work on mobile and desktop browsers!

ALLSHORT COMICSGRAPHIC NOVELSTTRPGsSOLO GAMESBOARDGAMESZINES

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A back up rich text list of exhibitors will be available, too.