Paper Jam was at the Durham Book Festival. It was quite a lot like the Whitley Bay shinding a week earlier, and although we made probably a comparable number of sales, the day was somewhat more disappointing because the potential to flog stuff (and more importantly talk to people about comics) was substantially undermined by the fact that most stalls, including ours, were situated in the same hall as the author talks - and when authors were talking, punters were disinclined to come and have a wander round (and those that did, we couldn't talk to).
We didn't want to hear Tony 'local radio personality' Horne try and flog his book about (literally) taking a family holiday to Australia, we wanted to talk to people about comics, dagnamit. To be fair to Mr. Horne, that's what he and the other authors were there for, it was the setup that was at fault. Regardless of how interesting the readings/talks were, it was simply unfortunate that they couldn't have been in a separate room to the stalls.
On the topic of authors, special props to local author of 9987, Nik Jones - his book sounded a little too grisly for my tastes but he seemed a nice chap and bought a copy of something from us, possibly Space Monkey.
Anyway, a few sales are a few sales and a day sketching is never a day wasted. Anyway, onward to Thoughtbubble.
