We have a flurry of autograph-based conventions these days. They may be comic book conventions, horror conventions, anime conventions, sports star conventions…whatever. But at their core, there's a big hall and there are celebrities who for a fee will pose for and/or sign photos and they sell books and other stuff. The celebs draw in the crowds, the crowds pay admission and buy moments with the famous folks and merch from them and from dealers…and all is well. Except that it sometimes isn't.
With more and more conventions being staged, three problems are inevitable. One is that some marketplaces get saturated. Some parts of the country have had too many of them…and too many appearances by the same stars at too many of them. Another is that not everyone who thinks they can run a successful convention has the knowledge and the people skills to run a successful convention.
And the third inevitable problem is that some conventions are very successful and very profitable so Unfinanced Entrepreneurs want to get a piece of those profits.
I have written here many times about Unfinanced Entrepreneurs. Unfinanced Entrepreneurs are people who have dreams of putting together big, lucrative-for-all (but especially them) projects but they lack the funds they oughta have to make their dreams happen. You know the old saying, "It takes money to make money"? Well, these people don't have money…or if they do, they're too smart to take it out of their wallets and gamble it on their surefire, can't-miss business ideas. I believe it was Howard R. Hughes — though it may well have been Donald J. Trump — who once said "The secret to great wealth is to only risk other people's money."
So they coerce, cajole, trick and otherwise convince people to invest their money and/or their time and resources. It's all promises of mega-moola down the pike when the project is overwhelmingly successful, as they'll swear on your mother's life it will be. And what happens when it isn't? Ah, that's the frequent snag in dealing with Unfinanced Entrepreneurs…
Lately, I've been hearing about a number of conventions run by Unfinanced (or at least seriously Underfinanced) Entrepreneurs. They amass enough funds to put down deposits on the facilities and a few other suppliers that require them. They have money — though never enough — to do advertising and publicity. But in the main, the convention will not be able to honor its debts if — let's say — three thousand attendees don't walk in the door and pay admission. And then only 600 show up.
So the promoters may not be able to pay the hotel or convention center hosting their event. They may not be able to pay the catering company or the security people or the photographer they hired or their printer or half a hundred other suppliers. And somewhere down the line — often not a top priority but an issue nonetheless — they may not be able to pay their guests.
Many of the guests, especially the "Names" who are supposed to draw in the masses, get contractual guarantees that they will go home with no less than X dollars. Many of them travel to the event so the con is on the hook for hotel accommodations and airfare. Many are promised meals and per diems and other things that cost money…but the Entrepreneurs didn't make as much as they were expecting. And they sure as hell aren't about to use any personal funds to satisfy business debts.
Since I don't qualify as any kind of celebrity and don't do a lot of cons, I've only once been stiffed by a convention and it was my own trust/stupidity that allowed that to happen. Those two things are sometimes hard to tell apart. The convention organizer, who seemed like an on-the-level guy, talked me into putting my plane fare on my credit card and he'd reimburse me. Then the con underperformed and I got a lot of "I swear I'll pay you what I owe you but I have people suing me and I have to deal with them first."
So far, it's been 25 years and I'm beginning to lose hope. (I made the same mistake once with a bookstore appearance in another city. I put the tickets for Sergio and myself on my AmEx and have yet to see the promised reimbursement. But that was only eighteen years ago so I'm thinking, like, any day now, right?)
Several of my friends have been shorted or unpaid at recent flop conventions. There have been some recent flop conventions complete with stories of guests not getting their guarantees, their hotel rooms paid-for or even their return airline tickets. And usually it's the smaller-name guests who get rooked because the bigger-name ones can afford lawyers and/or the convention organizers are just plain more worried about pissing them off.
In those cases, the ones hurt are the ones who can least afford the loss. I don't think the star of some new Marvel/DC blockbuster movie is going to miss a mortgage payment but there are celebrities (I'm using that noun in the loosest sense) who might. These are those seeking, perhaps needing to make some or all of their livings on the convention circuit. If you hit the right cons with the right deals — and often, the right agents — there's cash to be made as well as the fun of connecting with your fans. I spoke recently with a cartoon voice actor who told me that doing voices is becoming his second-favorite part of his profession. Signing autographs and meeting admirers is the first.
But then I spoke this morning with an actor with several near-iconic roles on his IMDB page…but they were long ago and the residuals he receives nowadays are the kind where it costs more money for them to mail him his check than he gets when he cashes it. He's still struggling to collect payments he says are owed to him for con appearances in the last two years. For various reasons, he doesn't want to go public with his specific issues but he's fine with me warning all to be wary. He even encouraged me.
So here I am, warning celebrities of every magnitude — the great, the near-great and the once-great — to be wary. He said the cons that owe him all wanted him as a guest because, as they put it, he was "billable." And he is. He just didn't know that he'd be the one stuck with the bill.
