ISNA Days 2+3
ok so day 2 was AWESOME - obviously, more people - i sold twice as many as the first day at full price, another twice as many at a promotional price (to vendors and volunteers) and got picked up by dar-us-salam! alhamdulillaah also someone who runs a bookstore said that a partner had reviewed it and had some criticisms (which was sort of expected) but she says to me, “i disagree, i think it’s charming!” - so she says when she opens her physical location inshallah she will carry it - i had a few “golden moments” where literally some teenage guy would see it, look at it for a second, say, “cool”, and plop down the money and be on his way, but overall it was still a lot of hustling on my part - i started getting even more active - offering vendors a chance to read it and if they liked it offer them a discount, going out into the crowd and seeing groups of kids and telling them about it, etc. - again, i got some more insight into marketing - as i mentioned, if you dont put in people’s faces, they dont notice it - and even sometimes they would be looking at it and then you STILL have to go - its a comic book! and THEN they say “ooooh” - so i dont know why its like that, but its just the reality of life - i do have to admit, i dont like marketing in this manner - i feel pretty bad actually trying to get people to buy something on a personal level (as opposed to having a store or something out which they come to on their own) - so i pretty much just got some thick skin, and was almost robotic in my professionalism - simply coming up with
like a 30-second, pressure-free informative line - my MAIN goal (more than sales even) was to make it KNOWN - i really cant thank allah enough - for such a small conference, for being stuck in the back, sharing a booth, not having fliers, etc. and being the first days with a single product, it was beyond expectation 
the last day was a half-day of course (sunday) and pretty dead, but i made some really cool contacts alhamdulillaah - i’ll write about that under IN Production…
(Note: This entry was imported from my personal blog and as such some of the information may be dated. Unfortunately, user comments were lost in the migration, so if you had a comment up, feel free to repost.)