Seeking feedback, Convention Merchandise Idea: Trading Card Zine’s

Hey all,

For a hot minute now I’ve been sitting on the idea for some potential convention merchandise and am now looking for feedback. While this may yet be another flower in my garden of unfinished ideas, I’m looking for some input. As you read on I ask you consider the following them reach out:

• If you was at a convention and didn’t know me, the artist, would this be merch you’d consider buying?
• What size, in both dimensions and volume make this more worthwhile?
• How much would you be willing to spend on one set of these?
• Does rarity increase or decrease the value of this as a product?

The Concept:

So, I as a prodictivity tool carry around these,

Its just a bit of scrap paper, but takes formatting from a “Zine”, or more so, a very butchered version of a Zine; Zine’s historically are very short, self published magazines, hence their namesake. In the digital era where printing and production are a lot more accessible, they often take the form of single print or pdf art books, but for a long time they existed in this format— a single piece of paper, folded into eighths, then with a cut down the center of the spine allowing it to fold into a booklet.

I carry these as bits of scrap for notetaking, but attended a workshop on/ made a few actual artzy-associated miniature comics at university. They fit in about your hand and are a little smaller than a playing card, which leads me to…

Trading Card Zines

These are small, plainly printed zines in this format, coming in packs similar to trading cards. On one side, and how they present in the packaging, would be a short comic with little to no dialogue or printed colors; unfolded however and on the reverse side would be a full page print. A target estimate would be about 4 zines per pack, at around 10$.

They would be shuffled for rarity, giving alternate versions of the same comic sequence with different characters, colors, or (as seen above) the handmade original WIP prints that were then digitized/ reprinted. The individual prints and pages would also be available for sale if people didn’t want to roll the dice on a pack a time, but at a higher markdown price.

Packs themselves would be separated between SFW and NSFW and plainly marked down as such, as well as other general qualifiers denoting how spicy they are, possibly separating out kink content from traditional vanilla NSFW.

Feedback

In addition to the questions posed above, I ask you also consider some more logistical questions.

• Would things such as “pack filler” where its generally lower quality but higher volume prevent you from fully enjoying this as a product?
• What size page would seem adequate? Below are four pages printed on traditional paper sizes: 8.5x11, 8.5x14, and 11x17. These are not only impact the size of the comic page itself but the size of the print on the back.
• As a patron of mine, if I started production of these would you be interested in physical merch rewards, or being included inside, as a benefit of patronage?

Any and all feedback is much appreciated.

-M