For
several years now Fan Expo, Canada’s biggest speculative Fiction convention,
has given free half tables to author guests. I want to start this posting by
thanking them for this largess as for many of us the economic reality is we
could not attend, let along sell our wears at the con, without it. Sadly this
year they had to cancel the author tables, do to fire regulations there was no
place to put us. This is unfortunate but understandable, James, who runs fan
expo, found himself between a rock and a hard place and did what he had to. I
can find no fault in this. James has been a good friend to the local, literary community
over the years and does not deserve the treatment he is getting at the hands of
some members of the community.
The
one thing I do feel could have been handled better is the communication. Before
James got the bad news several authors were put up as guests on the Fan Expo
site, I being one of them. We were quite glad about it, as I am sure you can
understand. When our names vanished from the site without explanation we were
confused. The prevalent roomer was the site had crashed and they had gone back
to a stable archived version and our names would be up when they fixed the new
site. That was one of several roomers.
Unfortunately
when there is a lack of real information roomers abound.
This
situation was made worse because there have been years when the only
notification an author got of inclusion in the authors ally was that they appeared
on the official website.
In
this and this alone do I think Fan Expo could have done better. Adding a brief
notification after the remaining authors’ names on the site that “Do to fire
regulations we have to regretfully announce that there will be no author ally
at Fan Expo 2015 and that only those authors listed above will be guests of the
con.”
I
feel this would have been appropriate because there are real life consequences
to attending a con like Fan Expo. People book hotel rooms, take vacation days
and the like. Thus once a reasonable expectation of inclusion was established
by putting names up on the site some notice would have been appropriate.
The
above is offered in the form of friendly advice should a similar situation happen
in the future. It is in no way an attack.
This
said, I’m sure that everyone at Hobby Star, the company that does Fan Expo is horribly
busy, so an oversight is not surprising when they are thrown a curve.
As
it was I contacted several of the official Fan Expo e-mails explaining that I
didn’t want to not show up if I was supposed to, or show up if I wasn’t. James
got back to me the next day, given how close the con is I thank him for that
because he must be going nuts with the work load. James’ E-mail to me is pasted next.
My apologies Stephen.
We are not allowed to do the under the escalator thing this year due to safety
issue with the MTCC. The problem is we have nowhere else to put an author
alley, but some publishers and organizations have paid booths on the floor, so
that is the cause of the confusion. So, I don’t have a free tables space for
you is the short of it. Sorry.
James
Now
I ask, what is wrong with this? He is polite, sympathetic even, up front and
honest. Is it the news I wanted, of course not, is it reason to pull my hair
and scream, no, not at all.
With
this information I took it upon myself to warn off some of my colleagues who
were in the same boat as me. Then the roar started. People began including me
in posts that were critical of Fan Expo and James. All I did was spread the
word so people wouldn’t show up the day of for a nasty surprise.
I
know it is disappointing and some people are apparently in a different boat
having received an official notice of inclusion but for me, and I think most,
this is really just one of those things that happens. There is no need to
vilify anybody and we should be grateful for the past kindnesses.
OK,
that’s my two cents.
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