TAGS Fest 2024 Report

Tabletop and Graphic Storytelling Fest (TAGS Fest, or TAGS) took place on the 7th of December 2024, and doors opened to the public from 10am to 5pm. The event took place inside of the Fruitmarket’s warehouse and workshop venues, located on Market Street, Edinburgh, just next to Waverly station.

A marketplace ran in the warehouse, featuring 40+ different exhibitors. Exhibitors could arrive for set up from 9am to 10am, and needed to pack down from 5pm to 5.30pm.

A free board game zone was run by Ancient Robot Games (ARG) in the workshop, which featured volunteer-run Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPGs) for visitors from 10.30am to 1.30pm, and 2pm to 5pm. Additionally, there were drop-in tables for visitors to rent board games and play them together, with an attendant from ARG on hand to explain the rules.

For comparison, you can follow this link to read TAGS Fest 2023’s report.

About the show

TAGS Fest 24 is organised with the combined voluntary efforts of Eve Greenwood (Quindrie Press) and Brian Tyrrell (Stout Stoat Press).

We dreamt up TAGS as a response to Scotland’s diminishing convention scene, where self publishing and small press businesses are increasingly being priced out of the events that they depend on for their livelihood.

Our aim for TAGS was to curate a show where small press was elevated. All of our exhibitors had at least one self-published project to debut, and the focus of all table displays was on published projects.

Report Summary

This year’s show was, by all metrics, bigger and better than last year’s. Footfall, average visitor spend and average exhibitor income were all up. Many exhibitors that returned from last year said they made more than they did last year. Overall, exhibitors continued to feel safe, welcome and comfortable in Fruitmarket’s venue, and had broadly positive feedback about all aspects of the show, like table pricing and space curation. Website traffic was significantly higher this year, with a much larger spike of unique visitors on the day; we interpret this to mean that our poster and tram advert efforts were effective this year at advertising the show.

Of note, the show was supported largely by donations, in-kind support and unpaid labour, without which it could not have run. As discussed in the closing thoughts of this report, running TAGS Fest has stretched the organisers, Eve and Brian, and we will be reflecting on how the labour of the show can be made more sustainable as a long term effort.

Budget

Income and expenditure

This year we brought in £1,540 from table fees (less than last year’s £1,610). We also received an anonymous donation of £1,500, of which we used £920 to cover shortfall from the table fees.

Our main costs broke down into:

• Venue Hire – £810
• Furniture Hire – £82
• Artwork – £240 (+ Free Full Table)
• Admin & Fees – £163
• Consultant (Nyla Ahmad) – £100
• Stewards (Uniform & Lunch) – £63
• On-the-day Supplies (Tea, coffee, masks, tape, etc) – £97
• Window Display and Signage – £29
• Advertising
• Posters – £90
• Tram coves – £732
• Stickers – £62.

Additional small incidental costs will have been incurred that were not captured here for ease of administration (for example, buying milk for the tea & coffee station on the day of the show).

Overall the core table fees covered as much of the show’s essentials as possible, while an anonymous donation paid for advertising.

Donations

Early in 2024, we received a single one-off donation of £1,500 from an anonymous donor. They said they believed in what we were trying to do with TAGS Fest, and wanted to help this growing community to find its feet. So far we have spent £920 of this funding, with £580 remaining for our next event.

Like last year, we also ran a raffle on the day. Two books were available as prizes (Into the Tower and I Shall Never Fall In Love), donated by our close friend and local disabled artist Hari Conner, who wishes they could attend TAGS Fest, but can't due to disability and immune problems. We raised £82 this year (down from last year’s £200). We believe this decrease could be a mixture of more tempered enthusiasm compared to our debut show last year, and increased footfall causing more visitors to slip past the welcome table.

We are very appreciative of these donations. Without them, we would have had to seriously compromise on our aims for this year’s event.

In-kind support

While not a donation, we received additional support that is worth recognising:

Concessionary venue hire. Fruitmarket charges us a reduced rate for our venue hire, as they acknowledge that we (Eve and Brian) are working to create a community group, and that we aren’t profiting from this show.

Volunteer stewards. We are grateful to have received the help of 7 volunteer stewards for a total of 38 worked hours. If paid at a Living Wage of £12.60/hour, they’ve provided us with the equivalent of £478.80 in support.

Edinburgh Mask Bloc. A local group supporting masking and COVID/illness safety at public events reached out to us shortly before this year’s event. We were able to co-ordinate the loan of two air purifiers for the marketplace, as well as approximately 60 rapid-flow tests to be given to exhibitors for free. We estimate we would have had to spend about £222 to offer these same safety measures. We look forward to working with EMB again for our next event.

Unpaid Labour. We, the organisers of TAGS Fest, Brian and Eve, are not remunerated for our labour throughout the year to run TAGS Fest. Instead, we have a table each at the festival, which we sell at while also working with the other stewards to make sure the event runs smoothly.

Both Eve and Brian put in about 100 hours of work overlapping across admin, graphic design, advertising and social media responsibilities. If we paid ourselves the national living wage of £12.60/hour we would be paid £1,260 each.

This year, from selling at the event Brian made £489.00 (down from last year’s £688), and Eve made £524 (down from last year’s £550). We did not pay for our full tables.

We further discuss our unpaid labour at the end of this report in the section titled Conflicts of Interest.

Existing resources. Both Eve and Brian have access to different resources through their full-time professional practice. For example, Adobe CC subscriptions, a professional quality A3+ printer, various craft supplies like glue, paper, posca markers, and so on. It’s hard to estimate a specific in-kind value, but these resources would cost a significant amount to assemble from scratch.

How the event went

Footfall

Footfall this year was exceptionally higher than last year. Over the course of the day, there were 807 visitors to the marketplace (up from last year’s 629), and there were 241 visitors to the boardgame zone (up from 178).

Examining the hour-by-hour counts, the show was busier earlier, and sustained higher attendance longer. Footfall did drop off faster at the end of the day.

The weather on Saturday was cold, with grey overcast clouds and intermittent bursts of light rain. This year we made efforts to make our window display bigger and more prominent, and we anecdotally feel that helped bring in casual attendance.

Comments from exhibitors on this year’s footfall was curiously mixed:

“While quiet at the start of the day, when it got busy it stayed consistently busy through the bulk of the day, a great achievement on a horrible rainy day!”

“I was just as busy as I was last year; I am glad that TAGS continues to be a well-attended show.”

“I feel that TAGS is unique because of the time of year and the proximity to the station allows for footfall of a kind that is just happening upon this kind of event.”

“The morning was very quiet but there was an uptick around the early afternoon/midday. Last year felt a lot more busy!”

“It was very slow at the start of the day but we were warned this would happen. It really picked up in the afternoon and seemed to remain pretty steady for a while.”

Total report spend

Based on responses from 27 of 42 exhibitors at TAGS this year, declared incomes totalled £9,720.25 (up from last year’s declared number of £5,228.00). Using an average that excludes highest and lowest outliers, we estimate that about £13,000 was spent across exhibitors at TAGS Fest this year (up from last year’s estimate of £10,000.)

Average visitor spend

Assuming about a fifth of visitors just browsed without buying anything, we estimate that an average visitor spent £26.48† while at the show (up from last year’s estimate of £25.00).

† This average includes highest and lowest declared incomes, because while the average exhibitor might not have seen it, the average visitor still spent it.

Advertising

Our main information point for TAGS Fest throughout 2024 continued to be tagsfest.co.uk. Web traffic in the lead-up to the event saw slow and steady increase from October, with a small spike at the start of November (likely from our exhibitor pack going out) and the largest traffic coming in for the event itself.

This year we opted not to add tracking UTMs to our advertising efforts. In short, neither of us have the relevant experience or training with Google Analytics, and we decided it would be time and cost prohibitive to pursue advanced tacking methods this year.

Flyers. Eve and Brian (and a few friends) gave out A5 TAGS Fest flyers at events in England and Scotland throughout the first half of the year, mainly aiming to raise awareness of the show for exhibitors. These flyers were printed at home by Brian.

Tram Advert. From November 11th to December 8th we rented 20 small cove adverts on the Edinburgh tram, with the below graphic.

As a general comment, while seemingly intimidating for first-time advertisers, the Edinburgh Tram was much more approachable and affordable than other public transport advertising options we investigated earlier in 2024.

Posters. From November 18th to December 3rd† we had 50 posters distributed across Edinburgh by Out of Hand Scotland, with the below graphic. Overall, this was much more time-effective than putting the poster up ourselves as we did last year, and we’ll definitely do this again next year.

† Poster distribution works on fortnightly cycles, with the next cycle lasting until 18th December. We figured it was most cost-effective to just pay for one cycle.

Stickers. For the show, we printed 100 vinyl die-cut stickers. Approximately 50 were given out to exhibitors, and the rest given away for free to the public. While much more personal, we find that stickers for shows help build word-of-mouth and keep a show in current memory. For example, we’ve both had stickers for shows we liked on phones, cases and cash boxes for years. We hope that these stickers will help keep TAGS in exhibitors and creators minds for next year.

Efficacy. Anecdotally, the tram adverts and posters seemed to be effective. We had friends and exhibitors report seeing them and feeling proud and excited to be coming to TAGS Fest. Right now, we don’t have a way to quantify their impact, but comparing last year’s web traffic to this year's, we saw about 100-150 users visiting tagsfest.co.uk each week in the lead up to the show. This year’s on-the-day traffic reached almost 700 unique users, whereas last year’s spike was closer to 100.

Website updates

Alongside general updates to copy across the website, we made efforts to upgrade the exhibitor page with a searchable card widget that allows visitors to filter by preset categories (Comics, Boardgames, etc) and search by custom exhibitor-chosen tags (Fantasy, Autobio, etc).

Feedback about the new exhibitor page was positive across the board:

“It was nice to have tags to make it easier to have an idea of what the person makes.”

“LOVE the tagging system, easy to navigate, the design of the pages always looks so slick too.”

"If people are debuting a new book or project, it would be cool to have a ‘debuts’ section that showcases these new, exciting items."

Having done the work to set this up, we’re now easily able to continue using this tagging system for future shows. With the increased traffic to the website, we’ll be considering what we can do in the future to best inform and excite people while we have their (often brief) attention.

Exhibitor’s experience

We sent out a post-event survey to all of our exhibitors on Sunday 8th of December, and received responses from 27 out of 42 exhibitors.

Pre-event

Overall, exhibitors remained very happy with how we ran table applications, our level of communication, and the TAGS Fest website.

Feedback mentioned needing a little more guidance on some topics, but was broadly positive:

“I think clarifying what TAGS benchmark for NSFW/18+ is (with an "at the organiser discretion" escape clause, but just some guidelines could be useful)”

“It contained all the information needed to plan the journey to the convention space, and was clear about the policies and expectations for people participating”

“The clarity of all of the information was 10/10, and much appreciated.”

Table allocation

This year, we updated our curation policy slightly to add weight to exhibitors who would be new to the show, and who would be debuting new works at the show. We did this to make sure we remained committed to our goal of platforming as many different talented exhibitors as possible.

We also enlisted the help of Nyla Ahmad as a guest curator, to help us remain impartial in our curatorial decisions.

For our initial table allocations we assigned spaces to 42 exhibitors, of which:

• 22 returned from TAGS 23
• 20 were brand new to the show
• Of those 20, 8 declared they had never tabled at an event before.

There were a few cancellations and last minute replacements leading up to the show, so this balance may have shifted slightly.

Table prices

Table prices changed slightly this year, reflecting increased costs on our end. Half tables remained £35, while full tables went up from £50 to £60.

Overall, exhibitors were generally satisfied with the prices:

“Would happily pay more but its great that its on the cheaper side“

“For artists who are starting in the convention world, it's lovely to be able to pay a little less for a table, since there isn't [a] consistent audience yet. We would have been happy to pay a little more though!”

“For me the table was just right as I had travel to consider as well.“

“For the footfall, it was really quite a high price especially as there were no talks or guests to bring people in.”

Venue

Overall, exhibitors remained pleased with Fruitmarket as a venue this year.

Feedback was positive, but also constructive:

“It was so easy to get in and set up on time. The closest thing to a perfect venue as I could think of”

“Extremely convenient to get to, food is expensive but very good. Next time I'd probably buy lunch elsewhere to keep my costs down.”

“I do like the Fruitmarket. I feel that the location is great and the space works well. It would be good with a bit more light as some areas felt a bit dingy.”

Comfort

This year we added a tea & coffee station exclusively for exhibitor use in the back corner of the marketplace. This was mentioned in pre-event emails, in the exhibitor information packs, and in the on-the-day pamphlets. The exhibitors reported that:

• 45% knew about the station, and used it.
• 48% knew about the station, but did not use it.
• 7% didn’t know about the station, but would have used it.

Feedback was broadly positive, and we think it would be great to set up again next year:

“Honestly, I was just ecstatic that there was a tea corner.”

“So convenient, made my day a lot more comfortable.”

“Loved it, I wish more festivals did this!”

“I would have used it but I was too busy.”

“I did not know where it was and assumed it was at [Fruitmarket’s] cafe!!”

Safety & stewardship

Last year we relied on close friends and partners to help us run TAGS Fest 23. This year we held an open call for external help from members of our comics and tabletop communities. Eve and Brian wore special orange t-shirts throughout the day, and our 7 volunteer stewards wore yellow t-shirts.

Like Eve and Brian, the other stewards were unpaid volunteers. Volunteers opted in for half day shifts (9am to 1.30pm or 1.30pm to 6pm), or full day shifts (9am to 6pm, with an hour break and £10 compensation for lunch).

Overall, the presence of stewards was positively received this year, as reflected in feedback submitted to us:

“Stewards were so kind and useful. I cannot sing their praises enough. Always on top of it and seemingly always aware of when I needed help.”

“I didn't speak to the stewards aside from entering and leaving, but I didn't have any trouble at all, so I didn't really need to!”

“They were really friendly and attentive, checked on me several times and were clearly working really hard to make sure it was a great event for everyone!”

Last year, we were made aware of a safe-guarding issue post-event that we judged a steward could have resolved on the day. This year we tried to encourage exhibitors to reach out to or seek out stewards in the case of issues, both in the pre-event exhibitor packs and also in the pamphlets left on each exhibitor’s tables.

Encouragingly, a communication concern was reported on the day, and we will continue to investigate it in the new year. That said, no safe-guarding issues were raised this year, so we believe that the event was safe for everyone who attended.

Exhibitor income

This year saw a significant increase in sales across the board, indicating TAGS Fest’s positive impact for exhibitors and its own growth.

on average exhibitors made £302.55 each (up from last year’s average of £237.00†). However, as seen in the chart above, many incomes ranged from £200 to £350.

Editor's note: Following constructive feedback, we’ve recalculated the median exhibitor income, which comes to £282.50, as a median is more representative than an average of most exhibitor’s experiences at TAGS 2024.

Across all earnings, on average exhibitors said they made more at TAGS Fest than they do at other similarly sized events, and on average returning exhibitors said they made more than at last year’s show.

Our highest earner made £1,374.00 (rated better than equivalent shows) while our lowest earner brought in £78.00 (rated similar to equivalent shows). This high end is encouraging, because it shows visitors are coming to the show willing to spend and engage with exhibitors, but we recognise that level of success is an outlier.

Feedback from exhibitors regarding sales seemed to be positive. Regardless of how much an exhibitor declared to have made, comments agreed that visitors preferred to buy comics, books and games over prints or merchandise.

“The bulk of my income from TAGS came from book and playing card sales. Usually it is my prints that constitute about 50% of all sales. It was very flattering that people were interested in my comics more than my illustration.”

“The smaller event focusing on original work was a perfect fit for me.”

“We've sold more bigger comics than zines this year!”

“I found sales to be [...] comparable to my sales at UKGE in a fraction of the time.”

“I made more money [at TAGS] last year, but that was an exception and this year aligned more with a show of this size”

—

† Based on feedback on last year’s report, we recalculated the average exhibitor’s income based only on declared values, and found it was lower than our previously estimated £273.28.

Travel & accommodation costs

14 of our 27 respondents declared to have travelled from outside of Edinburgh to attend TAGS. Travel fees varied depending on where exhibitors came from:

Exhibitors that stayed the night paid between £40 and £80 for a single night.

First time exhibitors

Of the 27 respondents to our Exhibitor Survey, 8 responded as having never tabled at an event before. Overall, their feedback was warming:

“This was my first market. I was terrified at first, but over the course of the day, I settled in and I made a lot of lovely friends in the industry.”

“I told all my friends. An absolute no brainer for next year.”

“It was a great experience. It was very professionally run, well attended and stuffed full of great artists”

One of our core aims for TAGS Fest is to uplift new talent in the Scottish and UK scene, so we’re pleased to hear that first-time exhibitors are able to network and feel welcomed.

Final thoughts

Attendance and income

By all metrics, this year was more successful than the last. Almost all exhibitors, big or small, made more than they did last year. Footfall was also significantly higher. As the show continues to grow a reputation, we hope this trend will continue.

We want exhibitors to see TAGS as a reliable-earner, and as a way to end the year’s convention season on a high. We collect income data because we deeply care about supporting every creator that attends our show. However, few other shows do this, and perhaps our approach is an overreach.

For now, we will continue to consider how to boost attendance and spending. We will also weigh if average income is a useful goal for us as organisers, especially as a majority of exhibitors at both ends of the income scale said they had a great show and would like to return.

Space management

We want TAGS Fest to be an event that supports as many creators as possible. Following last year’s feedback about cramped spacings, we decided to decrease the number of tables we fit into this year’s hall. Unfortunately, we received further feedback about cramped spacing this year. Going forward, we’ve decided to further reduce the number of half tables for next year to give our exhibitors more breathing room, and consider policies capping the number of exhibitors sat behind a half or full table to make sure all exhibitors have adequate space.

Perceptions vs. statistics

This year, we were hired as freelancers to organise ECAF for Out of the Blueprint. Several feedback points directly compared both shows, saying that ECAF was busier than TAGS. Curiously, we have statistics from both shows. ECAF's footfall was around 500 people, much lower than TAGS’ footfall of 800 people. Additionally, we noticed some exhibitor feedback claiming that TAGS was quieter in ‘24 than it was in ‘23, even though by the numbers footfall and spend was significantly improved. We aren’t drawing any conclusions from these views, but think it’s worth acknowledging that statistics don’t represent how an event feels from exhibitor to exhibitor on the day.

The burden of labour

Talking from a personal perspective for a moment, this last year has been exhausting. Both of us have faced difficulties, uncertainties, and loss in our professional and private lives. We’re only human, and 2024 was a hard year. The labour of organising TAGS has oscillated between a welcome distraction, and a suffocating burden. At our darkest points throughout the year, we both questioned if we were able to continue with the show at all. The evidenced success of TAGS ‘24 has encouraged us, and we’re confident that we should continue with TAGS Fest in some form. However, we must take steps to make this work more sustainable going forward.

Conflicts of interest

We started TAGS as a way of giving back to and supporting our community. We wanted to foster an environment we felt had been lost due to COVID-19 and lockdowns, and to create a market that we ourselves would enjoy tabling and selling at.

We enjoy running TAGS, even though we’re unpaid. As a whole the project seems to be working well, but it is consuming more of our spare time, and encroaching into our paid work.

As unpaid organisers, we need to sell at TAGS to make up for the many hours invested into organising it. However, with the experience of having now run TAGS twice and ECAF once, we realise that we’re being stretched too thinly between the requirements of ‘exhibitor’ and ‘event host’. What we achieved this year is unsustainable if we remain uncompensated going forwards.

Increasing table fees to compensate us isn’t currently feasible. Looking at In-Kind Support, the fair-paid cost of our labour is almost triple that of what we bring in for table fees alone.

External funding may alleviate this issue. An anonymous donation was a game changer for this year’s show, and support from bodies like Creative Scotland or other professional sponsorships could help balance our books. With funding, we could dedicate our time fully to running the show on the day without the need for tabling. Furthermore, we could run panels and workshops at our next event, something we have wanted to do since starting TAGS, and enjoyed doing for ECAF this year. We could also increase the scope of our advertising, pay our stewards, and look into expanding our venue space. All of these would be beneficial for the small press community in Scotland.

Without funding, we need to admit that we’ve surpassed the maximum workload that we can handle. Going forward we would still need to run our own table at TAGS. As a result, the show would have to scale back what is offered to exhibitors and we would need to set clearer expectations for the show on the day.

As it stands, TAGS is a community event, which we get a lot of joy from running. We don't have grand aspirations to grow it to the size of Thought Bubble or Tabletop Scotland, but we do want to see it flourish in some form. If we aren’t able to secure funding, our next event might look a little different, but we’re still committed to giving it a go.

Aims for the future

Finally, here are some goals for our next event:

• Securing funding to make sure we can invest further time and resources into TAGS Fest.
• Expanding TAGS Fest to 2 days, allowing for a rotation of exhibitors and more full tables.
• Panels and workshops, highlighting our fantastic community and offering game designers a chance to demo their works.
• A comic-swap table, where exhibitors and visitors can exchange similar-length titles (e.g. a zine for a zine, stand-alones for stand-alones, etc).
• A larger marketplace — although a larger space will likely cost more to rent. Table fees may have to go up accordingly.
• A tap-to-donate card machine at the welcome table. This would be a higher priority if we are able to expand into a larger marketplace or if we run events and panels.
• Further levels of transparency at the application stage about how exhibitor fees contribute to the budget of the show.

Even if we can’t achieve every single one of these goals, we will still strive to meet our number one objective: make a fun event that celebrates small press publishing!