Is Artist Alley even sustainable any more?

A few days ago I was wondering if supershow comic cons were sustainable, but as I noted earlier in the year, with rising costs due to inflation, tariffs and everything else, Artist Alley is also a daunting financial investment these days.  

A few reports have come out about this that seem worth noting. The very nice folks at Lifeline Comics publishers of Witches of Oz, Love at Second Biteand more, have several social media channels where they talk in frank but upbeat ways about the numbers. They made a TikTok about the costs of exhibiting at Rose City Comic Con

I actually found thisof transcribing the TikTok:

Curious about the profitability of selling comics at conventions? Lifeline Comics recently shared their experience from Rose City Comic Con, generating over $3,300 in sales with expenses around $2,600. This resulted in a profit of approximately $800, yielding a 20% profit margin.

Those expenses included more than $1200 in airfare, which is really one of the biggest costs of doing anything these days. 

The Lifeline duo – which is Kat Calamia and Phil Falco – also had a long newsletter post about their NYCC experience, the headline gives it away:

Phil: Costs multiple tenfold when you make the jump from Artist Alley to the Show Floor. Between the Table, point-of-sale Wi-fi (which was a necessity the last time we were exhibitors), and transport to-and-from the show, the cost of just being at/getting to the show was in the mid-$4,000 range. And that is not including costs of producing our multiple exclusives, which more than doubles the cost figure to the $8-9K range. Thankfully, the Kickstarter for the Exclusives (which ends tonight, by the way) covers the full production costs, so we can consider them a non-factor in our profit computations for New York Comic Con itself. In the end, we’re happy to say that we were able to turn a couple of hundred dollars profit — but nowhere near the amount of profit we’re able to turn in Artist Alley (where costs are much, much lower).

I highly recommend reading the whole newsletter for more on the experiences of a small, indie publisher at the show – they hosted some big signings, sold some exclusives, got the Josh Johnson rub, and seem to have had just a good time, which is what cons are all about after all. 

Essentially breaking even at a show is what everyone seems to expect these days, but just to do that takes a ton of work. It’s a far cry from the days of just sitting at a wooden table and pulling out a portfolio of art and a short box of comics. 

For an even deeper dive into the economics of Artist Alley, I cannot recommend highly enough Masha Zhdanova’sThe Death of the Artist Alleyon the site Fansplaining. To read it will cost you a dollar. Masha, who also is an editor here at The Beat, sent me a gift link but I gladly paid a dollar to support the work, and honestly,please pay a dollar. SUPPORT JOURNALISM. 

This is one of the most interesting and informative pieces about comics I have read in a long time. It especially delves into the community of newer artists who set up at anime shows, who tell their stories through TikToks, reels, vlogs and other social media posts. Putting their thoughts into a web article is old fashioned but bridges the information gap for this old timer.  

Zhdanova talked to a lot of vendors and artists who set up at shows and their experiences are eye-opening. I know a lot of old school comics folks are baffled by the proliferation of what appear to be merchandise booths in artist alley these days – very few comics and more things like stickers, prints and washi tape. But there are a lot of reasons for this, Zhdanova explains, and lots of economic factors at play.  Many creators are getting priced out of bigger shows, so they are setting up at smaller shows – in turn forcing out even smaller vendors. It’s a very competitive space. 

Artist and event organizerFaiell, who has been vending at artist alleys as a hobbyist since 2014, told me that, “From a vendor POV, the increase in cost is very obvious—I used to expect tables to cost $100-300 depending on the convention’s size and attendance. Some tables cost $600-700 now. The other main thing is the number of vendors doing AA has gone up astronomically. Acceptance rates are therefore at an all-time low. It’s difficult to lock down anything these days, especially at cons that are more established.”

IT costs a lot to even begin setting up at these shows. Plastic goods like keychains are harder and more expensive to manufacture, and booths have to be more and more elaborate – applicants to anime shows often have to send a photo of their booth – and the cost to just be competitive keeps climbing. 

The “design-maxxed” trend is directly fueling AA overcrowding:when every table has large amounts of merchandise, convention attendees need to spend more time perusing the offerings at each table, which causes traffic to slow, lines to form, and crowds to build up. The pressures of competition with other artists and the need to make back the high table fees and costs of overseas merch production all feed into each other to create worse experiences for both vendors and shoppers. 

There’s also more for attendees to look at because of the sheer breadth of work artists are now expected to sell. Cowlick identifies gacha games produced by the video game company miHoYo, also known as the HoYoverse (known for the Honkaiseries, Genshin Impact,and Zenless Zone Zero) as an origin point for the trend of merchandise of every character in a large franchise. “There was another shift I observed after hoyoverse stuff started coming out and that’s the increase of the tables with a sticker/charm of every character in a neutral pose.”

CartoonistJulie Lerche, who has been selling at and attending comics and anime conventions for the past 12 years, points to the “gatcha-ification” of shows like Anime NYC as part of a trend towards homogeneity and away from anime fanart at anime shows. “I was just veryyyyyyyyy disappointed last year when everything was like airbrushed genshin, honkai, zzz, horse girl prints and acrylic keychains and everything, to the point that even [the most popular] animes of the season (iirc dandadan and frieren around then) barely had anything by comparison,” she told me over Discord, referring to Anime NYC 2025. 

As events become more expensive and competitive, some people are making their own more artist friendly shows, and there was even a doujinshi show at FanimeCon 2026 in San Jose, Manga Ichiba. Modeled on the insanely huge Comiket events in Japan (where over 750,000 people come to buy fanzines), Manga Ichiba was much, much, MUCH smaller but required exhibitors to make a new comic for the event and featured the barebones set-ups Comiket is known for. And more doujinshi type events are being planned for the US. 

There was one sentence in Zhdanova’s piece that really haunted me. 

Other artists I know would love to make more comics, but are forced to concentrate on merchandise for artist alley, since that makes up more of their income than it does for me. 

In all honesty, I never considered that the rainbows of stickers, postcards, trinkets and other art objects that you see at most artist alley tables was a financial necessity. It is easier to sell a cute sticker than a whole comic, and so creators do what they have to to make table. 

(Random photos I took in Artist Alley at Anime NYC 2026)

For all its issues, NYCC still has the most glorious artist alley in North America, or maybe the world, a place where comics and art take precedence with the biggest names in the industry all setting up. It’s also a place where artists can make a lot of money, and that is a good thing in my view. 

But it is very much an outlier in the vast network of comic cons, anime shows, craft fairs, and zine fests that take place every weekend in the US. Artist alley will never die, of course, but the hopes and expectations of both fans and creators will continue to evolve as economic forces create more pressure on every step of the process.