Fest Registration Woes

[luke]

My local zine fest does registration lottery-style, which stinks in my opinion. They keep expanding but I've been wait-listed two years in a row. Plus it probably just leads to shenanigans of people registering under a bunch of pseudonyms and email addresses. Also, it seems like the close compatriots of the fest organizers never have a problem getting in...

I know it's not fair at all, but selfishly I prefer it when fests open registration at a specific time and then close when they sell out. I live the kind of lifestyle that allows me to have nothing to do but wait at my computer refreshing the browser. Still, apparently FLUKE sold out in like two minutes this year, so even that may be untenable.

"Juried" shows feel like they go against the open DIY ethos of the "scene," and would probably tend to discriminate against newcomers and the less experienced.

What's the solution? What are the other options? e.g. what about multi-day shows that have different tablers each day?

General thoughts on fest registration woes?

[manoopuesta]

Keeping in mind that I haven't ever taken part in the organization of a fest: I tend to think the best option for comics fests is having a curated show, where you screen the applications that you get. I say this mainly because I have seen in recent years many small press comics fests turn more into festivals of stickers/prints... and with barely any artists tabling with actual comics. I think now many people apply to these fests since they see how much more revenue they get from selling stickers, cute prints and this kind of stuff. They may have tangentially some comic related stuff to just make the cut. I don't know if this is a thing in Europe, or if it happens everywhere.

I know curated shows though is a lot of work for the organizers, but I think those that are nicely curated, they benefit from this. And from the few people organizing comics fests that I've talked with, I feel they are usually happy to have newcomers applying so their fest keeps being fresh and doesn't stagnate over the years. (At the end they do this more as an act of love, since organizing these events must be a huge headache and have little-to-nothing economical benefit). Of course this is not a perfect solution, and like you said, there will be always cases in which some gatekeeping is happening.