Alternating Reality Books

We got our official vendor notice from Sakuracon 2010, and we will be in Booth 731. Now the real question is what would you like us to bring?

This is one of the more important parts of investing time and energy into any kind of convention, everyone is looking for happy transactions, that means I bring what people want to get, and people get what they want at a reasonable price. While the Sakuracon official message boards do give an indication of what people are looking for it is really falling into a number of lines of thought.

1. Rare – hard to find, or generally unique. People are looking for stuff that few if anyone else will have. The only problem is that the supply chain for Anime and Manga is very shallow. There are only a few suppliers that are available (which is why you see a lot of Diamond Comics and AAA Anime boxes at the convention) to people. Importing directly is an expensive and time consuming process, and there is no guarantee that you will get authentic goods.

2. Small items, lots of patches, key chains, key rings, and other sub 5 dollar items. Those are easy, but rely on rule number one, harder to find for some of the more obscure stuff that exists in the whole Otaku Culture.

3. Music, music has the same issues, in that the really good bands are also heavily invested in the social fabric of Japan. We can’t simply burn disks from what is available in public and what bands are sharing. That really rare band you hear on MySpace or the Japanese equivalent Mixi.jp makes things harder for folks to get what they are looking for.

Given those hurdles we really are stuck with Viz, Studio Ghibli, Tokyo Pop, and things that are easier to get in the USA. So if you have anything that you would like to see us bring along, let us know here, or start talking on the Sakuracon message board right here so we know what to bring along. We would much rather have happy transactions than not.

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