NecronomiCon 2024
The modern incarnation of NecronomiCon started in 2013, and the sixth took place in Providence, Rhode Island, USA over the days of 15-18 August 2024. This was the second after the pandemic threw off the original biennial schedule on the odd years by pushing the 2021 con to 2022 (which was the first one we attended).
NecronomiCon is put on by the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council, a nonprofit that also runs a book/curio store in downtown Providence, a few blocks from the Graduate (nee Biltmore of Lovecraft’s day) and Omni hotels where most of the convention takes place. The show itself had a committee of five directors, but listed 39 others in key positions, as well as numerous volunteers who could be seen sporting “Minion” shirts throughout the weekend. The main names we came in contact with were Niels-Viggo Hobbs, the arch director, Anthony Teth (vendors), Ken Heard (core programming), and Jessica Gorton (gaming).
Anthony had taken over the vendor hall, or “Grand Emporium of the Weird”. This was in the Narragansett Ballroom in the Omni Hotel. This ballroom was divided into three aisles, with about 10 booths on either side of each aisle, a few tables capping each end of an aisle, and a few tables up against the front and back walls, so about 70 or so tables in total. In 2022 our table had been on the right wall, this time it was at the back wall of the hall, in between the left and center aisle.
We had come in 2022 with the concept of all the small independent publishers sharing a table together, so it would split the $300 cost of the table between us and also let us watch each other’s books during lunch breaks or panel or game commitments, and not require anyone to be there the whole weekend. Last time we had our table right next to Stygian Fox, and we asked for the same arrangement, as this also led to more coverage. We also asked for a second table, as we were upping our group publisher representation with even more Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games!
In 2022 our table had:
Bayt al Azif, Cthulhu Reborn, Hypergraphia, Golden Goblin, Sentinel Hill, and Sons of the Singularity
While next to us was Squamous and Stygian Fox.
In 2024, we didn’t have any Hypergraphia issues, but we added:
Geekach, Nightfall, Sixtystone Press, and Symphony Entertainment, for a total of 11 publishers!
from Geekach in Ukraine, one of the publishers we were selling
Sadly, our request for a second table was turned down, so it was going to be a tight squeeze. 2022 seemed to be a bit of rebuilding year after the pandemic started, with even a few empty tables or small art projects. 2024 was a much more full hall with a wider variety of quality vendors, and just seemed more full of good things to buy, including several who had not been there last time, as well as filling some surprising gaps (like a bookseller specializing in out of print horror novels).
The trip began by loading all the publisher books into the car and heading north. A traffic slowdown on the highway was the perfect time to get an early dinner at an outlet of the famous Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana, and Bret Kramer of Sentinel Hill Press had recalled a good game store in the small town of Groton in Connecticut, near the submarine base. This was only about an hour’s drive from Providence, and apparently submariners love games, for there was the Citadel Game Cellar, which opened in 1977 and has been amazing ever since. Old school game stores are hard to find and to be treasured, especially when they sell old books for cover price. I asked how the shelves were organized and was told “There’s no organization.” Not only did I spot a sticker for the “West End Games” section (in business from 1974 to bankruptcy in 1998) that had two Paranoia modules (1994), but also a Cthulhu Live LARP section (1999-2001) and Mortal Coils from Pagan Publishing (1998)! Yes, all cover price. My vision was starting to blur from the drive, so I only perused the shelves for a few treasures before finally pushing on to Providence.
Arriving after dark, I checked in to the Omni Hotel and debated where to park. Walking back to the car, I saw a lone stranger standing in a dark area and stepped off the curb to not startle them and give them some space. They were talking on their phone, or seemed to be. As I passed, they yelled, “Oh, you’re acting like you can’t hear me?!” They had been mumbling at me the whole time! As I moved quickly away, they continued to yell, “Well, you’ll be converted, in this world, or when you turn into starlight!” An auspicious start to the weekend, at the cost of a few fragile Sanity points.
The main events began on Thursday, but there were also several activities Wednesday for those who wanted to spend more time there. Sadly this late arrival meant I had missed most of those. The parking garage had a very large sign warning against leaving any visible valuables in sight, so with a load of extra books from the back seat of the car stashed in my room, I finished for the night.
Thursday was a day for the vendors to set up, but the sales wouldn’t begin until Friday. Going down to the hall, I found that Oscar Rios of Golden Goblin had not only got there early, he was already finished setting up! On the way to get our boxes, I ran into Paul Fricker and Mike Mason of Chaosium and Call of Cthulhu, who were looking for the rest of the Chaosium crew of Rick Meints and Matt Ryan with their own boxes. I volunteered our handcart to help them bring in everything, then got our own brought in. Anthony gave me our two vendor badges that were included with each table, and explained that while in 2022 we had to first purchase a temporary seller’s permit from Rhode Island, we now could just handle all taxes at the end of the show. I left our stack of boxes behind the table to wait until Bret Kramer from Sentinel Hill arrived with his books and those of Stygian Fox so we could figure out how to display everything else.
photo courtesy of Chaosium
This gave some time to wander about Providence, seeing the beautiful and quaint old architecture that survived over the years, eventually ending up in a park by the mouth of the Miskatonic (Providence) River, crossing over a bridge to the eastern side to come back up the river, and then crossing west back into the center of town.
This led to the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences building, which was in an amazing old “mall”, inside the enclosed three level Providence Arcade. The pillared entryway would not be out of place in Rome, and stairs on either side of the entrance led up to the higher levels, but they seemed to be locked. Several of the ground floor spaces were not in use, and the top floors also seemed closed, but later someone said they actually had rented a room on a higher floor for their stay during the con! It is surprising and a shame that this delightful location is not full of businesses, but it let the LA&S expand into an adjoining space for the Ars Necronomica gallery exhibit. Conveniently, right across from the LA&S space was the nice Livi’s Burritos which served as lunch until Bret arrived with his delivery of books. This was right before the hall closed, so we left the books behind the table until the next day, as the NecronomiCon staff told us we could get in two hours early on Friday.
Luckily Bret is a fan of all historical things, such as diners, so we picked up his badge, program guide, momento book, and cool pin from check in on the second floor atrium of the Graduate Hotel, then went to the Haven Brothers Diner he had introduced me to in 2022. (On the way we ran into a few people for a brief chat, including Keeper Murph formerly of the Miskatonic University Podcast and Max.) Haven Brothers is a mobile 1950s diner trailer parked two blocks over from the Graduate. It was originally a horse drawn lunch wagon back in 1893 and has evolved over the years! For a cheap price, we got some hot dogs, Haven or Hot Weiner style (though we passed on the milkshakes and deep fried Oreos this time). The clouds had darkened as we walked over, and it began to pour right as we got inside. It had dropped off to a drizzle by the time we finished, so it was about perfect timing. Another new customer came in after us and was very confused what was meant by a small, medium, or large burger until he understood that was also the amount of patties in each one!
The welcoming ceremony at the First Baptist Church in America was from 5 to 6, and is definitely worth going to once, as the building itself was open in 1775, and is only a few blocks walk from the hotels across the river. Unfortunately the aged building does not have air conditioning, so be careful on warm summer days. The program in 2022 involved readings and welcome, as well as music from the impressive organ, plus a few extra surprises. The opening reception for the Ars Necronomica was that night, as well as the Party Under the Stars at the Red Door nearby, and the Black Lodge Party at a secret location, but the exhaustion of walking about the day and loading in, plus the previous drive led to an early night and ten hours of sleep!
The next morning was an early start, as we had to actually figure out how to display our table. Using Bret’s handcart, a storage tub, and nine boxes, we filled in the gap between the two tables and covered it with the edge of the table cloth. Bret had also picked up a new folding card table, which we fit at the end of one of the tables. With this, we had about 18-20 feet of space to spread everything out, and it was still barely enough! Altogether, there were about 90 books and games on display! Sadly we forgot we had put labels and explanations on the books like last time, but used some post-it notes to at least add prices.
Around this time, Badger McInnes of Squamous Studios and Stygian Fox arrived. Badger had been with us in 2022 and had not learned his lesson. He quickly used his design skills to add some attractive price labels to all the Stygian Fox books. The normal hours for the hall were 11 to 6, but a few attendees can purchase limited Golden Key or Silver Key badges. One of the perks for these badges was early access to the vendor hall at 10, so they got an hour in relative calm before the hoi polloi were allowed in. Everyone else got in for free with a convention pass, or had to pay $5 to get in without one.
Friday had been the big rush of 2022, doing about 50% of all sales, with 25% of sales on Saturday and Sunday, so we were expecting big things. It makes sense that the hardcore shoppers know want they want, or want to make sure they get something before it sells out, so they will come first, and then the casual shoppers will drift in over the rest of the weekend as they have time.
As said before, this time the hall was much more full. Additional new roleplaying vendors included Hal Mangold of Atomic Overmind Press, who not only brought their beautiful Tour de Lovecraft books, but also copies of many Delta Green books from Arc Dream, and Trail of Cthulhu and Fall of Delta Green from Pelgrane Press, while Goodman Games had their weird old school fantasy games like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Returning were Chaosium with Call of Cthulhu, Limithron with Pirate Borg, and the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society with their many props, games, and audio plays. There seemed to be many more writers and artists, and many, many publishers. The one that most caught our eye was the afore mentioned bookseller Kathmandu Books from Florida, which had a lot of great fantasy and horror classics and first editions, and lots of Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft zines like Crypt of Cthulhu. His collection included a 1971 copy of Vathek by William Beckford that featured in the introductory essay in Bayt al Azif issue 1! It was also a pleasure to see that Cosmic Horror Monthly produces a print edition.
Jeff Moeller of many, many Cthulhu projects also helped out at our table. At some point he waved his hand at all the books and said, “I worked on a lot of these!” (For example, from Cthulhu Reborn, Golden Goblin, Sixtystone Press, and Stygian Fox!) It was great to chat with him a bit, as I hadn’t met him in person before, and to hear some stories of ye olde days with Pagan Publishing! Jeff’s working on a new project for the next Golden Goblin release.
For lunch, a quick walk across the street was Caffe Nero, which had sandwiches and cookies. On the way out, I stopped by Chaosium’s table where president Rick Meints and cartographer Matt Ryan gratefully accepted the offer of a coffee run. The sandwiches were ok, but the cookies were great!
Among the people who stopped by the booth was Christian Matzke, who is re-creating a thousand page edition of the John Dee Necronomicon! Amazing to see it in person. Christian had an entire panel about working on it which we sadly missed. You can support and follow along on his Patreon.
After the first day wrapped up, Badger invited me to the Irish pub a few blocks away, Murphy’s. Surprisingly to me, it even had some Irish people on staff! There we met Badger’s old friend Jason and spent some very pleasant time chatting over good food and drink about many games, and plans were made about perhaps playing a game one of the nights.
Friday night had the paid entry costumed event of the Eldritch Ball, this year with the theme of the Colour Out of Space (it had been The Masque of the Red Death in 2022). Other events were weird trivia, theater events, parties, and live performances. But again, the work of the day led to an early night, but less sleep. Just more time to get up early for Saturday!
Saturday had an extra event in it, our first panel! NecronomiCon welcomes people to suggest and volunteer for panels of all sorts. In addition to a strictly academic presentation of papers throughout the week in the Armitage Sessions, and author readings, there are 4 other concurrent panel events during the day. Topics that caught our eye included Game and Scenario Design, translating weird fiction, small press in the ’70s and ’80s, designing Call of Cthulhu scenarios, the weird west, heavy metal and the Mythos, alien biology, and many panels on authors and topics from punk to Canada!
They do not accept every offer, and while you can suggest a panel topic, you can also just explain your areas of expertise and they will try to fit you into a panel if there is a good match. If so, you get a free badge to the con! They accepted me into a panel on Saturday afternoon, “Weird Gaming: Indie and Freelance Perspectives: Running the Business”, moderated by Bret Kramer, with other panelist Oscar Rios, Leslie “XPLovecat” Horn, and Derek Sotak. If you are realizing the problem with this group, you are not the only one. Luckily, with both Bret and me in the same panel, Badger was able to watch our table.
This panel took place in the lovely Capital Ballroom in the Graduate and had about 40 attendees. A problem we had realized was we weren’t quite sure what aspects the audience would be most interested in, so Bret came up with several interesting topics to discuss. The format of a panel is suggested to be an hour of discussion, 15 minutes of question and answer from the audience, leaving 15 minutes for everyone to get to their next event, and set up for the next panel, putting everything on a 90 minute block schedule. Bret suggested we wrap up the presentation early and allow more questions, which worked out quite well with many interesting questions from the audience. At the end, Bret asked everyone for one piece of advice, and hopefully my suggestion to collaborate was well received, as so many people in the audience were looking to begin a project they could have completed several great things with just the talent already sitting in the room! This also allowed me to meet Derek Sotak and pick up a copy of his William Hope Hodgson-inspired Grey Seas are Dreaming of my Death RPG zines!
image from review video by Game On!
As expected, sales on Saturday had slowed, but upon returning from the panel, we saw we had missed the real excitement of the day! One of the numerous chandeliers hanging above everyone’s heads had snapped a strand of gems, leading to the strand to swing down and break off about halfway, which plummeted down between a set of tables. Luckily no one was hurt, and they moved the tables apart at the end of the day, so the hotel staff could raise a ladder and it was fixed by the next morning.
That evening Badger invited us out to Viva Mexico!, a nice cantina also just a few blocks away, where we ended up a few tables down from the Chaosium crew. We checked in with Matt about a game that evening, but he had been interested in the WaterFire festival happening at sunset. This happens once a month or so in Providence, but had not been the same weekend as NecronomiCon in 2022. So first we went up to the top 17th and 18th floors of the Graduate, which are connected by an internal open staircase, and are used for the gaming part of the con. A few game-focused vendors who could not get into the main vendor hall were also set up here. The hotel elevators stopped going UP to those floors at midnight, but games that ran late could still use the elevators to go DOWN from the top floors after that time.
The entryway to the gaming area had all the donations for the Extra Life charity event, with some truly amazing prizes to be won. Several games were in full swing, and there was a board listing open gaming spots for people just walking in, though most games were listed in advance through Tabletop Events.
Analyzing that site after the fact, here are the game seats and attendance for each type of game system for the 120 roleplaying games offered:
Open seats / Total seats / Game name
1/4 APOCTHULHU
0/6 Alien
1/5 Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine
0/6 Black Manse
4/6 BURN 2d6
18/195 Call of Cthulhu
1/6 Call of Cthulhu d20
5/6 Cohors Cthulhu
0/4 Cthulhu Dark
2/6 Cthulhu Dark Ages
0/12 Cthulhu Invictus (Roman Empire Call of Cthulhu)
1/35 Delta Green
0/5 Down Darker Trails (Wild West Call of Cthulhu)
2/6 Dungeons & Dragons
3/6 Eat the Reich
0/5 Edge of Reality
15/30 Eldritch Automata
64/80 Enclave
5/5 Fate of Cthulhu
1/12 The Laundry Files
0/6 Liminal Horror
0/6 Mork Borg
6/18 Mothership
22/56 Pirate Borg
6/6 Print Weaver
5/12 Punk Werewolves Fight Nazi Vampires
7/12 Road Trip
5/5 Root
0/5 RuneQuest
1/6 Strange Studies playtest RPG
0/4 Tales of the Harrowed Land
16/26 Tales of Two Moons
3/4 Tremulous
0/6 Trail of Cthulhu
1/4 Triangle Agency
5/12 Vast Grimm
14/24 unknown systems
The amount of variety was surprising, despite the obvious weird and Cthulhu trends. None of these numbers show how many people actually showed up to play, but are a good indication of prior interest. The gaming director Jesse was on station, and said, “I would love more guided play or just scheduled board games, card games and minis. Each year we end up getting more and more requests for Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green also. However, I’ll never limit anyone’s creativity and if someone wants to run a game (TTRPG, board, card, mini, LARP, Livestream) they are completely welcome to do so as long as the scenario they run has an element of horror to it.”
If you run 12 hours of games (i.e., three games of the standard four hour length), you will get a free badge to the convention! Unlike some cons with blocks of gaming all at the same time, games were staggered over the day, so usually 2-8 games would be starting each hour on the hour, making it easy to sign up for a game regardless of what the rest of your schedule looked like. Jesse also said they are looking for volunteer minions to help with gaming, especially in the later night shifts since those run longer than most other events at the con. If you help for 12 hours as a minion, you get a free badge, t-shirt, and you will be fed! You can contact for more info on running games or volunteering through their website or gaming@necronomicon-providence.com
There were certainly tables open when we stopped by, so lots of room to grow if the demand is there (and people step up to run games). Plus the tables had nice little sweets and candies on them for players, which was a nice touch after hours of talking and playing.
It would help to require a listing of each game’s rule system in the description (and in the title if it fits), otherwise you have to click on each one to see what they are about, and some seemed to suffer by opaque titles or descriptions.
After we had said hi to some people we knew (Jason was in one game, and we talked to Pirate Borg creator Luke Stratton who was speed-learning the brand-new Arkham Horror RPG to run 30 minutes later), we looked out the window over Providence, and could see the red flames of WaterFire coming from the river, as well as a mysterious blue glow.
We went downstairs and started wandering in that direction. Passing through a crowd heading the other way, we eventually we came to midway on a street where we waited until the traffic had passed to jaywalk across and found we were above the amphitheater around the circular basin on the Woonasquatucket River, one end of WaterFire. In the water of the basin were iron braziers rising on stands from the water itself. These had been filled with logs and set alight. Loud music played from speakers throughout the area as people stood on the railing and watched, or wandered along the river on the paths. In the center of the circle of lit braziers were a few floating ramps. We wondered if some spectacle would take place in the relatively small space between the burning braziers. A few people were boarding a boat that took them off down the river where more braziers led to the river’s mouth, while soon another boat pulled alongside the dock to take another load of passengers. Wandering down the riverbank, we found an information booth with a map. They explained we had missed the firelighting (at sunset) and by six minutes had just missed the thirty minutes of stunt wakeskating on the floating ramps!
Continuing along the river towards the sea, it eventually merged with the Moshassuck River to form the Providence. Multiple bridges crossed the rivers, and on the eastern side of the Providence in front of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the streets had been closed to traffic to set up food trucks and art installations. The best were “Starry, Starry Night” with blue stars hanging in the trees in a park, a large round stone that you could place glass beads on, and the Ten31 living statues in front of the World War I memorial pillar. Framed by spotlights, these moving statues of the Oracle and the Gargoyle would allow a picture with them and either give wisdom or a riddle. The worst was the passerby who exclaimed “Street magic!” at someone standing on a box, which led to a few minutes of watching an intense folding of a small object before remembering the map had listed an origami master! Alas, no street magic.
On the way back along the hundred bonfires, the question of the slowly dying fires was answered, as a boat of dark clothed figures pulled alongside each brazier and tossed more logs inside. But in the front of the boat was an eldritch horror! Pulling out a phone, I tried to snap a picture of this only to be told “Not enough phone storage. Free up some space and try again.” Strangely appropriate for trying to capture proof of the unnatural, and a good trick to pull on a clever investigator in the future! The blue glow also turned out to be blue lights from a tunnel off of the basin that led under the road we had dodged across, so there was a safe passage just a few feet later on. The tunnel itself had six maps showing the evolution of the river development of Providence over the centuries, great to see the historical changes, and unnerving to see how often the red star of “You Are Here” was floating over the much wider expanse of the old river that had been built over or filled in!
Sunday was both the final day of the con, and of the vendor hall, but we had discovered a problem the night before at dinner. We found three different times listed for the hours! It said 11-4 on the website and in the convention guide for the Emporium of Weird, but later in the convention guide the Sunday schedule said 11-5, and someone thought it might be 10-4 to match starting time on Friday and Saturday.
Sunday morning is another paid event, the Prayer Breakfast, which involves the Silver Key attendees donning their cultist robes and some sort of occult praying, but I have not yet made it into this event. Instead, I checked and found a sign on the vendor hall that said 11, so we didn’t have to rush into that. Instead, I got to catch another panel, “The Cowboy and the New Englander: The Correspondence of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft”, which took place in the same Capital Ballroom as our other panel. This was an interesting one with deeply researched presenters, and it was nice to be on the other side of the table in the audience.
Another benefit to the tribe assembling is that a lot of the creators of the books we were selling stopped by! Several of them signed their books too, so keep your eye out for signatures!
In 2022, Sunday sales had been about the same as Saturday, but this year it was a bit slower, which allowed me some time to look about the hall at the other vendors, as well as sneak out to Tori Tomo for a great ramen lunch. Dorsey who had helped with the Golden Goblin section in 2022 made an unexpected appearance with their excited family.
Finally, at 3:40 was the loud announcement that the vendor hall was closing at 4! This was greeted by happy cheering by the vendors, as the work part of the show was almost over! A final few purchases and we began to pack up. Unfortunately, with the uncertainty about the closing time, Oscar was in a panel until 5! Luckily this was about the time it took for everyone else to pack up, so the Golden Goblin books were collected just as everyone else was done. The final step is paying the sales tax to Rhode Island, which involved filling out a sales form dropped off by Anthony earlier, a quick check of total sales and a check written out for the taxes collected, and we were done!
We gathered for dinner, which was already picked as good old Murphy’s for some more Irish fare. Here we met Jason and Max again, and Tim McGonagle. Tim and Max were old friends who gave each other a lot of ribbing over dinner. (Tim, as a Providence native, also explained to us outlanders what the sacred stuffie offered on the menu was, and where the best ones in Providence were actually to be found, as although Murphy’s had good ones, they were inconsistent.) We were texting with Matt about the elusive game, but we were running out of time again, as the closing event was approaching, the showing of the terribly fun (but not terribly good) 1970 film The Dunwich Horror. Sadly, the amazing 1926 Columbus Theater closed this year, so the movie had to be moved outdoors. The movie is enjoyable, but at this point after so many viewings at the con, has become almost a Rocky Horror Picture Show/MST3K of audience participation, and even the appearance of some of the eldritch horrors from WaterFire in the audience! As one of the last “official” events of the weekend, it’s a great way to catch up with everyone in a situation where you can see people off and chat a bit, so this lured Matt away as he hadn’t seen it before.
Several others also planned to go to The Dunwich Horror Picture Show, so a four hour game would be too long, but luckily Tim (like all good gamers) had a game ready to go! He pulled out Cowboys with Big Hearts, a shorter story-telling game by Jason Morningstar. We walked back to the Omni Hotel, and although all the panel rooms had been locked up, there were several nice tables right next to the closed coffee shop on the second floor. Max headed to the movie, but we were joined by Chad Bouchard, so the four of us played a shorter game led by Tim. It’s a very interesting game, as the characters are Wild West tropes, but all on their last legs, going on a final ride to right a wrong, facing their likely deaths. The mechanics allowed three chances of overcoming difficulties that could backfire, one surefire solution, and one final success at the cost of your character’s death! A great time was had, although Tim did have to keep saying, “It’s already designed to be hard, you don’t have to keep adding extra complications to the story!”
After that, several went off to the movie, while the rest of us called it a night.
Monday was for the trip home, but first a stopover at the nearby Swan Point Cemetery, resting place of H.P. Lovecraft in his family plot. It’s over 3 miles from downtown as a walk, so a car is better, and his gravestone is located on most GPS systems, but also listed as spot 33 in the informative walking tour guide put out by the cemetery.
Lovecraft’s gravestone simply lists his birth and death dates, with the epitaph “I am Providence”. It is always interesting to see the momentos and tributes left, especially at this con (and this was on 19 August, one day before his birthday). It had rained during the night, which created a suitable staining on the stone, as some letters were darkened by moisture, while others blended into the rock. A NecronomiCon momento book leaned against it, while a badge had been wrapped around it to hold a rose in place. Numerous coins rested on top, while a few more personal bits had been left around it, including a writing pen stabbed into the earth.
Heading back into town I found Bagel Gourmet, a new place that was on the other side of the College Hill above the river. The directions back to the highway led up through the neighborhood, passing through several streets famed from Lovecraft’s stories or abodes, which can be explored with the highly recommended paid tours put on throughout the weekend by several Lovecraft fans and scholars.
With this final experience, it was the road for home and NecronomiCon was truly over.
While Bayt al Azif 5 came out last year, and thus was new to attendees at NecronomiCon, it was not new to anyone who followed such releases, so there was not a newer issue to present. Perhaps the tipping point has been reached, and there are just too many good books on our massive shared table! There were definitely moments where someone would see one publisher’s books and say, “Oh, I have all these”, despite 10 other publishers being right there. This year sales broke down as 40% Friday, 40% Saturday, 20% Sunday.
Bayt al Azif 5 sold exactly half of what Bayt al Azif 4 did in 2022. I’m not sure of the specifics for the other publishers at our table, let alone in the rest of the vendor hall, but it seemed slower at our table in general. One other publisher who was new this year said their sales were good, but they also did not have a point of comparison. Regardless, it was a down year, and that was disappointing.
Thanks as always to the NecronomiCon staff and all the volunteers for pulling together another great show. We didn’t hear the exact attendance compared to 2022, but it seemed busy from our vantage point, with several crowded moments in the vendor hall.
Ken Heard of NecronomiCon programming posted this: “If you did not attend the [NecronomiCon] wrap meeting, the main take-away is that we love holding this event, but are in need of volunteers to take some of the load off in order to continue. We are already planning 2026, and there is an enormous amount of work involved; far too much for the people doing it. This is extremely common in organizations run by volunteers. So, we plan to keep going, but will need reliable help to continue this for years to come.” So please reach out to the NecronomiCon crew and volunteer your time to help this amazing convention keep growing!
Thanks to Bret, Badger, and Jeff for helping with the table, and providing conversation and friendship!
Thanks to everyone who came by the table and picked up a book, or just said hi! It was great to talk to so many of you. We really appreciate all the compliments we got on previous issues. (Don’t forget to send in critiques and comments for our next letters page!) We’ll see you in 2026!
