by Else

Else taking a break while setting up the stand in Utrecht

Heroes Dutch Comic Con might be one of my favorite events to attend and organize with the American Book Center. This year, our long-term organizer Tiemen, decided to hand over the organization to a new generation: mostly to me for the event itself, handling the volunteers and the entire weekend. Which meant extra responsibilities for yours truly, and finally the upgrade to a hotel room next to the venue instead of having to travel to and from Utrecht every day!

Once again, we started our DCC journey way before the actual weekend, ordering books, trying to curate the perfect pop-up bookstore at the convention, contacting authors and their publicity teams to see if they were interested in attending the convention, and most of all, packing the books. We managed to pack over 4,000 books for this edition; the record of books packed in a day goes to Sywert for packing up over 1,200 books!

And then we get to unpack all of the books again on the Friday before the event. We met up at 9 AM at Utrecht Central Station to walk towards the Jaarbeurs, say hello to the organizers, scout our location in the hall, and plan out how we wanted to set up the stall. At about 10 AM the lorry with the pallets of books arrived for us to start unpacking the whole thing again. Of course, this weekend was the lead-in to a big heat wave, so it was nice and hot and we had to remind each other to stay hydrated and take enough rest so we didn’t overheat. The five fans we packed definitely helped with the heat and we managed to be done around half past 4. And of course we celebrated the setting up with our customary hamburgers in Utrecht city center.

Stand done, ready to receive our customers

Authors Sandra J. Paul and Johanna van Veen

The next day, Saturday, the fun actually began. This year we had four wonderful volunteers who helped us throughout the weekend. So on the Saturday it was just Sywert and me from the standard ABC crew, surrounded by four lovely, energetic volunteers who did most of the transactions, while Sywert and I answered the questions, hosted the guest authors (Sandra J. Paul and Johanna van Veen), and made sure everything ran smoothly behind the scenes. It was a nice and long day, which ended with us watching a bit of the Netherlands vs Sweden football game, which helped massively with scoring a place at the very good pizza place close to the hotel.

Sunday was already our last day, but we had more ABC staff to help man the stand aside from the volunteers, so Sywert and I actually also managed to walk around the convention (and spend too much money in the Dealer Hall and Artist Alley). I always love meeting the artists and dealers who sell their own art and wares at conventions like this; I get to socialize, buy bookish merch, and overall just be a general nerd. It is also always very nice to see artists and dealers come to our stand to browse some books before or after their busy shifts. I love having a chat with all the different vendors, talking about what kind of partnerships we could look into moving forward.

And after the last convention attendees have left, it is time for us to pack up all the books again. A convention like this really is just packing and unpacking books all the time…

After repacking all the leftover stock (significantly less than we unpacked on Friday), we got to go home and take a long, well-deserved sleep for a couple of days before going back to work. And now I’ve already started planning for the next edition in November of this year. Hopefully that one will be even more of a banger than the summer edition. I hope to see you there!