Help Jake go to APE

Hi! My name is Jake Richmond. I make a webcomic called Modest Medusa . I'd like to travel to San Jose this October for the Alternative Press Expo  so I can sell and promote my comic, but I need help paying for the booth (which costs about $300, plus some odds and ends fees).  I wasn't even considering going to this show, but a generous family member offered to cover the plane tickets.

That's the short version of why I want to go. Here's the longer and more complicated one.
I make my living with my webcomic. A lot of my income comes from my generous fans through Patreon, but a big part of it also comes from selling my Modest Medusa books at conventions. My books are really nice (or at least I think so) full color hardcovers, about 125 to 200 pages long. I've done three so far. Producing books is expensive, and to finance production I turned to Kickstarter. My friends, fans and readers have been very generous, and over the last 4 years I've had 3 very successful Kickstarters. However, I messed up pretty bad with the last Kickstarter. My 3rd book ended up being much more expensive than I anticipated, and when it finally came time to pay the printing bill I discovered that I barely had any money left over to ship the books to my generous backers. Worse, shipping costs had gone up pretty dramatically in the two years since my previous Kickstarter and the little bit of money I did have wasn't going to cover the expense. In short, I messed up bad and didn't have enough money to send my backers their books.

At the time I didn't think this would be a huge problem. As I said, I make my money by selling my books at conventions, and I was planning to attend plenty of conventions over the next several months. I figured that I could send out the books to my backers a few at a time, and use the money earned at shows like Emerald City and Sakuracon to pay to ship the rest. Unfortunately, this year  I didn't manage to get accepted to any of the conventions I usually attend, and the few shows I was able to attend were mostly a bust. This hurt my income this year pretty badly and my (admittedly not so great) plan to finance my shipping went up in a puff of smoke.

I've still managed to ship out more than half the books from my last Kickstarter, partially thanks to some incredibly generous donations from friends and fans. And I'm continuing to ship out more books as I can afford to. But shipping out a few books here and there as I can afford the postage just isn't working. My backers have waited long enough.

So... why do I want to go to the Alternative Press Expo? 
Well, beyond just wanting to go and check out the show, I think APE (that's what they call it) is my best chance before the end of the year to sell a bunch of books. I'm not sure if I can sell enough books at APE to completely cover the rest of my shipping expenses, but I think I can put a big dent in them! That's my hope anyway. 

Also, I've been offered free plane tickets if I want to attend the show, and that makes  the whole trip very affordable. If I don't have to pay for tickets and I can have the table cost covered by this GoFundMe campaign then the show becomes very affordable. My hope is to go to the show, make a solid amount of cash and come home to ship a bunch of books! Also, having a good time and meeting some Modest Medusa readers is a very likely side effect!

What if this campaign raises more than $350?

Any extra money this campaign generates will go directly to paying Kickstarter expenses. That's mostly shipping and buying shipping supplies. Extra donations are certainly appreciated!