A wide horizontal charcoal sketch of tabletop gamers and costumed live-action role players gathered around a table, dramatic black and grey shading with a moody, energetic atmosphere

High Level Games Convention

LARP · RPG · Table-Top Gaming in Atlantic City

Running a small press RPG booth at HLGCon without losing your shirt

High Level Games Convention arrived at the Showboat Hotel in Atlantic City in 2018 with the energy small press publishers dream about. Tabletop RPG fans, LARP crews, designers and curious newcomers packed one crowded hall while the air smelled like fresh dice and espresso. That density of audience is the single biggest reason a tiny studio books a stand.

The economics of running a small press RPG booth at HLGCon are brutally honest, though. The convention delivered buyers but also demanded booth fees, freight, lodging, demo supplies and weeks of staff time. A publisher who treats the show like a holiday will come home with great memories and a credit card statement that hurts for months.

For an Australian small press, the maths looks strange long before you board a flight. The Australian dollar sits below parity against the US greenback, so a US$450 booth quietly turns into nearly A$700 once your bank converts. Add international freight, GST on re-imported stock and ten thousand miles of air travel, and the typical Australian indie is pricing against a backdrop few American exhibitors think about.

What follows is a working look at how the dollars actually move for a small press RPG booth at HLGCon, and how an Australian studio can judge whether the trip pays back. We cover booth costs, shipping, design, workshops, the sales spreadsheet and the return on investment that lands in the months after the show.

Booth registration and the real cost of showing up

HLGCon booth prices varied by placement, electrical hookup and corner access, with the cheapest small-press spots between US$400 and US$600 for the weekend. That fee usually covered a draped table and two exhibitor badges. Power, internet, lead retrieval and additional badges all stacked on top, so a publisher expecting a basic booth quickly discovered that basic meant bare concrete.

For a Sydney or Melbourne studio, that bare concrete price is only the first line on a longer invoice. Flights from Australia's east coast to Newark run A$1,400 to A$2,200 in economy, and four nights at the Showboat in peak August land around US$700 per person. Add Uber fares, meals and the coffee-for-the-team habit, and most small Australian presses budget around A$5,000 per staff member just to make the floor.

The smarter reference point before you commit is what shows closer to home deliver. CanCon in Canberra and PAX Australia at the Melbourne Convention Centre run comparable booth fees in Australian dollars with much smaller travel costs. A studio that cannot make local shows profitable is unlikely to find the Atlantic City floor kinder.

Shipping a small press inventory across the Pacific

Inventory is where economics turn unforgiving. A typical small press RPG booth moves 80 to 250 units over a weekend, and you want enough buffer to avoid running dry by Saturday afternoon, which usually means shipping 300 to 400 books plus demo sets and banners. Crated, the order weighs 60 to 120 kilograms, and freight that heavy across the Pacific runs US$700 to US$1,800 depending on carrier.

Air freight is fast but punishes your budget, and sea freight is kind to your wallet but adds three to five weeks of lead time. Either way, unsold stock returning home will need to clear Australian customs, and any item that arrived duty-free will attract GST on re-entry. That bit of paperwork alone has caught out more than one first-time overseas exhibitor from Brisbane.

The workaround used by experienced Australian presses is to print locally. Printers in Melbourne and Adelaide will not undercut Shenzhen or Salt Lake City runs on unit cost, but they save you a freight disaster every time and let you top up between shows with a 200-copy reprint.

Booth design and what actually pulls a crowd

Once the bills are paid, the next question is whether anyone walks up to your table. HLGCon draws a broad mix of dyed-in-the-wool tabletop enthusiasts and curious passersby drifting over from the LARP field or escape room next door. A booth that reads as a small slab of books on a table will get politely walked past.

Indie presses that earned strong floor returns in 2018 had three things in common: clear signage from ten metres, an open game space where two people could learn a system in under ten minutes, and a floor staffer who knew the catalog cold. Several studios ran a half-table demo of their flagship RPG on rotation, doubling as crowd bait and playtesting for later editions. The marathon GM interview shows how much sustained attention a single bold run pulls to one corner of the hall.

Budget A$300 to A$600 on a clean tablecloth, banner, demo dice and a pull-up poster. Cheap looking booths signal cheap looking products, and the indie market punishes that look harder than any other genre.

Workshops, demos and the slow drip of goodwill

Sales do not all happen at the till. A large share of HLGCon's most enthusiastic buyers introduced themselves during a workshop or scheduled demo rather than while browsing the exhibitor hall. Running an advertised session is also one of the few ways a small press can justify the staffing cost of a second person, who can hold the booth while the first runs the room.

The economics of a workshop are strange because ticket revenue rarely covers staff hours. What it covers handsomely is relationship. A workshop attendee who leaves with a character sheet and a designer who knows their name will subscribe to your newsletter, back your next Kickstarter and quietly recommend your next release to their home group in Perth for years. A workshop playbook for conventions walks through scheduling, signups and facilitation tricks that make a session feel generous rather than salesy.

For Australian presses in particular, the workshop slot doubles as a soft launch into a North American audience that does not normally see the books. Treated as a marketing line item rather than a revenue line item, the workshop often outperforms print ads and social promotion combined.

Money in, money out, and the spreadsheet nobody wants to do

The honest sheet for a single HLGCon weekend looks like this: US$550 booth and accessories, A$1,800 flights, A$1,600 lodging and per diem, A$1,200 one-way freight, A$400 marketing and demo supplies, plus A$1,800 in stock cost of goods at 200 units sold. Total outflow sits between A$7,000 and A$9,000 for a solo founder, and closer to A$14,000 for a two-person booth.

Con-side revenue depends on your catalog. A small press running a US$25 hardcover will gross US$5,000 on a strong weekend, US$3,500 on an average one. Card surcharges on overseas terminals chew 2.5 to 3.5 per cent, and splitting sales between credit, cash and bank transfers at the booth is rarely as clean as your accountant wants. Hold back 15 per cent of revenue for tax advisory if your American sales push you across the IRS threshold for a single trade show.

The key number to track is not weekend revenue but the post-con quarter. Wholesale enquiries from distributors, follow-up Kickstarter conversions and reorders from friendly retailers almost always deliver more than the floor itself. If that quarter looks thin, the booth was a loss. If it looks healthy, you have your answer for next year.

What good ROI looks like in the weeks after the show

The convention ends on Sunday afternoon and the real work starts Monday. The week after HLGCon is when you email every retailer who visited the booth, fulfil the wholesale orders you wrote up on paper and upload email addresses into the newsletter system that pays your wages.

For an Australian studio, the post-con window is also the right time to set up a US-based fulfilment arrangement through a partner warehouse. A rented PO box and a small stock buffer remove the international shipping barrier for North American customers, the single biggest reason an Australian RPG underperforms a domestic competitor after a con. Treat the con weekend as a customer acquisition cost, and the months that follow as where the actual margin lives.

Budgeting checks before you commit to a booth

Worth running through with your co-founder before you send the registration form across.

  • Build a fully loaded cost sheet including freight, lodging, GST adjustments and per diem, not just the headline booth fee.
  • Decide on a minimum bar for break-even, both for the weekend itself and for the post-con quarter, and write it down.
  • Price your catalog as if every sale goes through an overseas card reader, so you do not bank on cash.
  • Print or source as much material in Australia as possible to avoid freight and re-entry surprises.
  • Plan at least one advertised demo or workshop slot to justify a two-person booth and build a real mailing list.
  • Set up an American fulfilment partner before you fly, so leads turn into shipped books within a fortnight.

A few hours before the freight forwarder collects the leftover boxes, draft a one-page debrief covering cost per qualified lead, weekend gross, post-con quarter gross and the three best pieces of customer feedback. File it next to the registration confirmation for the next edition. That single page is what makes next year's booth a calculated decision rather than a hopeful punt.