Dealer's Room
| Synonyms: | Huckster Room, Vendor's Room |
| See also: | Artist's Alley, Fanart, Art Show
 Karen Eaton's dealer's room sign. One of the characters from the show (The Professionals) is holding a bundle of zines, including circuit stories, Harlequin Airs, and Unprofessional Conduct |
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The Dealer's Room is the area of a convention where dealers set up tables or booths to sell things.
Various Fannish Swag
See Ancillary Merchandising: The Selling of Other Products to Defray Costs (1986)
Fan Art
While fan art may have been shown in the dealer's room (often in connection with an upcoming art auction), most fan art sold in the dealer's room came in the form of prints, not originals. At some events, the dealers room hosted a print shop where artists could sell art prints through the convention minus a small commission. At other conventions, art prints had to be sold by the artist directly or through the help of a friendly fanzine dealer.
Zines
When zines were more common, slash zines were sold literally 'under the table' at some cons. Slash fans would wander around the dealer's room looking for zine sellers, and then ask them quietly if they had slash zines as well, or they would gently pull aside the convention-hotel supplied long tablecloths of dealer's tables to see if there were boxes of slash zines hidden beneath.
Being required by concoms to keep slash under the table was aggravating, because het zines with relatively explicit covers were generally not hidden, even at all-age cons and actor cons. (There is a famous story of Mark Lenard, the actor who played Spock's father, wandering the Dealer's room with some handlers at a con. He came across a copy of the gen zine Spock Enslaved!, with its cover of a nearly naked Spock in chains, and stopped and stared long enough to worry his handlers, before sighing dramatically and mock whispering, "Oh my son, my son".) Note: This may be a retelling of something that happened at IsisCon.
However, at fan-run cons current and past, without celebrity guests (such as MediaWest*Con, ZebraCon, IDICon, etc.), slash zines and slash art could and can be sold openly, in the Dealers Rooms and by "room dealers" or "hall dealers" (fans who sell their wares out of their hotel rooms instead of in the Dealers Room).
Gallery
fanzine dealer's table selling new fanzines, Agent With Style (2010)
fanzine dealer's table selling used fanzines, Jim Rondeau (2010)
other types of items sold in dealer's rooms (2010)
the dealers' room at Space-Con #2 in 1976
a somewhat blurry photo of a 'room dealer' taken at MediaWest 2006. The door has been decorated as part of the MediaWest Door Decoration contest
