Hi Judith. Roughly how many people attend an Eastercon, normally? And how many do you expect to attend Orbital 2008? I think queues aren't a big concern as long as you have a location where people can queue up that can flow logically to the place where someone is signing, where the temperature will be comfortable, and where they won't disrupt the other traffic of the convention, and you limit the queue so that people won't stand there for hours and then find out that the author has run out of time to sign.
generally I would say that even a popular author like Neil doesn't bring in as many extra people as you might expect. You might check with the conchairs of other conventions to see if they've done a comparison on their numbers from before and after he's been there, but you're not going to be overwhelmed.
Also, Neil's fans in particular are very nice and understanding, so that are unlikley to be demanding about things like autograph sessions.
Neil does get asked to give autographs informally, and that's fine except when he ought to be going someplace else, especially if he needs to go eat or something. He is very nice and he does tend to sign anything that's put in front of him, so you do need to have someone with him who can r\e\s\c\u\e\ extract him from such a situation.
If you have not already read my notes on Neil-handling (http://www.netmouse.com/neil/neil_handling.html), I will modestly recommend it, and I would also point out that there was recently a substantial discussion thread on autographing sessions (and Neil in particular) on the SMOFs discussion list.
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generally I would say that even a popular author like Neil doesn't bring in as many extra people as you might expect. You might check with the conchairs of other conventions to see if they've done a comparison on their numbers from before and after he's been there, but you're not going to be overwhelmed.
Also, Neil's fans in particular are very nice and understanding, so that are unlikley to be demanding about things like autograph sessions.
Neil does get asked to give autographs informally, and that's fine except when he ought to be going someplace else, especially if he needs to go eat or something. He is very nice and he does tend to sign anything that's put in front of him, so you do need to have someone with him who can r\e\s\c\u\e\ extract him from such a situation.
If you have not already read my notes on Neil-handling (http://www.netmouse.com/neil/neil_handling.html), I will modestly recommend it, and I would also point out that there was recently a substantial discussion thread on autographing sessions (and Neil in particular) on the SMOFs discussion list.