Zero sales, Hundreds of smiles
Who says that's bad business?

Last weekend I packed up a selection of my original cartoons and headed to First Street Makers Market in Manchester. The forecast promised sunshine, my card reader was fully charged, and optimism was travelling with me. As every independent artist knows, you leave home believing today might just be the day.

It wasn't.

By the end of the market I had sold precisely zero cartoons. 

Not one.

From a business point of view, it wasn't exactly a blockbuster. From a human point of view, however, it was one of the most rewarding days.

Throughout the day, people kept stopping at my stall. Students stood reading every cartoon. Young families gathered around together, taking turns to point out their favourites. Children laughed first, followed by their parents. Complete strangers called their friends over with the words every cartoonist loves to hear: "You've got to come and read these!" One visitor smiled and said, "These have made my day."

My card reader, meanwhile, remained impressively unemployed.

Standing all day behind a market stall is an interesting experience. After several hours, your legs begin negotiating with your brain about whose idea this was in the first place. Somewhere around mid-afternoon I realised my biggest financial contribution to the market was buying food simply to relieve the boredom between conversations. I probably spent more than I earned, which, admittedly, wasn't difficult.

It did make me think about the curious economics of cartooning. Painters often sell beauty. Sculptors sell craftsmanship. Photographers sell a moment frozen in time.

Cartoonists sell... laughter.

The problem is that laughter is wonderfully free. The moment someone smiles, the cartoon has already fulfilled its purpose. The customer has received the emotional reward before reaching for their wallet. They walk away lighter than when they arrived, carrying nothing except a better mood. Perhaps that's why cartoons can be surprisingly difficult to sell.

As one friend joked afterwards, "Maybe you should charge people before they laugh." It's not a bad business model.

If my cartoons encouraged hundreds of people to pause, smile and forget their worries for a few moments, then they were already doing exactly what I created them to do. Humour doesn't always have to hang on someone's wall to have value. Sometimes it simply needs to appear at exactly the right moment. There's enough seriousness in the world already. We are surrounded by headlines that make us anxious, screens that demand our attention and endless reasons to frown.

Perhaps we cartoonists quietly perform one of society's smallest public services. We remind people that it's still perfectly acceptable to laugh. Would I have preferred a few sales? Of course. Artists, sadly, cannot pay their stall hire in compliments.

But I went home with something that isn't listed on any sales report. Hundreds of smiles. And for one sunny Saturday in Manchester, that felt like a pretty good return on investment.