Cosplay in America

I am currently working on a book to pay tribute to Kevin Lillard, a cosplay photographer who documented the early anime convention scene from 1997 to 2008 with his Fan's View website and while he retired his website in 2009, he still attended and photographed cosplayers until his passing in 2022.

My goal is to attempt to preserve his legacy through his images and words. Currently, I am slowly going through every convention report on his website via Wayback Machine. The plan is to have a rough draft to show Kevin's family by the end of the year / early next year.

Once the family approves, I'll launch a Kickstarter to raised funds for printing the book. Kickstarter backers get the first dibs on the book and the rest of the books will be donated to any libraries, archives or memory institutions that request a copy. That's right, I'm basically giving the book at no cost to libraries.

Reason is simple : I have independently released two books in the past and it is extremely time consuming and expensive to market and sell a book. I really don't have the stamina to do tables at cons and my currently health condition probably doesn't help either.

As always thank y'all for your support over the years.

ejen

Questions : [email protected]

Kevin Lillard book update : so Kevin had been photographing for at least 24 years and he shot everything from cons to car shows to sports events to parades, the man has done it all! SInce the book would be focus on his cosplay photography it will narrow the focus a bit and since most remember him for A Fan's View we can narrow it down to 1998-ish to 2009 but from what I can tell, he visited some 51 cons in that decade. Still I have to figure how to organized it. Thinking 512 pages book, maybe hardcover, maybe softcover. I'll talk about that process later.

Besides photos, I been scouring his old website. He has often a written a few paragraphs about his experience at a con, he has also wrote about equipment he uses and his thoughts about cosplay and anime cons. I still have to approach the family to see if they are up for interview and I love to get some of y'alls stories about your memories of Kevin. If you like to contribute anything let me know, a poem, a story, essay, drawings, anything that can be put into a book. I can be reached at [email protected].