Entrepreneurial Cosplay: Creating Identity, Building Identity, Brand and Business Acumen

by Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols (Editor), Amy C. Lewis (Editor), Dave Tomczyk (Editor)

Overview

Entrepreneurial Cosplay takes a comprehensive and insightful look at the business of cosplay, exploring the ways that artists and fans engage in entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial practices to gain personal and professional success.

Centered around the concept of entrepreneurship and the newly emerging concept of intrapreneurship – using entrepreneurial principles to enhance or further an existing concept, organization or product – the book showcases the ways in which cosplayers create new ideas, new ways of working and new ways of doing things, exploiting their knowledge to create new opportunities. By analyzing the numerous motivations driving cosplay behavior (self-expression, external recognition and financial gain), this volume provides a unique view of current cosplay practice and its relationship to economic activity.

Offering important insight into this emerging area, this book will be of interest to scholars seeking to learn how entrepreneurial and economic models may be used to understand the emerging field of cosplay studies, as well as students and scholars working in the fields of Entrepreneurship, Business, Fan Studies, Visual Art Studies and Gender Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032217581
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/01/2023
Series:	Routledge Studies in Media and Cultural Industries
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols is a professor of Spanish and gender studies at Drury University. Her research covers international beauty work, cosplay and popular culture. She is a long-time cosplayer and blogs at www.cosplaymom.com.

Amy C. Lewis is a professor of management and associate dean of business at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Her research interests involve social identity, motivated cognition and stigma. She also enjoys cosplaying, primarily focusing on the Star Trek fandom.

Dave Tomcyzk is an associate professor of entrepreneurship and game design at Quinnipiac University. His research covers unusual businesses, creativity and how to teach entrepreneurship. His first board game, Catharsis, was published by his company Cyber Wizard Games in 2022.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols, Dave Tomczyk and Amy C. Lewis

Part 1: Ideas, Innovation, and Failure

Chapter 1- Entrepreneurial Cosplay: Success Maximization, Business Ownership, and the Entrepreneurial Mentality

Dave Tomczyk

Chapter 2- Third Party Content Creators in eSport

Christopher McCutcheon, Michael Hitchens, Mitchell McEwan

Chapter 3- Entrepreneurial Cosplay: Women and Crossplay in Mexico

Mitzi Ariana Pérez Trejo

Part 2: Intrapraneurship

Chapter 4- Reign in Your Baloney Pony: Managing Sexual Taboo for Success

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols

Chapter 5- Nerds and Copyright

Matthew Mangum

Chapter 6- Threat of Familiar Faces: Cosplay Outside of Conventions

Luxx Mishou

Chapter 7- Violence against Women in The Witcher and Game of Thrones

Madison Sears & Mary Ingram-Waters

Chapter 8- Cosplay through a Lens of Family Business

D'Lisa N. McKee

Part 3: (Self)-Branding

Chapter 9- Marketing, Personal Branding, and Positioning: Cosplay: Personal Branding … on Steroids!

Ruby Daniels

Chapter 10- Child Cosplayers: Embodying Potentialities

Sara Austin

Chapter 11- Heroic Returns on Investment: Economic Considerations of Cosplay in the United States

Erin Kenny

Chapter 12-Managing Cosplay Identities: For love or money?

Amy C. Lewis