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

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.

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.