I'm not sure how other small-time authors feel about book festivals but I don't like 'em. I'm sure the bigger ones have better traffic but since I haven't been to those, I don't know for sure. The book festival that I went to recently (look, there I am) had MAYBE 20 people walk through the doors as paying customers ALL DAY.
From what I understand, the registration fee pays for some of the general expenses. In my humble opinion, a large part of the fee should go to advertising. Now, they have a website so I know there was some advertisement. Or maybe they made just enough to pay for the space but then why would you go through all that trouble of organizing and planning for what amounted to 20 people? I don't know. I had a similar experience with a book fair in Georgetown last year. Very little traffic. I appreciate the goal of a book festival/fair but if you truly want your message to get out there (and presumably that is that books = good and these authors = good), you need to advertise in the right places (schools? book stores? a visible sign on the building?).
The bottom line: please don't have a book festival/fair just to say you are having one. I think potentially you could be burning bridges with authors and they may start telling their author friends and publishers and then no one will participate in your festival or fair in the future. Quality over quantity. That's my opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment