Leave it to the rookies to
shake things up. Ann Binkley and Edward Nawotka
were hardly new to the book biz — Binkley most recently
PR director at Borders, and Nawotka an editor at PW
— but they were admittedly novices at organizing book
festivals. So, they thought, why don’t we ask the pros?
At the recent BEA, the two (she now runs New
York is Book Country and he is program director
for the Texas Book Festival) hosted a “Best Practices”
roundtable for book festival organizers. Expecting about
a dozen attendees, they were shocked to find a packed
room of about 80 — including representatives from Little
Rock, Ark., Honolulu, and Jamaica. A sort of literary
glasnost was born, and they are already in discussions
with BEA to expand it next year. Ironically, as book
festivals proliferate, stats suggest Americans read
less and less.
The concerns voiced at that
meeting ranged from questions about how the smaller,
non-profit festivals could draw popular, nationally
recognized authors (Nawotka says one answer is to try
to coordinate with authors that are already on tour
in the region), to how to attract wider audiences (have
panels that link books with other pop culture interests
such as film and fashion) to very basic how-tos. With
some exceptions like the LA Times’ Festival of Books,
most of the festivals are nonprofit, and so don’t have
large budgets to pay the authors. So, “publishers have
to be willing to supply authors,” Nawotka says, adding
that it’s to their benefit as well. “We do sell a lot
of books. Some authors sell 400 to 500 books per event.”
It’s also important for festival organizers to “satisfy
local interests and needs, as well as expose them to
nationally known authors. You have to bring [the latter]
in because it’s something that’s otherwise not available”
for readers who don’t live in major metropolitan centers.
No matter how important a book
festival is to its community, none is immune to budgetary
restrictions. Around the same time the community of
Ann Arbor, Michigan, was celebrating its first Ann
Arbor Book Festival this April, the board of directors
for the 10-year-old Northwest Bookfest was deciding
it couldn’t afford to operate in the red any longer,
and called 2003 its last. There’s certainly a lot of
change in the air, and for every Northwest story, there’s
another, more heartening tale. In recent years, we’ve
seen the advent of DC’s annual National Book Festival,
Laura Bush’s baby which will celebrate its fourth year
in October. We’ve also heard success stories like the
burgeoning Key West Literary Seminar, which will
hold its 23rd annual event next January. Unlike most
other festivals, this one requires attendees to pay
per event; but despite this, it draws a large attendance
and big-named authors, and is sold out a year in advance.
Next year’s theme is “Literature of Humor,” and guest
writers include Billy Collins and Calvin Trillin.
In holding the roundtable at BEA, Binkley and Nawotka
wanted to hear some of these success stories.
When he started what is now
known as the Miami Book Fair International back in 1984,
ABA President Mitchell Kaplan looked to New York
is Book Country (NYIBC) as a model. Now, in a flattering
act of mimicry, Binkley studied Miami to reinvent the
New York festival, which had outgrown its street fair
roots. Referring to the expansion of this year’s NYIBC,
which will be Oct. 2-3 (the same weekend as the annual
celebrity-laden New Yorker Festival), Binkley says,
“It’s not a street fair anymore; it’s a literary festival.
When it started, this book festival was wonderful. It
really hasn’t grown.” The “totally different festival”
will include over 150 authors and take place in Washington
Square Park and on the adjacent New York University
campus, including readings and panels in university
lecture halls. “True book lovers want to meet the authors,
and this will be the first time they can do that here,”
Binkley said. For the first time there will be a Graphic
Novels Pavilion, and a large Children’s Pavilion will
include the Target-sponsored reading stage with high-profile
authors like Jamie Lee Curtis and Lemony Snicket.
The publishers and merchandise booths, which used to
line Fifth Avenue, will now be in the park, and just
on Saturday.
Sufficiently pleased to hear
NYIBC looked to his festival for inspiration, Kaplan
offered, “In some ways, it’s harder for a festival to
distinguish itself in a place like New York. But, I
do think they’ll do it.” NYIBC has more competition,
with the New Yorker Festival, not to mention year-round
readings and literary events at the city’s myriad bookstores,
universities and cultural institutions.
Kaplan thinks budgetary problems
top most festivals’ list of woes — no matter how big
or established. If he had one word of advice for new
or struggling festivals, it would be to partner with
one or more organizations, such as the Miami festival’s
relationship with Miami-Dade Community College.
“Those fairs that try to do it alone are having more
difficulty,” he said. The college was one of his festival’s
founding organizations and has continued to not only
financially support it, but houses it and promotes it.
“The college has shouldered most of the funding burden
that we’ve had. We’ve lost some state funding over the
years, and we’re looking to ease some of the burden
placed on the college,” Kaplan explained. Plus, the
college community is a natural starting point for a
reading audience, though Kaplan is proud of the fact
that people come from all over the state. Calling it
a “beautiful, seamless, public-private affair,” he attributes
the Miami festival’s popularity to the diversity of
its programming. “We cast a very wide net. We try to
have the fair reflect the diversity of the community.
We have author programs in Spanish, and writers from
the Caribbean and Latin America come. We also have exhibitors
from those areas.”
As Nawotka takes the Texas Book
Festival into its 9th year, he is trying to balance
an obvious literary agenda with satisfying a variety
of audiences — a model that has proved popular in Miami,
LA and New York. Hence, this year’s planned Tolkien
panel will cater to the “big, geeky computer games population,”
and the Western wear panel (incorporating Gibbs Smith
books on designer Nudie and the history of the western
shirt) will draw the stereotypical Texans, and a couple
of panel discussions at a local movie theater will highlight
Austin’s budding film industry and bring in filmmakers
Peter Bogdanovich and Ken Burns. As for
the events that used to cost upwards of $100 to attend,
such as the “Bon Appetit, Y’All” panel and dinner, the
festival has lowered the cost and is having it in a
larger venue.
