Author’s Life, Making a Book Festival

The Sacramento Book Festival happened this last Saturday in May. Happened is one of those weak verbs writers are meant to avoid. And, in this case, what I really mean is I poured in hours of time and effort (physical, mental, and emotional) with a small crew of fellow writers under the aegis of the California Writers Club–Sacramento Branch (and on the day-of with a large crew of volunteers), and we pulled off a book festival that was far more successful than we’d dared hope.

I’m still exhausted. I’ve spent a lot of this week peacefully gardening. No active brain or interacting with people required. I keep swearing I’ll get back to my very-early-stage current writing project, but other than research reading, I didn’t succeed this week.

Great Community Response for the Sacramento Book Festival

So why did I take an active role in designing and putting on a book festival for the Sacramento area? For starters, I love book festivals, they provide a great boost for authors, and there’s the satisfaction of helping create a new one. That it turned out so successfully came as a wonderful, surprising gift. My fellow festival committee members are estimating the attendance at 5,000 people. When we started planning, several hundred attendees would have felt like success.

Publicity Success

What made for that success? I will say, against all our expectations and despite our lack of expertise with this aspect, we pulled off amazing publicity. It definitely helped to have some well known authors who gave their time and name recognition to the project. My fellow committee members who handled the various sides of publicity, Tim, Scott and Bel, got the word out on pretty much every media and grass roots channel that one can in the greater Sac area. That is hard work. As their efforts produced more and more opportunities, they roped me in. I’d never been on live TV before, but now I have.

Meeting a Resounding Need for a Book Festival

But underlying all our efforts, there was a big, organic reason for the success. As we discovered from contacting authors, readers, the local media, etc., the success came about largely because the Sacramento community so deeply wanted a book festival, and had been wanting one for a long time. There was a need. All we had to do was meet it.

Well, meeting that need was harder than I’m making it sound. First, we had to create a festival that matched the community’s collective vision, which, of course, is made up of a lot of seemingly different visions that need to be graciously incorporated. That took making a festival that lots of people–both readers and the participating authors–saw as “theirs,” where their kind of book or people or organization or publishing method or otherwise was included.

We had to grow our understanding of the book festival from the original vision to what the festival became. It meant remaining open to the exciting possibilities that the extended community shared with us. Mind you, we had to fit that in one small building and its (unfortunately, day-of hot) outdoor spaces! But the large number of attendees shows our genuine if sometimes work-in-progress efforts paid off to build a broadly appealing festival. We made a festival that the community, lots of it, will show up for with enthusiasm. I am proud of that, although most of the credit rests on the shoulders of the other committee members.

Inclusion and Collaboration at the Sacramento Book Festival

By the time I joined the committee, the festival had booked the Shepard Center and made tables available for a fee (which funded the center, etc.) so authors, especially California Writers Club members, could sell their books and reach new readers. The tables quickly sold out. The enthusiasm of this response showed how much authors wanted a festival, and the plan was off to a good start.

At that point, my critique partner, Tim Schooley, persuaded me to become an active member of the festival committee. I’d been watching and resisting jumping in because I didn’t want to give up the hours that I knew it would take. My past festival experience involved arranging authors to do signings and moderating panels at the Tucson Book Festival, a huge, multi-day event. I was willing to apply those skills to this nascent festival.

The pool of self-published authors who’d leapt at the opportunity to book tables was a strong base to build on, but we had to strategize to include other portions of the Sacramento author world and meet the expectations and hopes of the reading community–our customers! Many hours of responding to suggestions with author invites, reaching out to some well-known writers, including traditionally published ones, and adding reader-oriented panels brought us to a full-scale festival.

Getting It All Done Took All of Us

The follow-up time of organizing and communicating with all those many sides of the festival we had created nearly finished off the five committee members, but it was worth our time. We heard, over and over that day, that we’d done an excellent job with communication and set up. Thank goodness. Juggling this much was beyond any of our individual experience, and general satisfaction was no sure thing. The day was a scorcher, but people were understanding of that out-of-our-control element. The discomfort of our crowded rooms and terraces was such a good problem that I can’t complain, and going forward, these are aspects that can be addressed.

Author Life Balance

For me as an author, it was worth it. I loved watching a vibrant reader community show up, interact with and buy from 150 or so authors of every genre, background, method of publishing, set of beliefs, etc. The author panels were packed with eager audiences all day. There were many more outstanding authors than spots on panels. We would have loved to have the space for more panels or workshops, but the popularity of the panels was reassuring. We’d designed them well.

On a personal level, was it a good idea to devote so much time to making this festival happen? That’s a lot of word count that didn’t hit the page. In exchange, I built many connections with writers around Sacramento and the Bay Area. Four years ago, I moved to Northern California. I left behind an Arizona-based network of colleagues. Now I feel far more settled-in to this writer community with a place I made. By collaborating and reaching out, I did something helpful for a lot of authors.

Hopefully, I and the other members of our committee are able to pull off a similar success next year and in the process bring on board more contributors who know how to make an inclusive festival. I won’t fib. I’ll be happy to hand off duties to others who share the vision of collaboration and inclusion–and bring lots of good ideas that I would never think of.