Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Last weekend, I attended the LA Times Festival of Books on the UCLA campus.  From their FAQ:

What is the festival of Books?
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

I’d never been, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and what I found was exciting!  To begin with, the day I was there, the weather was beautiful!  65 degrees and sunny;  perfect for an outdoor festival.  The main body of the festival took place on the main campus of UCLA with tents and vans set up in the common areas and green spaces which cover a good chunk of the campus.  I got there right as it started, and even at that “early” hour, the place was packed with book lovers enjoying the day.

The festival was broken up into a several loose areas:  food courts, a children’s area, traditional publishers and bookstores, independent publishers and authors, event stages and local bookstores and shops sprinkled throughout.   Everywhere I wandered, people were packing the tents, checking out books on a huge range of subjects or chatting with members of literacy organizations, professional trade associations, non-profit groups, or just waiting in line for a chance to get their book signed by their favorite author.  Book mascots wandered the fields posing for pictures with children and the young at the heart and everywhere you went, the smell of kettle corn and roasting meat from the food vendors tempted people over to their kitchens.

This isn’t a show we normally attend for business.  In fact, I think this was our first year with someone there, but from everyone I talked to in the publishing industry, I’d heard it was a pretty big deal with lots of potential opportunities.  While I did find this to be the case, the atmosphere was so chaotic with people wandering everywhere and so much selling going on, that having a deep conversation with a publisher or vendor was kinda tough.  Despite this, I met some cool people and laid the groundwork for future relations, and I think with some refinements to my itinerary, this could be a regular stop on the annual show circuit.

All in all, I had a great time, met some some cool people and I now know more about the nuts and bolts of the show so that next year I can arrange things differently so that we can get even more out of it, specifically, book buying.  While this trip will inevitably lead to some good deals in the upcoming months, I have other ideas about how our business might benefit now that I’ve been there and seen how the show dynamics play out.  As with most things, its all about timing and my timing on this trip was less than ideal.  For what I do, visiting the show during times when there isn’t as much chaos would definitely be more productive.  While I enjoy the hustle and bustle of a busy show on a personal level, its hard to sit and have an in-depth talk with a vendor about stuff when they have 50 customers trying to buy books from them.

From the shopping to the dining to the musical acts or just lying on the grass taking in the sun or playing frisbee, the show was without a doubt a big hit.  I’m often pretty bummed about how little our society seems to value reading or literature, but events like this make me hopeful.  Seeing the young and old get enthusiastic about books and reading is a big morale boost to someone in my profession.  Without that enthusiasm in people, I and everyone else that works in the book trade, from authors to publishers to vendors would be out of a job, and for many of us, we’d lose a passion.  Its hard to explain the impact of a meaningful book on a person and what that in turn does to those around us.  It makes us more thoughtful, empathetic and civilized, I think, and that was evident from the peaceful happy crowd at the festival.

If you’re interested, I have a few more pics of the show up on my Flickr page.