Building communities with smaller book festivals
Cleveland, Barcelona, and beyond
I’m pleased to share another great post by my colleague of Vesto PR.—DK
With fewer publicity opportunities available—the depletion of book review outlets, interview opportunities, and the like—publishers have looked for new ways to promote authors and their new books. While the emphasis of any marketing effort for a book launch has generally been the “earned media” that publicity represents, this has been changing over my twenty years in the business, as publishers have learned that soliciting traditional outlets for coverage can only be part of the strategy for the important task of finding readers.
One interesting solution that has emerged in recent years is book festivals sponsored by publishers and non-profits. While book festivals aren’t new, an increasing number are more focused: geared to a specific audience or readership to whom the featured books and authors might appeal, rather than the general, big-tent gatherings on the coasts and in large cities. These major festivals (such as Brooklyn, Miami, LA Times, and Literary Arts in Portland, among others) are a very important part of the publishing ecosystem, but their priority tends to be inviting authors who can fill big rooms, which can leave the independent and university presses on the sidelines.
By taking matters into their own hands, the organizers of the smaller book festivals offer great value, both for their authors and attendees, and they are a natural extension of publishing work: publishers inherently catalyze communities, so finding an opportunity to bring together their authors and editors makes a great deal of sense. Additional resources, both financial and labor, are required to pull these off, but there are groups looking to collaborate on these endeavors.
An example of such an event running this week is Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Festival (trailer embedded above). In a social media post, Rescue Press editor and Cleveland State University professor Caryl Pagel called the festival “the greatest week in Cleveland,” and the festival bills itself as one of the country’s only free writing conferences. This year has brought together an impressive roster of writers and editors who live and work in the city (such as poets Philip Metres and Zach Savich), as well as several authors who have been invited to the city for events this weekend, including Maris Kreizman on how to be a good literary citizen, and a panel with Madeline McDonnell and Aidan Ryan on how research can inspire creative work. In total there are 45 events over 7 days—including many virtual offerings—with panels and programming across genres, fun social events, and a book room. There will be a live recording of Hilary Plum and Zach Peckham’s Index for Continuance podcast as well, featuring Eric Obenauf from Two Dollar Radio.
Another example—closer to home for me in Barcelona—is the read Barcelona conference, which will host its inaugural meeting from September 17–19. Verso Books, the influential left-wing publisher, has been closely involved in organizing this gathering of politically progressive publishers, and several of their authors will come to Barcelona for presentations and panel discussions, including climate activist Andres Malm and the Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko. I spoke with Verso editor Sebastian Budgen about this conference several months ago and he told me that along with the free programming on offer, read Barcelona is also meant to be an alternative to book fairs such as Frankfurt and London. By bringing together editors from 200+ publishers and magazines for a few days in Barcelona, the organizers hope translation and rights deals can still be made by hosting the gathering at lower cost and a much smaller scale. (Frankfurt, by contrast, attracts over 100,000 publishing professionals each year.) In Barcelona, there is generous public funding available for organizing this type of event; Literary Cleveland is sponsored by a mix of public and private sources.
I know a few more conferences and gatherings like this, such as BOMB Magazine’s Small Press Flea, Haymarket’s Socialism conference, and also the Literal PRO festival in Barcelona—are there others? Please share them in the comments.