Comments on: Seattle Bookfest

By: Clark Humphrey on Seattle Book Fest - Reading Local Seattle

Clark Humphrey on Seattle Book Fest - Reading Local Seattle — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:22:49 +0000

[...] Rat has a list of things that need to improved, based on his circuit of the vendors and leaving. Like many people King Rat focused on the lack of signage and the attempt to fix this problem with [...]

By: Tracy in W. Seattle

Tracy in W. Seattle — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:43:21 +0000

We are the most-read news source in West Seattle, not that far away, and barely heard a peep about it in advance. If anyone sent out news releases, we didn’t get one. And it would be easy enough to spotlight neighborhood residents who are reading, exhibiting, whatever – we have some great authors over here – were any of them involved? (Terry Brooks among others) Also, we have a fab indie book store, Square 1 Books – which advertises with us – if they had been involved, I expect we would have heard about it, and in turn had something in our calendar “WSB sponsor Square 1 Books is among those who are …” etc.

I do give them big props for trying. Putting on an event is tough in the best of circumstances.

By: King Rat

King Rat — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:43:09 +0000

The rumors are that someone else will be starting another book festival next year, and that there is some publishing backing behind it. This one was essentially put on by the neighborhood chamber of commerce type folks. They didn’t do a bad job for having very little experience and only a few months to put it together. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It was there.

Promotion wise, I knew more about the Boston Bookfest, Internet Librarian, and the Austin Teen Book Festival than about Seattle Bookfest. I don’t know how well those were promoted locally, but they had a much bigger footprint online than Seattle’s small event.

By: Marie

Marie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:30:17 +0000

I’m sorry it was disappointing. Hopefully they’ll do better next year. The Boston Book Fest was nice but it had its drawbacks too, especially if you were a volunteer. :-) I think I would have found it overwhelming had I been able to participate as a regular attendee.