Bigger Book Bashes
Decatur Metro | June 24, 2009 | 9:38 amA little Decatur Book Festival Trivia for you this morning.
If you’re like me and love the Decatur Book Festival, but aren’t necessarily a connoisseur of these bound word extravaganzas, you may also have wondered, if Decatur is the largest INDEPENDENT festival, what are the largest overall regardless of dependence?
I posed this question to DBF self-described crackpot Daren Wang, who replied..
The other three are LA Times, Miami, and the National. We’re probably tied for 4th with Printers Row. [I added the links]
Those three are owned and operated by the Tribune Company, Miami Dade College, and the Federal Government, respectively. That’s why we call ourselves the largest independent–we’re just a couple of crackpots with an idea.LA and Miami are both in the 150,000 to 200,000 range. I’m not sure about National, but that is a one day event on the mall in Washington.
While “largest independent book festival” is certainly a better sound-bite than “fourth largest book festival in the country”, I think showing that little ol’ Decatur lags behind only three massive city festivals is actually more impressive and really demonstrates how successful this fledgling festival has become in only 3 years.
> Those three are owned and operated by the Tribune Company, Miami Dade College, and the Federal Government, respectively. That’s why we call ourselves the largest independent–we’re just a couple of crackpots with an idea.
And sponsorship from the AJC, Georgia Power, Target, Dekalb Medical Center, Stone Mtn. Park, WABE, the Art Institute of Atlanta, Georgia Tech, Decatur First Bank, Georgia Perimeter College, Holiday Inn, and a few more.
What’s all that about indy-ness again?
Not to run down the event itself, but is it possible a little less “independent” chest-thumping is in order?
Independence or not refers to the event’s organization and management, not its sources of funding. Anything of that magnitude requires sponsorships.
Hell yeah it’s indy!
I’m not sure it’s based on sponsors, but on who actually RUNS the festival. Maybe Daren could clarify for us.
“owned and operated by the Tribune Company, Miami Dade College, and the Federal Government, respectively.”
DBF is owned and operated by DBF, not a media company or government entity, which fulfills the moniker in my mind.
“DBF is owned and operated by DBF, not a media company or government entity, which fulfills the moniker in my mind.”
Maybe, but the title of the event (AJC Decatur Book Festival) kind of makes it seem like it might be owned by a media company. The poster also suggests that the event is owned by the AJC.
http://www.decaturbookfestival.com/2009/index.php
The AJC is the title sponsor of the event, not the owner.
Even though AJC is the title sponsor, I can understand how they can be confused as the owner/operator. It’s parallel to the “LA Times Festival of Books.” It’s hard to distinguish between sponor and owner — could be the same, but in the case of DBF, it’s not. I just went on LA Times Festival website, and all the contacts they listed have the latimes.com domain, which shows that they’re operated by the LA Times. DBF is not operated by the AJC.
I just want to know what a cantaloupe dump entails. (That little article that appears in your blog feed…) 😉
The DBF is a 501(c)3, with a great, active board, lots of community support, and a growing list of sponsors. We sell the AJC the rights to the title, thus it’s called the AJC Decatur Book Festival. I’ll sell naming rights to anything I can at the festival–we have even discussed finding sponsors for the port-o-lets(and if you are interested in those rights you can email me at [email protected] ). Those sales are our main source of funding, and without them we would have the smallest independent book festival in the country.
The practical difference is that when the LA Times wants to sell a sponsorship, they have someone from their large sales staff break out the rolodex. They can also make deals which include ad packages, etc., etc.
It is much the same in programming. When the LA Times calls Random House, Random House is quite responsive. Whatever reputation we have, we’ve had to build on our own.
It also means that we have no safety net. There’s no corporation to cover us if we come up short.
All that may not mean to much to the folks that attend and enjoy the festival. In fact, I hope it doesn’t. But for the staff and the board, that difference is huge. So we wear that badge proudly.
And thus you should, Daren. Read on!