Comments on: “Why the hell can Columbia, South Carolina, have a really decent book festival and Atlanta, Georgia, cannot?”

By: TeeRuss

TeeRuss — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:56:54 +0000

Same weekend as the VT-Alabama game, too, which has spawned an ESPN Gameday appearance and a free concert (Collective Soul, Drivin n Cryin) in Centennial park. Combined with DragonCon, there’ll be a very interesting dynamic downtown.

By: DarenW

DarenW — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:29:44 +0000

“When to hold the festival?” has always been a nightmare of a question. There aren’t just local Decatur conflicts (like Beer Festival and Wine Festival), but also industry conflicts (the Southern Independent Booksellers Association convention) and other book festivals (National, Miami, Southern(in Tennessee). If you schedule against those other events, many writers are going to go there instead of here. There is no perfect weekend, and we just had to bite the bullet and conflict with something.
DragonCon is a great partner for us–we share talent with them quite often. But it does stink that most people can’t do both. I’d love to head down to the Stormtrooper parade myself.
We have a survey question on the questionnaire this year about the weekend, just to get a sense of how many people we’d lose with a shift of weekends. The idea of a date shift scares the bejesus out of me, though.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:08:12 +0000

And DragonCon was there first !

By: Mary

Mary — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:57:36 +0000

Shucks, I’m blushing.

It is safe to assume that all 150,000 will be visitors to our fair city because I’m pretty sure that all 18,000 Decaturites volunteer for this festival.

By: Paula

Paula — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:39:49 +0000

Why oh why is the Book Festival the same weekend as DragonCon?

** Shakes fist at the universe in frustration.**