The Decatur Book Festival inner circle (Bookzilla included, of course) has just come out of the sweat lodge with an attendance estimate for this year’s fest.

According to Festival Executive Director Daren Wang, 75,000-80,000 people attended the event this past weekend.

“Absolutely the biggest ever.”

Congrats Book Fest!!!

From a just released Decatur Book Festival press release…

While total crowds figures aren’t yet available, [DBF Executive Director Daren] Wang estimated a 15 percent increase in guests over last year.

Pic above: Terra McVoy, left, AJC DBF Assistant Program Director, helps lead the Lady Bug Girl children’s parade Sunday morning.

A few more sassy, official pics after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

As anyone can guess, it’s notoriously difficult to estimate attendance levels at festivals that don’t employ ticketed entry.  That said, Decatur Book Festival Executive Director Daren Wang predicts around a 15% increase vs. last year.

How’d the DBF powers-that-be come up with that number?  Well…

The square was more crowded, there were more venues, the smaller venues were more full, the lines at the larger venues were longer and it was a lot harder to get through the crowds.  I don’t think, however, that we had 80,000 people in town over the weekend.  So the bottom line is we are estimating a 15% increase, but not putting an absolute number on it.

Sounds about right to me.

Access Atlanta has a splendid article about the upcoming Decatur Book Festival with extensive interviews with festival founders Daren Wang and Tom Bell.

If you’re a book festival junkie, there’s probably not much in this article that you haven’t read before.  However, my love of speculation requires that I point out that Wang and Bell state in the article that they can easily see the DBF attendance rate doubling before Decatur hits any sort of capacity.

That’s 150,000 people.

According to a blurb in this morning’s hard-copy of the AJC (can’t find it online), the Decatur Book Festival attracted a total of 75,000 attendees this past weekend.  That’s up a good 15,000 from last year.

Funny thing…that was the EXACT number the DBF publicly hoped for before the festival began.  FREAKY. Good thing that last person showed up on Sunday.  Can you imagine if they only attracted 74,999?  Disappointment!  75,000?  Success!

But seriously, how are such open events are measured?

UPDATE: The official DBF release is touting 70,000 attendees.  I guess the AJC just rounded up.