On August 24, I was in Washington D.C. for the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival. This is a free event that features lectures by a variety of authors and book signings.
To be honest, the whole event was a bit of a mess. It was free, which was nice, but they had no way of knowing how many people were coming. They appeared to be entirely overwhelmed. There was talk on the website at one point about requiring you to sign up for a free ticket. That would have been good but they didn’t do it.
They had an area with a booth for each state and some territories to highlight authors from their area. Some states did better than others.
I read a book called Bindle Punk Bruja that I learned about at the Missouri booth. Mississippi gave out books on the history of seersucker. I hate seersucker so I took a book to learn more about it. I told the lady that the husband and I argue about seersucker and she told me that I would have facts on my side now. She didn’t realize that I was team No Seersucker.
Other states didn’t put in that much work. Ohio had a little display on Superman. (He was created in Cleveland.) There was also a map with some authors on it but it didn’t even cover most of the state. If I was making a display for Ohio, I’d have books as a backdrop to grab attention at least. It was very bland.
There was a lot of info on the Library of Congress that I didn’t really look at. It got crowded fast. There was an area where you could buy books by authors who were speaking. Then there were the signing lines.
I don’t care about book signings. But the person I went with only wanted to come to get her book signed by Rebecca Yarros. Her signing was from 4-6 PM. Very long story short – she got in line at 2 PM. She stood in line until 6 PM. She never got anywhere close to Rebecca Yarros. They were closing lines but they were letting way too many people in the lines. If you have a 2 hour signing you can’t do more than about 60 people or so, I figure. Maybe 120 if you are speedy and not talking. They had hundreds of people in the lines. She missed most of the day standing in that line for absolutely nothing. She was livid. Rebecca Yarros was giving a talk later in the day but she couldn’t go to that either because by standing in line for the signing she missed her chance to get in line for the talk.
That was another issue. The rooms for the talks were way too small for the amount of people there. I wanted to be in the room for the nonfiction people. I’m sure that wasn’t the most popular section and it was packed. I got a seat and stayed there all afternoon. I knew if I left between sections that there was a good chance that I wasn’t getting back in.
I enjoyed most the talks that I saw but overall, I don’t think that I’d go back. A lot of the talks in the room I was in were on C-Span so you can watch them here.
There were other issues like the events went until 7 but they closed most of the food places before 5. I’d expect issues like this on a first event but this was the 24th year. It shouldn’t have been this much of a mess.
(We went back to our hotel and my friend was listening to the replay of the Rebecca Yarros lecture. I left and went for a walk when the moderator strongly implied that she was the person who invented romantic fantasy and the crowd screamed like it was a Taylor Swift concert. I’d never heard of this author before this event but I’m an old person and I’m pretty sure romance and fantasy have been going hand in hand for a good long time.)
