Well, it’s over. The Second Annual (and first full) Sacramento Book Festival has been consigned to the history books. And oh what a festival it was.
We were hoping for great weather – the average temperature in Sacramento on May 31st is 87 degrees, so we had good reason to think it would be comfortable shirtsleeves weather. Instead, we got the hottest May 31st in the city in 100 years. Because of course we did.
And still, despite the heat, they came. People crammed into the charming (but a little small) Shepard Garden and Arts Center – over 5,000 of them over six hours, by our best estimate. And they were ready to buy. Many authors sold 20, 30, 40, even 50+ copies of their books, and a number of them sold out completely.
The comments tell the story:
“Being at the Sacramento Book Festival, standing beside a table filled with my words, and watching people come, some I knew, many I didn’t, was nothing short of surreal. Over half my books sold. Over half. That’s not just numbers, it’s hearts choosing to carry my voice home with them.“
“What fun I had today at the Sacramento Book Festival!
I sold a record (33) books.”
“Banner day for me today attending the Sacramento Book Festival. The turnout was beyond what I ever imagined, and everyone was there to support the authors and buy books and meet fellow readers and writers. Easily the best day in the 9 months I’ve been doing events sales-wise.”
One publisher even told us he outsold his table at the LA Times Book Festival, a two-day event with more than 80,000 attendees.
So as promised, here are some of the things I learned on Saturday:
- People Still Really Love Books: And by books, I mean physical books. The turnout was immense, and people were walking out with five, ten, fifteen titles. Every single author I spoke with said this was one of the best bookselling events they have ever attended, and they want to come back next year.
- There Is Still Kindness in the World: We had an amazing volunteer crew, and while there were too few of them – an issue we will fix next year – they gave of themselves wholeheartedly, even the poor souls we put outside to stamp Scavenger Hunt passports. I was stopped multiple times by people checking in on me – “Are you okay?” – as I ran to put out one metaphorical fire after another. So many people offered assistance, from the Sacramento LGBT Center, which loaned us traffic cones and sign holders (as did Costello Printing, who also printed a bunch of signs for us free) to the author who offered up her own canopy to help shade the Kids Zone. The owner of Sauced, a barbecue restaurant in downtown, emailed us out of the blue and offered $200 in prizes for our scavenger hunt. Personally, two of our other QSAC authors, Marvin and Grete, took over the booth, and sold books for both Bel and I. And our children’s book drive recipient, the Mustard Seed School for unhoused kids, left with two full carloads of book donations, and had to leave a couple boxes behind to be delivered to them later. It was a beautiful display of humanity, in the midst of an often inhuman time.
- Things Will Go Wrong, But That’s Okay: From the outside, besides the heat, it was a flawless event. From the inside, it was a little murkier. We weren’t able to get into the venue until fifteen minutes before authors were due to arrive (and of course, some came half an hour earlier than the “do not arrive before” time), and a couple snafus with the venue’s preparations threw things into immediate chaos (and if you need party rentals, let me heartily recommend Marlon at NorCal Patry rentals, who was a calm, kind, understanding soul in the middle of the chaos). We were able to work through the initial issues, but the chaos threw my carefully planned organizational time at the start of set-up into chaos. I had hoped to hang out at our QSAC table selling books for a good chunk of the day, but I ended up being there maybe ten minutes max. The rest of the time was spent responding to the myriad of issues that came up. Running out of toilet paper. A “handicap” door button that didn’t work. Authors in direct sun that needed to be moved. Missing vendors. And a host of other things, large and small, that all needed attention. Still, as a team, we went into this knowing this was how it would be. I’ve been telling the committee for months that we will make mistakes, and there will be issues, but that’s okay, because we will fix them and move on. And we will learn from them for next year. And they did, and it was.
- Your Team is Everything: I was blessed with an amazing committee. Tim took on Promotion and Volunteer Management, and did a bang-up job on both. He singlehandedly landed the Cody Stark spots on Good Day Sacramento, which netted us a ton of publicity. And although we needed more volunteers, he found an able lieutenant in Teri and a fantastic Kids Zone organizer in his wife Sue, both of whom oversaw their respective jobs like generals on the field. Judith threw herself into programming and pulled off an amazing line-up with her second-in-command Robin’s able assistance, and yhe room was packed all day long. Bel took on social media and our newsletter, and also consulted on the layout and author liaisons, drawing on her experience at the Clockwork Alchemy con. And Lois surfaced a bunch of fundraising opportunities for the event. None of this would have happened without all of their contributions.
- Organization is Everything: We spent almost ten months planning this event. In the last five months, we met every other week (and then weekly at the end), coming up with all the various pieces of the event, gaming out everything we thought might go wrong, doing outreach to every book-related group and organization we could find in the Greater Sacramento area, and personally hitting the streets on multiple occasions to distribute more than 5,000 fliers to bookstores, coffee shops, hair salons, locally-owned stores, libraries and little free libraries, and more, We even kept a rainy-day fund, on the off chance that we might need a patio cover, and tapped it for the umbrellas we were able to rent for the East Patio at the last minute. Our authors noticed, commenting over and over again on the great organization, communication and follow-up before and during the festival.
- If the Books Are Selling, Nothing Else Matters: As some of the authors noted above, they sold a ton of books. A book festival should have three important goals – to bring the area’s literary community together, to promote reading and literacy, and to connect authors and readers. By all three measures, I think we succeeded this year, and so do our authors, every one of whom told me it was an amazing event, and they wanted to do this again in 2026. But without the extreme heat, please! 😉
- We Want to Do It Again Too, But Better: We are already strategizing on when/where to hold the event next year, and processing what went right and what went wrong. But we were all energized by the experience, and are so excited to make SBF 3.0 even better.
That’s it for now. I have an insane amount of work to get back to, and maybe even a bit of writing? But this was an amazing experience. I am grateful to everyone who made it happen.
And maybe next year I can find some time to actually sell my own books!