Books will be Fine
The Gaithersburg Book Festival showed an unstoppable love for books
If you’ll pardon the expression, it seems like a really shit time for books these days.
Amazon holds a monopoly on the digital book market and wields its power against its authors like a 19th century factory worker.
Mass market paperbacks are disappearing, forever. Until/unless the world’s reading habits change considerably, those smaller books are never coming back.
American literacy rates are dropping, and are reading less and less for fun.
AI-slop fills the internet and makes well-written books even hard to find.
All of these are severe challenges to book authors, publishers, sellers, and the overall book community.
However, for all that doom and gloom, books and bookstores are actually doing pretty okay, all things considered. Like much of our post-Covid world, today is filled with amazing and exciting opportunities for creativity and adventure, sitting next to piles of absolute garbage.
I know I live in a bit of a pro-book bubble – we live in a very education-friendly state and our county is very liberal – and I’m not saying books are totally safe. Threats to education and literacy hide around every corner and sometimes just stand out in the open.
But as an aspiring author and someone who is actively rebuilding my book collection, I figured it was time to attend the annual Gaithersburg Book Festival last month and see what all the fuss was about.
It’s free and I had the morning available, so into a pitch-perfect spring day I launched my reignited love of books and people who love books.
It was awesome.
My First Workshop
I have a pretty good understanding of how good books work, at least in theory, but I’m always open to learning new perspectives. So, right after I grabbed one of the last parking spots in the closer parking lot (awesome), I wandered into the workshop How to Catch and Keep a Reader by Eva Langston.
Eva is a well-established writing teacher and coach (and author and host of The Long Road to Publishing podcast), and she brought a ton of enthusiasm to take a tent full of aspiring authors through exercises to help define our book’s core elements. For the next hour, she talked through fundamental ideas around developing core book ideas, how to juice up and tighten up book pitches, and shared her love for the The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast.
Then as quickly as we started we were done and it was time to move on.
What struck me most about the workshop was that at 10am on a Saturday, she packed a tent full of 40+ people plus standing room, everyone eager – even desperate – for some handhold on how to better position their book. The people she called to the mic to talk through their exercises had all sorts of crazy ideas, and quality or not, enthusiasms were high.
I really enjoyed seeing so many people ready to share their stories with the world. But that was done and now I had books to buy.
People Love to Buy Books
Right after the workshop, I hit the used book tent and found three books quickly, including a first edition hardback of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island! Literally 12 hours earlier, I was surfing eBay for used Lehane books as he’s suddenly become both a favorite of mine as well as a possible author comp.
The stars were watching my shopping cart.
With three books in hand and only out $8, I clapped my hands with a job well done, took the books and my sweatshirt back to the car (it was already 80 degrees), and was happy both with my purchases and my overall restraint.
Ha!
As I was leaving the used book tent, one of the workers saw my fiction purchases and said, “Oh, this tent is mostly children’s books. That tent over there is mostly fiction,” and pointed across the field to another tent. Duly noted!
Thirty minutes later I had my coffee in hand (after meeting author Kate Hilton – more below) and I just walked the whole festival, taking in all the people, including the scores of kids running around.
Once I snaked my way through the entire festival, I ended up at the second used book tent, and suddenly my arms were filled with more books to buy.
See, when we moved to the east coast a while back, I sold more than half my stuff: boardgames, TTRPGs, CDs, and of course books. But this third move in as many years was also the third purge of my book collection. By the time we arrived at the mid-Atlantic, both my books and CDs had been pruned to a short list of key essentials with no flexibility or spirit or depth.
Or fun.
But now I have my own office and bookshelves, and I’m in a couple communities with avid and rabid readers (far more than I can read but it’s good to aspire), and I am slowly rebuilding my personal library. It’s nothing to brag about, but it’s mine and occasionally I say, “Oh I want to read XXX,” and I can rummage around in my shelves and I actually find it.
And while it’s great to buy new books and directly support authors, everyone knows that used books are the true goldmine. When I arrived at the used fiction and non-fiction tent, I was met with throngs of all the bargain hunters like me, with another long line with people’s arms and bags full of books wrapped around the tent.
Remember how I said that mass market paperbacks are just going away? It was like a bolt of lightning to find a stack of vintage Kurt Vonnegut Jr paperbacks – I could not resist them, and added them to the top of my armful. Then I just had to call off my search, even though I had only examined half the tent. I was not prepared for this scale of purchase or to lug all these books around in my arms all day like a squirming cat.
BUT STILL.
Thirteen books for $26 is just too easy of an investment, even though it will require a complete rejiggering of my bookshelves, which I just completed this spring.
This is my burden.
Meet an Author!
I was standing in line for coffee (which being hand-made espresso drinks was taking forever) when I noticed the woman standing in front of me had a nametag: Kate Hilton – Featured Author. She broke the ice by complimenting my hat, and I realized that with a slow-moving line to keep her captive, I could informally interview her.
I put my Introvert/Heavy-thinking mask away, put on my Engaging Amateur Journalist mask on in its place, and I grilled her about her author life for the next 20 minutes.
Kate is awesome and entertained my questions about everything from her writing and research processes to traveling from Canada to her social media strategy and how she manages everything in a way that gets her invited to book festivals like ours. Her most insightful comments came toward the end, when I asked her, “How do you judge the success of this trip for yourself?”
She explained that yes, book sales and meeting readers are important, but sustainable success means networking and meeting other authors. Other authors are your peers and support group, not only sharing ideas and perspectives, but who you meet along the way builds your author infrastructure. So meeting them and building long-term relationships is where the most sustained value can be found.
Absolute gold.
More on that advice in a bit. After I had coffee in my hand, I strolled the whole faire (that’s how I ended up at the used book tent later), watched readers young and old engage with their favorite authors, talked to the guys at the Maryland Writers’ Association booth, and just loved the vibe.
Then, after finding my 13 books and waiting 15 minutes with my full arms to buy them, I waited another 30 minutes to get taco lunch. The faire thankfully had plenty of food trucks and I found sustenance in the glory of freshly made local tacos and salsa.
Then it was time for my final event – seeing Kate on the Dashiell Hammett stage (another nod to my recent attentions) discuss her historical mysteries. I sat near the stage and managed my squirming book stack as people climbed past me to their seats. I was nearing fullness in both attention-span and people-ing, so this author panel would be my last event for the day.
Remember how Kate said the gold for her visit was about meeting new authors?
I saw this happen in real time, when Kate shared a stage with Sujata Massey (who now I regret not getting her book and autograph) and the two spoke about their latest historical mysteries for an hour. It was clear to everyone in the audience that Kate and Sujata had fun and dynamic chemistry, as they openly riffed off each other’s comments and had a lot in common regarding their books and characters.
But when asked about it, Sujata commented that she and Kate had literally just met and become fast friends on the way to the stage. Both were clearly excited for the opportunity to share a stage and an experience with each other. This was exactly what Kate spoke to me about and it seemed very clear that she had met a new friend.
The whole day intertwined socially, artistically, and personally, as messages and ideas discussed earlier wrapped around to show me their impact later. I had no idea what the book festival was about – my wife and I have discussed attending multiple times but never could make it – but now I had seen the light and was hooked.
I’m all about the book festival. Hooked for life.
Weather the Weather
The seasons are crazy-mad here in Maryland. Eastern MD is really a swamp, and we get all sorts of ups and downs, especially in our current climate crisis. This matters to organizers of a book festival held annually in the middle of May – it can be boom or bust depending on where on the spectrum of soul-crushing humid heat and soul-soaking torrential rainstorms we find ourselves.
Well, congrats to whomever tuned the weather machines this year because it could not have been more ideal weather: cool and clear in the morning, heating up just right into the upper 80s in the late afternoon. This is the weather that our lizard-brains LOVE and push us to get out into.
The faire was full of so many different people, all shapes and sizes and ages and colors. I was truly stunned and thankful to see so many people out and about enjoying books and authors and all things literary.
It’s a good sign.
oh man! I can't think of a better way to spend a day. I've read this twice, and will read it again - so much resonance every which way. I came to this small town to head up the local literacy council, which turned out to be an exercise in futility (that's me kvetching). Education and literacy have been huge issues for me forever, and I may never stop my love affair with actual books. Not only the stories, but the heft of one in my hands, the smell, the feel - of cover and pages. The act of turning the pages. Plus, of course, they were my childhood best friends and safe places. All of which brnigs me to, I envy you that glorious day!
Fantastic post! I'm so glad the universe aligned for you and the Faire!