The Bookseller.com

7th September 2008

Joel Rickett

Joel Rickett is deputy editor of The Bookseller, and also writes columns for the Guardian and Screen International.

Blogging Hay: a chat with Peter Florence

31.05.08

As Hay enters its final weekend, I caught up with festival director Peter Florence. He was remarkably relaxed, given the freakish weather that had besieged the start of the week – the local area had one sixth of its annual rainfall in just four days. Here are some of my notes from the interview:

“We haven’t lost any box office because of the weather.” No major events were cancelled because of the rain; only the Baby Zone tent was closed for a significant period; all the cafes and food areas stayed open. Final ticket sales are expected to come in at 145,000, 10% up on last year. “We’re pretty much at capacity now.” Interestingly, the main Hay now only accounts for a third of the organisation’s turnover – the two Spanish festivals in Granada and Segovia are now bigger when combined.

“Everybody has played a blinder – the ground staff have been heroes, the writers have been wonderful. Only one event didn’t go as we hoped – and I’m not telling you which one.”

“We spent an extra £100,000 on the site [infrastructure] this year – that’s why it held up.”

“The Hay audience is very well read, and they heckle. My perception is that the audience is slightly older this year.” The average length of stay has risen from two to five days in the last few years. “There’s a real hunger from people to join in the conversation.”

The best feedback came from the Will Self event and the one on the Mitford letters; Jimmy Carter was “phenomenal – wise, provocative and newsworthy”. “The scale of the events is thrilling, and some authors revel in it. Most of them stay for a few days – being in a field is a great leveller.”

“The perception is that we only deal with politics and celebrity. But this year we’ve slightly ducked the celebrity thing – apart from Kathleen Turner and Les Dennis. And we have more literary events than any other festival.”

Florence hired a PR agency to generate news coverage and to “spin” the big events; video clips have been fed out via the PA and Reuters. “As a result our international media coverage has been six times bigger than before.”

I also spoke to an exhausted Di Speirs, who runs the vast festival bookshop Pemberton’s. She told me that the biggest signing queues had been for Tim Winton, George Monbiot, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, Roger McGough and Jimmy Carter (he stayed to sign books for all the shop staff). The “distinguished elderly ladies” like Katharine Whitehorn and Diana Athill also pulled in big crowds.

The shop’s overall sales will be level with 2007, at £200,000-plus. But “we shifted more signed stock than ever before.” Why are some events so successful at sending people into the bookshop? “It’s all the talk – they have to captivate the crowd. But if anyone says ‘read it in my book’, then they fall stone dead.”

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