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Business focus: literary festivals

18.03.11 | Tom Tivnan and Laura Richards

Britain has experienced an exponential growth in book festivals in the past decade. There are, of course, the monster festivals that are literary highlights of each year such as the UK's, and perhaps the world's, most visited, the Edinburgh International Book Festival (just over 200,000 people attended in 2010), and arguably the globe's most high profile, The Telegraph Hay Festival.

In addition to the more established players, festivals are popping up every year. New entrants in 2011 include the Surrey Heath Literary Festival, the Guernsey Literature Festival and the Worcestershire Literary Festival. There are festivals that cater to almost every taste, from specific genres (The Harrogate Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival, the STANZA Poetry Festival), to celebrating one writer (the Graham Greene Festival in Hertfordshire, Cornwall's Daphne du Maurier Festival), to boutique book festivals (the boho Port Eliot Lit Fest, the literary programme in the ultra-trendy Shoreditch Festival).

How many literature festivals are there in the UK? The exact number is difficult to pin down as many arts and music festivals have added book streams in recent years, such as the Latitude Festival and Words and Motion at The Big Chill. But a conservative estimate would be around the 250 mark.

Tiny acorns
Though the notion of people paying money to listen to a writer talk is hardly new—Mark Twain and Charles Dickens made small fortunes out of author tours—the modern book festival is a relatively recent thing. The oldest continuing festival, the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, was founded in 1949. The majority are under 30 years old, with very humble beginnings. Hay launched in 1988 with a £23,000 budget and just 1,200 visitors; Edinburgh was originally a biennial event, first held in a single tent in 1983.

One festival that shows how a programme can develop over the years is the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. Launched 15 years ago with a handful events over a couple of days at Oxford University's Student Union, it has grown into one of the world's premier book events. This year's outing has a budget of around £1m, runs over nine days from 2nd April, will feature more than 550 speakers and take place in the dreaming spires of Corpus Christi and Merton Colleges, Oxford (festival-goers can even choose to stay overnight in college rooms).

Highlights of the programme include the artists Gilbert and George reviewing their careers, Kazuo Ishiguro receiving the Honorary Fellowship of the Festival, Jordan's King Adbullah II delivering a rather timely lecture on peace in the Middle East, A C Grayling launching his sure to be controversial The Good Book: A Secular Bible (Bloomsbury), and the -present, and past three, children's laureates; Anthony Browne, Anne Fine, Michael Rosen and -Jacqueline Wilson, kicking off the Festival's children's strand.

Though Oxford is certainly well established, the festival director Sally Dunsmore admits that acquiring funding is "not easy", particularly since it does not receive public monies. She adds: "We are in an area that is very competitive, and every year we have to go out and find the money to put it on. Though, interestingly, something has changed this year, we have even been approached by sponsors and partners wanting to get involved." HSBC is a major contributor, while Blackwell runs the onsite book concession [see right], and for the second year in a row Amazon.co.uk has a dedicated Oxford festival page on its site.

Those partnerships are key to growth, Dunsmore says, and Oxford's "sea change" came when the Sunday Times became its media partner nine years ago, spearheaded by the paper's then literary editor, now Hutchinson publishing director, Caroline Gascoigne. The Sunday Times current literary editor (who was deputy editor when the partnership started),- Andrew Holgate, will not give out the exact terms of the deal—"we contribute a colossal amount", he jokes—yet he emphasises that the partnership is "a great fit". He adds: "Oxford is a seat of learning, the festival is very sophisticated, very literary and that works well with our pages. And we do some selling there. Online and the [Times and Sunday Times] app are very important and we will have people running around during the festival with iPads trying to sell the app."

Lean and mean
Yet even with the sponsorship, Dunsmore says she has to run, like most festival organisers, a "very lean" operation. The 100 or so staff during the course of the festival are largely volunteers, for example (including Dunsmore's mother, who takes care of authors in the green room). And, the festival does not pay authors to appear (the Society of Authors recommends appearance fees of £150 for a session not exceeding an hour and £350 for a full day). She says: "The structure of our finances doesn't allow us to do that. We quite simply would not be able to have a festival. The purpose is to bring the written word to the public and to sell books for the authors. What we do is look after authors very well, and provide them with a stage and a platform."

Dunsmore believes that going forward, the festival has to experiment with new types of events and different ways to engage audiences.- This year, for example, Madhur Jaffrey is giving a cookery demonstration. She says: "Time moves on. And there is a festival every weekend, every five miles up the road. If we want to be one of the best festivals, we have to innovate. Quite frankly, my boredom threshold is low, so I'm always thinking what can we try this year, what new things can we do?

"One of our main challenges, however, is not to get too overblown. Sometimes it's like I'm holding down a beast that wants to escape. That's not to say we're not being innovative or bringing in new partners, but it is just being clear about why we are doing it and what the purposes are."

Newbies
A clear direction is key to starting up a festival, says Kate Allen, a novelist and PR for Newcastle indie publisher Myrmidon Books, and also one of the founders of the York Festival of Writing, a three-day event aimed at bringing aspiring authors and the book trade together, which had its inaugural outing last year. "I think starting up, a lot of people say: 'Oh, we're going to run a literary festival', and don't really think about the audience," she says. "The first question you should ask yourself is: 'What, and who, is my festival for?'"

Allen makes the point that clearness of purpose is even more necessary when, as in York's case, when there is no public funding and the festival must earn out. "With a lot of festivals, often the only people making the money are the venues." She also emphasises that it is the details that can often detract from the bottom line. She got a surprise last year when at the last moment the venue said that the festival was responsible for hiring a security team.

Bhavit Mehta, co-founder of the DSC South Asian Literature Festival, another organiser coming off a launch year, agrees that details are key, from giving adequate time to getting funding in place, to ironing out the inevitable teething problems of your website. He adds: "We had a challenge in that we had a number of different venues. And there are little things that we really didn't factor in, like simply the costs to transport authors to the venues."

What all the festival organisers say is that it gets smoother as you go along. Holgate says: "We've been involved nine years and you can see the support growing. These things take time to get going. Oxford has loyalty now, and above all, the [big name speakers] keep coming."

Allen echoes the sentiment: "There is a building of confidence after the first year, when people see that you can deliver. It does get easier, and people are more willing to take the trek up to York for a weekend." It must get easier—Allen feels so confident, she is co-founding another this year, the Festival of Romance, which launches in Hertfordshire in October.

The Start-up: Stoke Newington Literary Festival

Now in its second year, the Stoke Newington Literary Festival has been a very big project for its director, Liz Vater. As a resident of the area for 22 years, Vater got to know its rich literary tradition and saw a gap in the market. "Local literary heroes like Daniel Defoe and Edgar Allan Poe were not being celebrated. I went around other literary festivals and it dawned on me that prominence should be given to Stoke Newington."

This was one of the initial aims of the project, but Vater also hoped to give back to the community. "Stoke Newington may be very affluent, but Hackney has one of the lowest literacy levels in Europe. I hope to raise literacy funding and to make people proud of their literary heritage," says Vater.

June 2010 saw the first edition of the festival, with events held over three days, spread across seven venues, throughout the London district. "It exceeded my expectations," Vater says about turnout. "Events sold out and we actually broke even, which is quite rare for a first-time festival."

Drumming up word-of-mouth ticket sales was all-important for the festival, as Vater was adamant that it would not depend on external funding. "I wanted it to be a festival that relies on ticket sales. We had a very small grant from Hackney council, but this year we will be getting development grants to help the festival grow."

Vater has a background in PR and used her experience to boost ticket sales. "We aimed for 60% of our budget to be covered by ticket sales. Promotion was a key part of this being a success. If you don't understand PR and promotion then you'll struggle," Vater warns.
The festival used Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media to spread the word, as well as building a strong relationship with the local press, gaining extensive coverage from media partner N16 Magazine, as well as other local papers such as the Stoke Newington Gazette and Hackney Gazette.

Working on a tight budget, Vater used voluntary workers in the festival's first year, but hopes to pay key employees for 2011.

Collaborations are also vital to the festival, which is now branching out with literary cinema group Flicker Club, and the Spare Room Society, which is helping spearhead children's literature.

Having a process in place for booking writers who will guarantee crowds is essential, Vater says. "We start with a wish list based on the area, customer interests, themes for the festival, and who is touring at the time. There will be 'no-brainer' artists, but you also need to be quite open-minded."

The Retailer: Blackwell at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

As the official bookseller for the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival for the past eight years, Blackwell has seen its presence at the event expand. The festival attracts tens of thousands of visitors to Oxford each year, and holds around 550 author events over the course of nine days in April.

"We've been lucky enough to grow with the festival," says Zool Verjee, Blackwell event manager. "We used to run mini book stalls in Oxford University's Student Union, but now we occupy the marquee space where we have our main festival book shop. It takes two days to set up and another two to take down."

The partnership with the festival began when the festival approached Blackwell. "It's recognised as one of the big literary festivals to take place in the UK and it's a real cachet to be involved with such a cultural calendar landmark.

"We pay a pre-arranged sponsorship fee to be the official bookseller for the festival each year," he says, although he cannot reveal the terms. Within this role, Blackwell organises official book signings, sells in its onsite bookshop, and stocks the official programme in its Oxford shops in advance and at the event. This also gains more custom at the flagship store on Broad Street. "There's a real presence for our shop before and during the festival. People want to order signed copies in advance."

Signings are really important for Blackwell and are a huge strategic operation. "In order to run a professional and friendly signing that caters for both the author and the public, there's a lot of organisation to get right first. The project kicks off in earnest at the start of the new year, and we have to speak to between 120 and 140 publishers to place enough orders.

"Getting stock right is the hardest part and there are lots of spreadsheets involved," says Verjee. To select the right books, Verjee and his team have many factors to consider—sales track records of authors, venue and audience sizes, if it's a new novel being discussed or a past work, and the subject matter up for discussion.

Blackwell hires a team of 35 to 40 staff specifically for the festival, so as to not affect the running of the Broad Street flagship. His advice for booksellers is simple: "A festival is just an extensive string of single events. If you stick to the principles of running an event, you can't go wrong."

The Pioneer: The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival

Being the oldest literary festival in the world is something the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival is extremely proud of. Living up to this reputation year on year is a full-time job for interim festival executive producer Christin Stein. "We now plan each festival 18 months in advance because the scale of it grows every year," she says.

The festival has considerably increased in size since the inaugural programme in 1949. From a 10-event affair it has expanded to a 10-day festival, hosting 450 events across 10 different venues. This means that a team of four people work all year round, with the number of staff growing as the event draws closer. "By the time of the festival we have about 100 people working as production staff. A lot of them are volunteers who come back each year. We have a real festival family here," Stein says.

A key member of this family is the dedicated fundraiser. Cheltenham Literature Festival is a registered charity and so relies on donations, sponsorship and grants. Stein estimates that the festival receives twice as much money from sponsors as grants. Despite this reliance on financial support, she insists that every author is paid an appearance fee.

Programming these authors is a large-scale effort. "We work very closely with publishers. A lot of bookings will be based on who is touring at the time," says Stein. "Our artistic director is responsible for this. It's a very creative planning process and we're always considering how to take the festival forward and make it a success."

The team at Cheltenham has a further recipe for success. "We embrace trends in bookselling and we encourage ­innovative ways to include authors and customers in the ­festivities. There is always something going on, which adds a real buzz and energy to the event. That's something we're very proud of."

For Stein, this buzz is created from customer satisfaction. "We make sure our audience feels welcome. We want to break down the barriers of literature. They can come to the events, browse bookshops, or indulge in cream teas."  

Cheltenham Literature Festival has had the Times as its media partner for the last six years. "It's been fantastic to have their knowledge and contacts as well as the editorial coverage. It's been a real collaborative effort." The literary festival also partners three other festivals in Cheltenham that cover science, music and jazz. "Being a part of a cross-festival partnership gives us strength in programming and marketing," Stein adds.

 

 

• Flagship Feature
• In Depth
• literary festivals
• Stoke Newington Literary Festival
• Sunday Times Oxfrod Literary Festival
• Times Cheltenham Literature Festival