Six months ago I was asked to join a grassroots committee to bring a book festival to San Diego. The last book festival held here in San Diego was two years ago and they felt it was time to share the love of books with our community once again.
It has been a truly eye opening experience. I have never been involved in such a large event before and I am amazed at the number of details you need to consider:
- Porta Potties- Yes please. But how many?
- City Permits, Fire Marshall and Police- Need to be addressed early on in the process.
- Funding- This is a huge one. Since this is a grassroots effort, we have no budget. We have had to get creative in asking for donations and make barters and trades.
- Website, Facebook, Twitter- To get the word out.
- Non-Profit or not?- There are benefits to becoming a Non-Profit organization, but it requires $500.00 and we have no budget.
- Logo and Letterhead for all correspondence- I designed that myself to help us cut down on costs.
- Tables, Chairs and Food for the authors- They have to sit and eat right?
- Authors and Entertainment- What are the people coming to see?
- Booths for Authors and Vendors- This is where we have to put our salesman hat on and try to fill those booths.
Whew! And this is only a partial list of the things required to put on a book festival. There are at least a million and two details that still pop up. The Orange County Children’s Book Festival , just a few hours north of us, has been a tremendous help as we wade through this process. But there is still more work to do and very little time left to do it in (the event is on May 20th). I can see my life is going to get even busier in the next ten weeks.
I will share more about the event, as we get closer to the date or you can always check out the website.
Until then… Happy Reading,
Suzanne Santillan
Writing on the Sidewalk
Writing on the sidewalk 
Best wishes on the festival! I too have planned a festival before, a food festival, and I completely feel your pain (as well as your excitement) about the whole thing. I wish that I could come to see it. Keep us posted on how it goes.
Thanks Sandi.
The festival logo is great–fun and clear.
Thanks Andrea, your opinion means a lot.
Sue
Great, Suzanne…and you certainly have done your share. Did you know the original spark came from Deena While, owner of Readers, Inc?
And although you mentioned your logo and correspondence design, I thought you also set up the website: childrensbookfestivallamesa.webs.com
I can’t begin to tell you how many hours composing letters to: prospective sponsors, organizations, schools, neighbors, I worked on, just to mention a few.
I hope your followers will check out the website.It should be quite a party.
Jane Patton
SD-SCBWI Member
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