Rocky Mountain Low: Book Festival Investigates Dwindling Turnout

by Ken Freed, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 5/14/2002

On the first beautiful spring weekend in Denver, the ninth annual Rocky Mountain Book Festival opened its doors to the public in the new Ritchie Events Center on the University of Denver campus. Was the great weather why so few people ever went inside?

The April 13-14 festival sold slightly more than 3,000 admission ticket at $6 each for the weekend, less than half of 2001 festival attendance at 7,000. In 2000, 8,000 attended, which was a shadow of the book festival's initial years, which boasted upwards to 40,000 visitors at the peak in 1995.

"I'm told the 2002 festival program was the best ever," said visiting author Terry Quin. "Too bad more people weren't here to enjoy it."

Highlights included author readings by John Nichols and Gary Hart, local and regional author panels with standing room only, resources for independent publishing, and a talk at the banned books reading by Tattered Cover bookstore owner Joyce Meskis, fresh from her Colorado Supreme Court victory protecting the privacy of customer records.

Local publicity for the 2002 Rocky Mountain Book Festival was no less than usual, and included full media sponsorship by The Denver Post, the cover of the weekend section in the Rocky Mountain News, several radio interviews and a 30-second public service announcement with festival footage from last year on major local station KUSA-TV.

Lagging attendance is not isolated to Denver's book fair, according to Christiane Citron, executive director of the Colorado Center for the Book, told PW Daily, "See this festival in the context of the publishing industry itself. The book trade is in the throes of major convulsions, and these changes are affecting local book festivals across the country and worldwide." She added, "We're all swimming in the same pool."

"Consolidations among publishers and booksellers means fewer funds are available for community outreach and marketing," she said. Little or nothing is being budgeted by publishers for donations to sponsor book festival stages or special events. "This helps to explain smaller book festivals in San Francisco, Chicago and other cities recently. We're also seeing the impact on bookseller shows, from regional events like Mountains and Plains to international events like BookExpo America."

Interviews with Citron plus a dozen participating exhibitors and authors identified four factors affecting Denver that may affect festivals elsewhere.

First, the event in 2002 moved from March to April and the weekend of the festival saw the warmest weather of the year so far. "Coloradoans love the outdoors," Citron said, "Maybe we need to go back to doing the festival before spring arrives."

The second cause was moving to a new venue, the third in five years. Since inception in1993, the book festival was at Currigan Hall downtown. With Currigan slated for demolition, the festival moved in 1998 to the Denver Merchandise Mart. But hoping for better esthetics and wanting to appear on a college campus, like the vibrant Los Angeles Book Festival at UCLA, the festival moved this year to the University of Denver.

Third, the university's Ritchie Center insisted on paid parking, which effectively doubled the ticket price since there is no parking allowed in local neighborhoods without a permit.

Fourth, there were no free tickets, again at the insistence of the Ritchie Center, so no festival passes were distributed by local booksellers this year.

A solution comes from exhibitor Marilyn Auer, editor and associate publisher of Denver's Bloomsbury Review. "The festival here, like others elsewhere, needs to be subsidized by more of the local cultural facilities tax and by more of the major corporations as way to improve public literacy."