L.A. Times Festival of Books: 'The Best Gift Ever Given L.A.'

For the ninth year in a row, tens of thousands of book-lovers from all over Southern California gathered at the UCLA campus this past weekend for the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. With temperatures near 90 degrees on both Saturday and Sunday, an estimated total of 130,000 attended the two-day free event. Nearly 300 exhibitors occupied booths along campus quads; and over 400 authors (among them T.C. Boyle, Carrie Fisher, Dean Koontz, Elmore Leonard, Anna Quindlen, and George Pelecanos) took part in 95 indoor and outdoor panels, solo talks, and interviews.

Well-represented among the exhibitors, as always, were independent booksellers from around the Southland, many of whom have been staunch supporters of the popular festival since its inception in 1996.

Among those founding participants was EsoWon Books, the African American-oriented Los Angeles store, whose Tom Hamilton described the Times festival as "a great event" where "authors and the books are the main attraction. There's nothing comparable to this that I've seen, at least on the West Coast."

Over the years, many patrons who first encountered EsoWon at the Festival of Books later sought out the store itself and became good customers, Hamilton explained. "I think [the festival people] are getting better and better each year, presenting it." As for the business EsoWon does at the festival: "It's always good. We've never had a bad year."

Only the fact that Distant Lands: Traveler's Bookstore and Outfitters of Pasadena shared a booth for the festival's first year prevents it from being counted as a founding store, said Louanne Kalvinskas, a principal in the shop her son Adrian began and owns.

Like Distant Lands' Pasadena store, its festival space was large and well decorated. "We started out [in 1996] with half a booth," said Kalvinskas. "We are now three full booths ... We highlight certain publishers that we work with -- Rough Guides, Globe Pequot, Avalon, and Travelers Tales -- and that's how we choose what we bring down; so that we are not duplicating what somebody else here will have."

As a festival participant, she said, "We do extremely well.… [The festival] pulls nationally and internationally known authors. The L.A. Times should be commended; they work extremely hard on it.

And so do the vendors."

One such was Hennessey + Ingalls, the art and architecture bookstore of Santa Monica, whose manager, Douglas Woods, said business at this year's festival felt even better than last year's: "We sold more remainders last year; we're selling more full-price books this year. I think that's a good sign." Wood tries to bring a good cross-section of titles from the store, he said; and he thought the festival exposure benefited the Santa Monica shop. "Our store is a destination for people in the arts and architecture and design community, so they know us. But there are plenty of folks that enjoy those kinds of books that either buy them online or see them at a general bookstore; for them to find this many of these kinds of titles under one roof is a nice discovery, for those folks. Yes, I'm sure it helps us pick up new customers."

For L.A.'s Skylight Books, it was its seventh year of participation in the festival. In past years, Kerry Slattery, the store's general manager, said Skylight focused on L.A. culture and history in its festival titles. This year, though, the store brought more graphic novels, political books, and a good selection of artzines.

Partnered for the event with the University of California Press and Watson-Guptill, Skylight had those publishers' books on display; and the booth was hosting signings by two University of California Press authors: Joe Domanick (Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State) and Neil Smith (American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, a nominee for, and eventual winner of, one of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes given at a separate ticketed event at UCLA that Saturday night).

"We do minimal in-booth signings," Slattery said, "because we want to just focus on being a friendly, independent bookstore. We're right across from [the] Barnes & Noble [tent], so we figure: we'll give people lots of [book] choices!"

At the Dutton's Brentwood booth, though, there was a pronounced emphasis on scheduled author visits. "We have signings every hour, throughout both days," said owner Doug Dutton, even as Gay Talese sat at a front corner inscribing books for a long line of customers. "I think we could have had signings every half-hour, or every 15 minutes, if we had put ourselves to it. I look out here and I see lots and lots of buyers and readers; but there's also a lot of authors amongst them."

Dutton's booth was hosting some 15 authors during the two-day event, he said -- and an equal number of children's-book authors in the store's separate booth in the children's area. "And, of course, we also have a booth where the official (panel) signings are taking place." All were doing good business, and each had brochures available with information on the new Dutton's Beverly Hills Books store scheduled to open this fall.

Also occupying a good-sized space was West Hollywood's Bodhi Tree Bookstore, whose proprietor, Stan Madson, recalled: "We started off [at the 1996 festival] with just one of the 10' x 10' booths, and found that was overwhelmingly too constrictive for us. So we moved into this configuration of four booths -- a 20' x 20', four 10-footers -- and that's been very comfortable for us. We find it is a nice way of helping us merchandize a lot of the books we have dropped: our sale books, and some of our overstock used books. We bring those along, and we find that the people here are really interested in getting that."

He especially likes coming to the festival for a couple of reasons, Madson said: "We're a highly specialized bookstore, in new-age philosophy and psychology and self-help and all this kind of material ... There's a bunch of people that go by [here] who've never heard of us, and that's the intriguing part: meeting someone who has no idea that this type of world exists!" And the other reason? "When we come to this, which is more of a literary event, it introduces us to a group of people -- Dean Koontz, for example; Pico Iyer, Ariana Huffington, Alice Walker, Jonathan Kirsch --people that we're quite interested in."

A number of authors were scheduled to sign over the weekend at the Skirball Cultural Center's roomy enclosure, where the L.A. museum's bookshop Audrey's Store was a key component. "All of our departments really are combined here," said Aomawa Baker, external affairs assistant. "This year we have a wonderful family program activity; our education department is taking part, along with our programs department, handling the author signings."

The Skirball's [and Audrey's] festival presence has increased greatly in its six years of participation, said assistant store manager Barbara Lang: "We've grown from having a single dark booth, to having four booths together, here, and it's fabulous."

In addition to highlighting works by the signing authors (including Faye Levy, Donna Rosenthal, and Rabbi Steven Leder), the booth also had a five-dollar "blowout-bargain" table with "some fabulous deals," said Lang. "And kind of a featured book for the weekend is The Cat in the Hat in Yiddish, which people love. Mostly adults buy it!"

There were plenty of copies of the more traditional edition of The Cat in the Hat in evidence at the festival's children's area, where a large string of booths circled a stage offering a non-stop schedule of kids' performers and authors.

"It's a lot of fun," Jamie Barsumian, manager of Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop of La Verne, said of the L.A. Times Festival of Books. "And it is a good thing to do. It's profitable, and it's fun to be able to be here and meet all these authors."

Mrs. Nelson's, in its fourth year at the festival, was hosting over 22 booth signings on Saturday and Sunday, Barsumian said, "We have one every hour, just about." The focus was on titles from the store's event-partners, Simon & Schuster and Chronicle.

Back on the main quad, the booth for West Hollywood's Book Soup was offering a "medley" of adult-trade titles, said general manager Marion Bright. "We like to bring both the books that have been selling well at the store, but also some from the smaller presses, and some of the books that people may not find at some of the bigger tents. Of course, we try to bring some of the signed stock that we have from the store, because people always like to get autographed copies of books. And then we try to bring some smaller gifty books. And just things we think people would like."

Book Soup's sales volume at the festival has gone up in the eight years of the store's participation, said Bright. "When we first started, it was a little wobbly; but then we got our system down, and it's continued to get better and better." Like many other exhibitors, Book Soup was featuring booth signings. Bright explained, "Full days, with six to seven authors each day."

The champion store for booth signings, though, had to be the Mystery Bookstore of Westwood, which featured hourly "seatings" of seven or more authors throughout the two-day festival. "This year, we set a record," said owner Sheldon McArthur. "One hundred twelve mystery writers will have signed in the tent. It's amazing to me that we've actually made it come off; we've gotten all the authors here, we virtually got books for every author, and it seems to have gone without any hiccups."

The booth's guests ranged from genre superstars (including Elmore Leonard) to first-time authors. "Most encouraging," said McArthur, "we had Peter Lovesey, from England, who'd never been here before." (Lovesey was a nominee for a Times Book Prize this year.) "Peter was overwhelmed, because he was sitting next to Elmore Leonard and had a line equally as long as Elmore Leonard's for his entire hour. He had no idea there were this many fans of his work, right here in L.A.!"

And all those authors were good for sales. McArthur said, "On a good festival, I do in two days what is a good month's worth of business in the store."
The festival itself, said McArthur (who calls the event "the best gift ever given L.A."), "just gets bigger and bigger. I think each year they come up with things they haven't done before; it's perpetual fine-tuning. I know they're gearing up for next year -- which will be the 10th anniversary."

And the Mystery Bookstore will be gearing up, too, he added. "We literally begin the inviting of the authors and the figuring out of our logistics in January; and by mid-February, we hope to have it pretty well laid out. If we don't, it's impossible to put it together." --Tom Nolan

Winners of the 24th Annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

Biography: Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (University of California Press)

Current Interest: Ross Terrill, The New Chinese Empire -- And What It Means for the United States (Basic Books)

Fiction: Pete Dexter, Train: A Novel (Doubleday)

First Fiction (Art Seidenbaum Award): Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Doubleday)

History: Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (FSG)

Mystery/Thriller: George P. Pelecanos, Soul Circus: A Novel (Little, Brown)

Poetry: Anthony Hecht, Collected Later Poems (Knopf)

Science and Technology: Philip J. Hilts, Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation (Knopf)

Young Adult Fiction: Jennifer Donnely, A Northern Light (Harcourt Children's Books)

Robert Kirsch Award (recognizing the body of work by a writer living in and/or writing on the American West): Ishmael Reed