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The Virginia Festival of the Book (VABook!) is a nationally renowned annual literary event in Charlottesville, Virginia, for children and adults featuring authors and book-related professionals in over 150 programs. Programs range from traditional author readings and book signings to informal conversations, panel discussions, and workshops. Produced annually by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), the Festival promotes literacy and celebrates the book.
In its five years, the Virginia Festival of the Book has achieved powerful name-recognition by presenting a variety of authors and quality programs. Past participants in the Festival include John Grisham, Anita Shreve, Alice McDermott, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates, William Meredith, Orson Scott Card, Tami Hoag, David Baldacci, Sheri Reynolds, Lois Lowry, and Madison Smartt Bell, among hundreds of others. The Festival continues to grow in stature: drawing "big-name" authors, offering more, diverse programs, and attracting larger audiences. In addition to the swell in audience size-from 3,000 in 1994 to over 13,000 in 1999-increasing media coverage of the Festival attests to its growth and spreading reputation. As one of the nation's premier literary events, the Virginia Festival of the Book occupies a unique niche: it is the writers' and readers', the book-groups', and the book-lovers' festival.
The Virginia Festival of the Book maintains a vigorous on-going media relations and publicity campaign. The media campaign focuses on placing feature stories in a variety of print and broadcast media outlets. Mailing to an up-to-date press list (which numbers 650 outlets with the major concentration in the mid-Atlantic region), the Festival is in constant contact with assignment editors, literary writers, television and radio broadcast producers, and web site editors at targeted media outlets. The Festival also gains editorial mentions and placement on media calendars and daybooks by following up press releases and media alerts with e-mail, phone, and fax contact.
The Festival web site carries an electronic press kit, participant biographies and photos, and program information. The web site is updated on a regular basis and receives as many as 18,000 hits in the month of the Festival. Press releases and collateral material (i.e. press kits, programs, brochures, bookmarks) provide the mainstay for media contact.
Festival collateral material receives wide distribution throughout the mid-Atlantic region and state of Virginia with the help of the Library of Congress, the Virginia and Washington D.C. Tourism Bureaus and Chambers of Commerce, Virginia state libraries and school systems, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Board of Directors and its regional councils, the Festival's Advisory and Steering Committees, and through the efforts of hundreds of volunteers. Word of mouth on the event is exceptionally effective.
Working in cooperation with tourism bureaus, the Festival places paid advertising in media outlets in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area (i.e. The Washington Post) and advertises by means of trades and co-op advertising in several media outlets, particularly literary publications such as The Oxford American and Virginia Quarterly Review. The Festival and its authors have also benefited from earned media in an impressive array of outlets including Southern Living, Travel and Leisure, Publisher's Weekly, and Outside.
Event publicity includes media interviews with Festival participants and feature stories broadcast on local radio and network stations such as National Public Radio, C-SPAN's BookTV, TRAVEL CHANNEL, and Channel 29 (Central Virginia's NBC affiliate). Newspaper announcements carry event schedules and program information and central Virginia's The Daily Progress publishes a special 32-page Festival Edition.
In 1999 and again in 2000, C-SPAN's BookTV attended four days of the Festival and filmed 15 programs, which continue to air on C-SPAN2. Also during the 1999 Festival, WINA, Central Virginia's talk radio show, broadcast a series of six live interviews with Festival authors.
The 2000 Virginia Festival of the Book proved to be our largest and best event to date. A media campaign expanded in reach, scope and duration will provide authors high quality media and consumer exposure in a variety of outlets. Other public relations benefits resulted from the use of electronic news distribution for Festival news and releases. C-SPAN's BookTV again spent four days filming programs at the 2000 Virginia Festival of the Book. Such enhanced news coverage continues to build a national profile for the event and offers incalculable public relations benefits to the authors.
There are approximately 50 book festivals and fairs in the United States today. The Virginia Festival of the Book remains peerless in format, content, audience make-up, and quality of authors and literary guests. As David Streitfeld of The Washington Post Book World wrote, "This began as a small program in Charlottesville and has grown progressively bigger, involving many of the writers who live in the area as well as others (Jane Hamilton and Russell Banks, to name two) whose book tours coincide with the festival. I attended last year and can report that everything I saw was interesting and well-run." Offering five days of non-stop literary events, the Virginia Festival of the Book is a first-class opportunity to bring authors and their books to the public.
The seventh annual Virginia Festival of the Book will be held March 21-25, 2001 in Charlottesville.
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