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The Seventh Annual Virginia Festival of the Book took place in Charlottesville, Virginia from March 21st through March 25th. The Festival enlists public relations professionals to develop and implement public relations plans and strategies, including opportunities for media partnerships, special events, funding, and to assist with publicity and media exposure from the local to national level.
Press releases are written and distributed manually and electronically from August through April. The releases announce notable authors and intriguing programs as they are developed. An annual press breakfast is held in February to provide local and surrounding media with inside stories and information to help them plan their Festival coverage in advance. After the Festival, a final release recaps the event and includes a page of statistics that summarizes Festival attendance and ratings based on Festival questionnaires. All releases are posted immediately online and remain available at www.vabook.org throughout the year.
The Festival office maintains a press list compiled throughout the seven years during which the Festival has operated. This list is augmented annually to reflect changes in media status, editors, writers and others who join the cadre of Festival followers and promoters. This year, new media outlets helped attract the largest number of book lovers Charlottesville has ever hosted for this event. Additionally, with the advent of a special electronic publishing event, media interest came from different areas, launching the event into cyber media and the international press.
The 2001 Publishers Day, which headlined a symposium entitled "The e-Book:
How to Publish and Promote Online" and hosted the First Independent e-Book Awards
ceremony, attracted the attention of an array of media from Internet sites, webzines
and online newsletters. Featured on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, in Publishers
Weekly, the event appeared on websites NPR Online, Wired.com, Bookreporter.com
and eBookAd.com. Festival programs were recorded for broadcast by C-SPAN2's BookTV,
the Odyssey Channel, WVPT Public Television, Public Radio, and NHK, the Japanese
Broadcasting Company.
Albemarle Magazine and the Richmond-based arts magazine 64 provided in-depth stories about the Festival and its producer, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Charlottesville's local daily newspaper, The Daily Progress (Media General), provides tremendous support as a full media partner by publishing many stories pre-event, covering events during the five-day Festival and printing a stand-alone piece complete with highlights, calendar and schedule of all events and programs. Other local media, including radio, television and print, help disseminate news, schedules and events. Annually WINA, a local radio station owned by Eure Communications, supports the Festival by interviewing authors, participants and organizers on their news and talk radio shows. The attention devoted to the Festival by WINA-AM as a public service is deserving of special note. WVPT Public Television recorded the Annual Luncheon with speaker Paule Marshall for re-broadcast. From the opening to the closing ceremony Sunday afternoon, the local media tracks the Festival events.
Nationally and internationally acclaimed authors, the Independent e-Book Awards, the media and devoted audiences of regulars and newcomers alike have all helped raise the profile of this event to the largest book festival in the mid-Atlantic region. The Virginia Festival of the Book has grown from a "backyard" series of readings into a five-day affair for book lovers with more than 200 programs and an audience of 15,700.
The media plan for VABook! 2002 is underway. As attention from the media has grown each year, so does interest from publishers and authors, visitors, participants, business and media partners. Sponsored by the city and county, many local businesses, booksellers, various media partners, publications and our own Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Virginia Festival of the Book, now in its eighth year, continues to entertain and inform audiences from near and far.
Nancy Damon
VABook!
145 Ednam Drive
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Phone: (434) 924-6890
Fax: (434) 296-4714
vabook@virginia.edu
www.vabook.org
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