

The following is an excerpt from the latest “Difference Makers” podcast interview with the Savannah Book Festival‘s Erika Dongre. “Difference Makers” is presented by the Savannah Economic Development Authority and features Q&As with Savannah community leaders. Full episodes are available at SavannahNow.com/podcasts or through mobile device podcast apps by searching “Difference Makers with @SavannahOpinion.”



Question: The Savannah Book Festival is in its 13th year. What makes it such a success?


Dongre: “From the board members to the regular festival attendees, what strikes me is how much they love reading and how much they love meeting the authors and hearing about the authors and learning from them. They’ve read the books.I think that intimacy and hospitality is really attractive to the authors. I loved hearing, especially from some of the newer authors, how welcome they feel at our festival and how they love the people. The questions they were asked leave them feeling like these people were really paying attention or they've read the book or they really want to know what made me think of this character or this story or decide to research this subject. That’s what really makes me smile about the book festival.”


Question: Let’s peel back the curtain a bit on the festival and talk about how it all comes together. The festival is an invitation-only event for authors, so you have a committee that decides who receives those invites. How do they make their selections?


Dongre: “We have a former publishing executive on our committee, a professor from SCAD, others who offer specific expertise. We come up with a wish list and start reaching out. I take a trip to New York over the summer and meet with all the big publishers. It's almost like publisher speed dating. We’ll go into a meeting and, depending on the publisher, talk about some books by their authors that we are interested in. We’ll ask ‘What do you think?’ And they’ll tell us, ‘Oh, he or she might be available. Let me reach out. And by the way, here are other authors we think you should consider, as well.’ Some of these publishers we work with regularly so they know our festival. They're good at suggesting authors. I come back with this big list and the committee, we go through it to come up with our original list of invitations. We'll send out 200 invitations to get to 45. We also do accept submissions. Local authors often send in submissions, and we like to have local authors at our festival, as well as nationally recognized authors.”


Question: The festival always offers a range of genres: fiction, nonfiction, history, cookbooks. Do you want to fill so many slots in each one? And are you conscious of what moves the needle with an audience?


Dongre: “We have categories and we try to fill each one. And yes, we do consider whether a book will be appealing to the audience. We might double up somewhere else. Perhaps there are two great books in the political thriller genre that everyone’s going to love. We’ll try to bring them both in. It’s not hard and fast, and we do pay attention to the reviews and the reactions to the books as they are published. If it’s a book that is going to be on everyone’s Christmas list, we want it for the festival.”


Question: The Savannah Book Festival is unique in that you don‘t pay authors to appear or speak, although you do cover their expenses. If they aren’t being paid to be here, where do the authors and publishers find value in the festival? A nice weekend in Savannah? Exposure?


Dongre: “It’s definitely about exposure. They publishers and publicists, they have their budgets to get their authors out there on tour. With the Savannah Book Festival, they don’t have to cover those travel expenses, but are still getting the exposure. The publicists love us, actually. They get all the benefits of exposure for their author and they don’t have to pay.”
https://www.savannahnow.com/news/20200207/qa-book-fest-director-authors-love-intimacy-of-savannah
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