The Stranger's Paul Constant might be right that last weekend's Seattle Bookfest was a "disaster for many of the participants." But that certainly wasn't the case for us. In fact, it was our best event financially this year (and we had a presence at Portland's Wordstock, Chicago's Assoc. of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, and indirectly, via our friends at Two Dollar Radio, at the Brooklyn Book Festival and elsewhere).

Same was the case with our colleagues at Tara Books, an Indian publisher of beautiful handmade books which is represented by Jenn Abel (who also works on CMP's marketing and publicity). She tells me that Tara made its money back within two hours of the fair’s opening on Saturday, gave out lots of catalogs and added tons of people to the mailing list.

Similarly satisfied was Book Publishers Northwest, according to a comment left at the Slog responding to Paul's "mini-rant":

Book Publishers Northwest sold 4x the cost of our booth at Seattle Bookfest and talked to the organizers about buying an entire room next year. We did have a great location, just inside the front door. Many of our members that I talked to, and we had members scattered throughout the exhibits, were satisfied with sales.

Book Fest organizers tell us that some 3,000 people attended and contributed $6,400. Not bad for a first attempt, in my reckoning. San Francisco's Litquake, which, as I've argued here, is a good model for Seattle as it is more local-oriented than national, attracted only 400 people its first year, 1999, at the pinnacle of the Internet boom, when it was a single-day event known as Litstock. This year, it was 9 days long and attracted more than 10,000 people. (See this reference in the Chronicle.)

By contrast, Portland's Wordstock was already attracting 10 to 12,000 people in 2007, its third year of operation, according to Executive Director Greg Netzer. Netzer, who took over management of the festival that year, said that the organizers had no attendance data from the previous two years. Some 13-15,000 attended in both 2008 and 2009.

From what I've gleaned, at least some of the panels were well attended. Bloggers have confirmed that there was standing room only at the graphic novel panel, at Knute Berger's ('Mossback') reading from Pugetopolis, and at the controversial "Is Seattle Hostile to Literary Innovation," panel.

There were problems, of course. Most of the people I asked had issues with the Columbia City location, regardless of its funkiness and proximity to a light rail station (Wordstock's location at the Oregon Convention Center has even less to offer). City-wide marketing could have been improved, signage and parking made more available, and panel topics spruced up. Why didn’t the panels include any of Seattle's new "literary tastemakers" such as Costco's Penny Clark Ianiciello or librarian Nancy Pearl? Or tackle pressing issues like e-books (since we're the home of the Kindle) and the rumored move of Elliot Bay Bookstore to Capitol Hill, which was in the news during the conference itself?

Our friends at Exterminating Angel and Pilot Books were, of course, legitimately upset with their second-class placement in the portable classrooms, and should have received a discount off their exhibitor fees and better signage leading to their booths. Moreover, exhibitors should have been organized according to type, rather than seemingly in alphabetical order.

That said, is it really fair to say that the conference organizers were "irresponsible"? Anyone who agreed to pay for a booth or participate in a panel knew that this was a new fair, starting out in a year of a general recession, and had to consider it a gamble. But at $150 for a booth (half the price of exhibiting at Wordstock), it wasn't such a big gamble, even for a small publisher like us. And for us, at least, it proved to be a gamble well worth it.

For some constructive criticism of the festival, check out this post by Philip Weiss