Today, I’ll speak with Texas Book Festival’s literary director, Matthew Patin. Matt will tell us all about the Texas Book Festival and how independent authors can get involved.

1:30 - Matt, welcome to Published. It’s great to have you. Let’s start out with you telling us a little bit about your background.

• I have been in publishing and writing and editing for about 15-20 years if you count some college experience.
• I was an advertising major at UT and that's because I like copywriting and graphic design but my project in my last semester was with a real-world client which was Greenleaf and then I started at Greenleaf after that.
• Moving forward, I went to Harper Collins New York for a while. After that, I came back and worked as a content director and curriculum designer in the higher education space.
• I started getting involved in nonprofits in about 2014-2015 with the Texas Book Festival as a committee chair and so on and with Austin Bat Cave which is a literary and education nonprofit in Austin. Next January will be two years in this role at Texas Book Festival.

3:00 - For people who aren't familiar with the Texas Book Festival (TBF) can you tell a little bit about the event, the organization, and the mission?

• Texas Book Festival is one of the largest literary festivals in North America.
• It was founded in 1995 by Mary Margaret Ferebee and then-first lady of Texas Laura Bush who was a librarian by trade. One of the main missions at that time, and it’s still core to what we do, is raising money for libraries in Texas, especially rural public libraries. Last year was our 25th anniversary. And then 2021 was our 26^th.
• The mission has expanded in that quarter of a century. This year we gave $125,000 or more to Texas libraries, it’s still core to what we do, but also expanded our outreach programs to in-school appearances by children's authors and giving books to schools—mostly title one schools, in Austin, DFW, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley.

4:40 - Obviously, a lot of authors may be wondering when it is appropriate to get involved in a festival. Can you speak to when that might make sense for some of our listeners to consider?

• The first thing I would recommend is asking what the submission window is for whatever festival you're going to. And check out what kind of programs and what kind of genres does it capture. If you’re a children’s book author, asking “Is it mostly a children's festival. Is it mostly adult?”
• Texas Book Festival is a big tent festival so each year we have 250-325 authors and depending on the year it's about 60% to 70% adult (half fiction, half nonfiction with some poetry folded in there as well) and then 30% children’s (YA, middle grade, picture books).
• Getting an idea of what does this festival do and does your own book seem to fit into that to some degree. So that's where I would start, is by understanding the landscape of festivals, especially in your own region.
• If you're in Mississippi, you should be watching what the Mississippi Book Festival is doing. If you're in Miami it’s the Miami Book Fair. If you're in Chicago or the Midwest in general, it's Printers Row. If you're in Texas there's TBF, South Texas Book Festival, North Texas Teen Book Festival, and West Texas Book Festival.

• There's lots of events going on so I think one of the most important things is tapping into your community wherever you live and see what’s going on there.

7:10 - For someone who is participating, what should they expect? So that they go in with the right expectations, what should they be looking to get out of it?

• It's a little bit different depending on the festival or event but I would say for Texas Book Festival, we’re not a writers’ conference so to speak so we're not like AWP which is a writers’ conference or Romance Writers of America which have lots of genre focus. We’re a reader-focused festival so most of the events that we have are between 45 and one-hour sessions, sometimes solo authors, sometimes panel discussions, that are reader-facing.
• At the same time, we also put an emphasis on book sales and signing books. Of course, the last two years have been a different story but typically, if you go to a TBF session that takes place in Capital Extension Room in downtown Austin, afterward, you'll go to the BookPeople sales tent, purchase that book, take that book to the signing tent, and get your book signed by the author.
• With all that said, another thing that we try to do at Texas Book Festival is have author-focused events so that there is networking happening and friendships being formed. For many years we've had every author on the TBF lineup invited to the author cocktail party for instance and sometimes other events too depending on the year.
• Keep your eyes and ears open for those opportunities to connect with your peers because some of the best relationships are made that way. I know tons of stories of would-be authors who, because of the connections that they made at a festival, ultimately went on to publish a book.

9:30 - Is there any point at which it makes more sense, perhaps, to exhibit versus trying to be on a panel or otherwise participate?

• I think so. I think it’s just talking with your publisher or publishing partners and asking, “Are you going to have a presence in the exhibition space?” and saying “I’d like to have a presence there too.” It never hurts to have two presences. It's a bit more exposure and there's different kinds of foot traffic in different areas of the festival.
• I think it always makes sense to pursue the exhibitor’s path. It's different with every festival but it doesn't necessarily mean that you'd be excluded from being on a line-up or being in programming of some sorts. I would take advantage of that opportunity for sure if your publisher or your publishing partners are there at a festival or event.

10:50 - Now you mentioned 2020 and the curveball Covid threw to all of us and obviously that’s going to have a huge effect on an in-person festival so can you talk a bit about how you pivoted through that and your take on how, if at all, that made any impact on the connection between authors and readers?

• Going back to 2020, I think one thing we tried to focus on really quickly, even if we didn’t have all the answers, was jumping into virtual programming. We had never done anything to that degree before and that scale, so we got involved in that really quickly.
• So, 2020 was all virtual, of course. 2021 had its own challenges and I think it was a bit more challenging in a lot of ways because it was one foot in and one foot out.
• With an event as large as ours we can’t wait until the last minute, we have to start planning early. So, when we made the decision to pivot a lot of our programming to virtual this year, we were at stage 5 here in Austin and by the time the festival rolled around we were already back at stage 2 again, so, there’s lots of coordination and planning involved.
• I would say with reader and author connections, I think it definitely had an impact. At Texas Book Festival, we’re a statewide festival that takes place in Austin every year but finally we were able reach out better to Houstonians and Dallasites and San Antonio, and El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley so that was good.
• But as you know there’s that in-person magic that you can’t replace online like when you can’t go to a session and then walk to a book signing afterward and roam the sales tent and pick out those books you love and take them with you. There is something physical about an event like ours that is very hard to replicate.
• Also, online, and this isn’t a bad thing, people have tons of options about where they’d like to purchase their books. So, BookPeople is our official bookseller, but I can’t fault anyone from Dallas buying from Deep Vellum or anybody from Houston buying from Brazos Bookstore or if you’re strapped for cash, buying form Amazon and getting it more affordably. That book sales element kind of leaves our control a little bit in the virtual space.

15:00 - And what’s on the docket for 2022? Is it too soon to say?

• It might be too soon to say but I’d say we’re all, at TBF, very eager to get back in-person.
• I talk to book people every day, and people in the industry like publishers, editors, agents and so-on and it’s a little bit all over the map. Some houses and publicists have let me know that their authors prefer to do virtual, but others are very eager to get back out there, and we are too.
• At the same time, I think we all realize we can’t forget about these last two years and what we’ve learned from it. For example, we were at Austin Central Library this year for our in-person programming, and we livestreamed all of those. We’ve never done that much live streaming before.

• So, going forward, we’re thinking of how we can livestream more of the sessions at Texas Book Festival and reach a broader audience not only statewide but also nationwide, and even sometimes internationally. That was one of the amazing things we discovered last year. The platform we used gave us great analytics on where people were watching from, and it was always amazing to see people log in from places like London and Buenos Aires and we don’t want to lose that.
• So, we’re finding some sort of hybrid solution that is mostly in-person but can enhance the programming through a broader reach with technology.

17:00 - You mentioned some events scattered throughout the year, it’s not just the one big festival, so can you talk about what that lineup looks like and how authors can get involved if they’re interested?

• Yes, each year we have a handful of off-season events. For example, this year we hosted Ethan Hawk in conversation with Richard Linklater virtually.
• With children’s books, we do our Reading Rockstar’s which is our in-school children’s programming. In Austin, at the same time, is the festival in the fall but we do it at DFW, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley in the late winter and early spring, so a lot of our focus is there.
• We have a program for young readers in the older demographic so upper high school, lower college, called Real Reads.
• For how to get involved – I think this is true wherever you’re located, whether it’s Mississippi or Miami, start thinking of the long game and getting involved as soon as you can like volunteering for something. Texas Book Festival, for instance, relies on a thousand volunteers to operate in a typical year. Getting involved in that way is important.
• I can think of 2 independently published authors who were on the line-up in 2021 for instance and one of them had been involved in the literary community in Austin for at least 5-10 years. And the other one was an educator at a public school here in Austin and he’d been coming to Texas Book Festival with his children for many years. In fact, his picture book was inspired by a connection his son had with an author at one of our tents at Texas Book Festival.

• Whether you’re independently publishing or traditionally publishing or whatever direction you’re taking, it’s about taking that long game, getting involved and getting to know people. If you’re in Austin, I’d say, join the Writers League of Texas, take adult classes at Austin Bat Cave, take classes at The Writing Barn which is in south Austin.
• That’s how I’d suggest one way to approach it. Think not just for the year-of, but more broadly.

20:50 Great advice. So, for any of our listeners who are looking to get involved in Texas Book Festival or any other festivals, any parting advice?

• Number one is looking at a particular festival and seeing what kind of festival it is and understanding that festival’s landscape, especially regionally.
• Number two is getting involved with the community. And stepping back and thinking of publishing in general, if you’re pitching to an agent, you can cast a very wide net and probably get ignored or be more targeted. I think it's true of independent publishing too, I mean, what is your genre, what are you writing about, how can you connect with different organizations or societies so to speak within your own community to get the word out that can just grow it from there?
• A few more things is if you’re on the line-up at Texas Book Festival, by default, you are also having a signing session which typically takes place on-site where you’ll be escorted to the signing tent, readers will buy your book at the book sales tent, and you’ll be there to sign your book. I would say whatever event you're going to, whether it's a festival or a bookstore event or whatever it is, if you don't hear anything about signing, try to insist on it and say that you're happy to do that because signing your book leads to greater book sales.
• Another thing is that when you're working with an organization like Greenleaf, you're in good hands automatically because Greenleaf has fantastic editorial, design, and distribution operations. If you're going it truly solo and you really are trying to do it all yourself which might include the cover design, interior design, editing, printing and so on, know that it's going to be a bit more of an uphill climb especially when you take the distribution part of the equation. If your book isn't in a wholesaler, like Ingram, that can be ordered from by a bookstore, it's going to be harder to get your books into readers hands at a festival like this. A lot of booksellers order their books by-the-box wholesale and so if it's difficult for them to get their hands on your book it's going to be more difficult to sell it and, from a programming perspective, it doesn’t always make perfect sense.

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ABOUT MATT

Matt has nearly fifteen years of experience in books, editing, and publishing, primarily as an independent editor. Matt began his career as an author assistant, then interned at both the Austin Chronicle and aGLIFF—an Austin-based film festival—before occupying communications and editorial roles at two publishing firms. Since 2009 he has edited, collaborated with, or advised nearly 200 fiction and nonfiction authors, including award winners and bestsellers, and has contributed to Kirkus Reviews and the Austin Chronicle. He has a bachelor’s degree from the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas and is a California State University–certified ghostwriter. In addition to acting as TBF’s literary director, Matt serves on the board of directors at Austin Bat Cave—a literary and literacy-education nonprofit and TBF partner organization.