Bookfest: Time for Slow Change

::Rant Warning::

A number of friends of mine who attended the Pacific Northwest Bookfest this weekend remarked that attendance was down significantly from last year. This morning, the Seattle Times ran a piece about the sparse attendance, citing mainly the new $10 admission fee as a cause.

While money wasn't the reason I didn't attend (crowd exhaustion, beautiful weather, and other plans kept me away), I can certainly understand how, in a lousy economy where jobs are scarce, a $10 admission could scare people off. In previous years, the Bookfest requested a $5.00 donation. If they'd made that donation the admission fee, rather than leaping to twice the price right off, they might have garnered a higher attendance. Next year they might have boosted it to $7.00.

What also puzzles me is why science fiction conventions can charge $50-$60 for attendance and still fill a hotel to overflowing while a larger festival with a broader appeal can't pack the place at a relatively modest fee. What do they need to do to change that? I'm not sure. Perhaps it's the setting? Perhaps it's a matter of customer investment, i.e., positioning their admission fee as a membership? I don't know.

My feeling is that they were looking at a deficit in their budget and panicked. I'm sure that fundraising has taken a hit in this economy (just like everything else), so they probably figured that jacking up the admission was the easiest way to go. It cost them, though, and it could cost the Pacific Northwest as well.

My question is: is this sort of quick fix really doing anyone any good? PNW Bookfest has suffered from curiously disorganized management (at least that's how it's looked from the outside) and impermanent facilities over the last few years. Positioned in one of the most literate regions in the country, however, it's got a stalwart following, and a huge network of booksellers, publishers and authors to keep it going. It just seems as though trying to come up with a quick answer rather than taking the long view and solving their problems gradually is imprudent at best and, at worst, could end the festival for good. And that, my friends, would be a loss to us all.

::End of Rant::

Deja Vu All Over Again

My running joke about working at The Company has been that I moved to Seattle to edit game-related fiction, and though it took 9 years to get here, I was finally doing it.

Well, not any more.

Today The Company laid off 23 people including me. They were very clear that it had nothing to do with performance but was, rather, a "reorganization," corporatese for "downsizing." Research and Development lost something like 6 people (myself included), Consumer Experience lost something like 5, Design lost a couple--it was a cut across the board. We'd heard a lot over the last few weeks about how certain products hadn't performed quite as expected, but I don't think anyone saw this coming. Everyone walked out of the meetings with a glazed look in their eyes.

There was a lot of astonishment at my being let go, presumably because I'm the only novel editor on staff and because I've contributed in a number of ways at The Company other than purely novel-editing. My surprise wasn't quite so acute. I was certainly astonished to learn that we were all being laid off. The fact that I was included, however, wasn't a surprise when one considers The Company and its products overall. Novels simply weren't seen as a core product line; they were always there to support the games.

So I wrapped up my business, bid my authors, agents and publishers farewell , stuffed my car with the product I received as a benefit, and drove off into the torrential autumn rain.

So how'm I doin'? I'm feeling remarkably sanguine, all things considered. I've been through this before. I've been miserable the last two months or so because of the two or three Projects I've mentioned in previous entries, and I've been hankering to work on some of my own stuff. There are people I'll miss and there are certainly projects I really wanted to see through to their conclusions. But these things happen.

Tonight I'm just Being. I don't anticipate a weepfest, or even heavy drinking, though there will be at least one good shot of scotch before bedtime. Tomorrow I'll get up, do a little cleaning, and then sit down and take stock of where I'm at in terms of money, connections, and ambitions. After that I'll figure out what comes next.

Right now I'm in a place we don't often get to be: standing on a threshold between worlds. For tonight, I'm going to enjoy the view back and the view ahead. Tomorrow I'll worry about stepping out.