EXPLORING THE POST-PANDEMIC LANDSCAPE OF SCOTTISH

LITERARY FESTIVALS: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Lee Randall

"Literary festivals are among our last remaining democratic spaces and we need them for our sanity, we need
culture and art to have nuanced conversations, nurture empathy, feed knowledge and turn good words into good
action." — Elif Shafak at The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary Festival 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

How Has Our Sector Responded to COVID-19

In the Beginning 5
First Responders 6
What We Did Next 7
Case Study: Digital’s Not for Everyone 8
Case Study: Britain’s First Drive-In
Book Festival 15

Where We Live Now:

Talking Points: Observations on aspects of the crisis 18
Innovative, Multi-Media Programming 18
Children’s and YA Events 25
Measure for Measure 27
Audience Engagement: Are they Paying
Attention? 31
The Importance of Good Chairing 34
Cultural Tourism or Cultural Exporters? 36
The Environment 40
Monetisation (and Book Sales) 41

Some Inclusion Talking Points and Specifics 49

Two Vital Takeaways 51
Tapping into Existing Technology 52
Dyslexia 53
Mental Health Challenges 55
Sight Loss 56

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 Hearing Loss 58
Reaching out to Refugees 60
Case Study: Ever Dundas 61
Digital Poverty and Exclusion 63

Nuts and Bolts 69

On the Day or In the Can? 69
YouTube, Vimeo, or Crowdcast? 73
A Word About Templates 76
Case Study: View from the Tech Desk 76
Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder 79
Case Study: North Cornwall Book Festival
At Home 80
Chatterboxes — A Tool for Boosting Engagement 82
Case Study: Personalised Signings at
Edinburgh International Book Festival 85
Sign Up or Rock Up? 86
The Tech Dry Run 87

Where Might We Go From Here?

Towards a game plan for best practice 90
Let’s Brainstorm 92

Appendix A: Additional Reading and Resources 103

Appendix B: Links to festivals consulted 107

Acknowledgements 108

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 INTRODUCTION

“I saw first-hand how a literary festival is put together — the conceptual aspect, the business aspect, the
fundraising aspect, the piles and piles of books read, authors selected, publicists pitched— and you’d think
proximity to such literary sausage-making would be triggering, but it wasn’t, maybe because it all seemed to
come from a place that was clear-eyed and practical, but also weirdly pure: everyone involved just loved books.
Their lives had been changed by books. They got excited about books. They wanted, genuinely, to bring
something good and nourishing and inclusive and necessary to everyone else. They wanted it to matter, not as
some effete rarefied enterprise, but as a relevant contribution to an urgent conversation.” — Susan Rivecca, in
If I Have to Die on a Zoom Call I’d Rather Be Talking About Books (Lithub.com, 27/3/20)

This report was commissioned by Creative Scotland, who asked me to

explore what tools, mentoring opportunities, alliances and best practice
strategies would strengthen Scottish Book Festivals as we move into a post-
pandemic world, where the expectation is that digital events will co-exist with
live events in blended festivals delivered both locally and internationally.
I have worked in this and related sectors for decades in a variety of roles.
This report includes my opinions and observations. It relies heavily on ideas
gathered by reading around the subject, attending (and delivering) digital events
during the pandemic, and interviewing a range of people involved in
programming and delivering events, primarily (but not exclusively) through
festivals. It incorporates — and expands upon — ideas broached in my essay for
the Wigtown Book Festival blog, published on 23 April 2020.
This research is not — cannot be — exhaustive. Circumstances are
constantly changing as the pandemic continues to throw the best laid plans into
disarray. How long will current circumstances persist and what will the
landscape look like post-pandemic? Nobody knows.
Among the Scottish festivals, I spoke to: Wigtown Book Festival, Islay
Book Festival, The Ballie Gifford Borders Book Festival, Edinburgh
International Book Festival, StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival,
Colonsay Book Festival, CYMERA, Ullapool Book Festival, The Stay-at-Home
International Literature Festival, Paisley Book Festival, Glasgow Life (which
oversees Aye Write), Bloody Scotland, Boswell Book Festival and Cove and
Kilcreggan Book Festival.
Other festivals consulted were: Reading is Magic (a collaboration among
festivals providing children’s events, managed through Bath Festivals), North
Cornwall Book Festival, The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary
Festival, Appledore Book Festival, Hay Festivals, The Margate Bookie and
Toronto International Festival of Authors.
I spoke to Peggy Hughes, Programme Director at the National Centre for
Writing, in Norwich, who has first-hand knowledge of the Scottish festival

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scene. I spoke to Philippa Cochrane, Head of Reading Communities
Programmes at Scottish Book Trust, whose remit includes Book Week
Scotland, an annual nationwide programme of events. Joseph Vaughan told me
about his work as Digital Production Liaison for Edinburgh International Book
Festival, and his own industry-centred festival, Publicate.
The authors I spoke to were Ever Dundas, Vivian French, Ian Rankin,
and Gavin Francis. Within the industry, I had conversations with publicists
Drew Jerrison (Viper) and Alison Barrow (Penguin, Random House), and with
Georgina Moore (formerly of Headline, now Director of Books and Publishing
at Midas PR).
My aim is to highlight what we have achieved and the brilliant ways in
which the book community have responded to this crisis thus far. I will look at
the opportunities ahead, and propose questions we can ask about how to
improve outreach to audiences that are slipping between the gaps. I’ll suggest
opportunities to support festival staff, and ask how festivals might support one
another.
This is a first step towards developing a long-range strategy to further
professional development, the delivery of quality programming, and offer
practical assistance from seasoned professionals.
None of this is meant to be presumptuous or prescriptive. It is meant to be
the springboard for future communication and collaboration within the new
Scottish Book Festivals Network (name TBC). There are more questions here
than answers.
As others have noted, this a marathon not a sprint — across terrain that’s
perpetually changing. Quick-fixes that served us in the short-term may need to
be refined or reimagined. If the future of book festivals is a hybrid model, this is
an ideal time to ask ourselves why we do what we do, and in re-examining our
goals, join forces to make those ambitions real.

WHAT IS A BOOK FESTIVAL?

• An agora for ideas

• A meeting place for writers, industry insiders, and story lovers
• A place for education and celebration
• A place where commerce and art intersect
• A nexus for cultural tourism

Perhaps a more pertinent question is:

WHAT COULD A BOOK FESTIVAL BE. . . ?

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 HOW HAS OUR SECTOR RESPONDED TO COVID-19?

“In a time of crisis especially, but, at any time, an artist’s responsibility is to participate in the telling of stories
that reflect the human condition back to humanity.” — Actor Thomas Sadoski, talking to Al Jazeera

In the beginning. . .

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing nationwide lockdown (Part I) sent

publishing and book festivals into a spin. Yet at the start of the year, despite
rumblings about what was happening around the world, some festivals were
able to go ahead as normal. The Paisley Book Festival took place about three
weeks before lockdown. The festival I programme, Granite Noir, happened in
February and was, at every level, our biggest and best yet.
Things changed rapidly. In March, Aye Write wisely and conscientiously
pulled the plug after one day to ensure everyone’s safety.
The world saw a sharp pivot to digital and overnight Zoom and Zooming
took their places beside Google and Googling in everyday speech. (Other
platforms and search engines are available, but these dominate.)
On 18 March, CYMERA, of which I am a trustee, decided to go digital
for its June festival, announcing that decision two weeks later. On 1 April
Edinburgh International Book Festival, along with all the Edinburgh festivals,
announced it had cancelled its 2020 programme. On 11 June the good news
came that they would go digital, and on 31 July, they unveiled their programme,
Keep the Conversation Going.
Scottish festivals that made the tough decision to pull the plug on their
2020 plans included The Boswell Book Festival, Ullapool Book Festival, and
Colonsay Book Festival. Boswell Book Festival later took part in the Reading is
Magic festival in the autumn.
As I noted in April, there are persuasive arguments in favour of digital
festivals. For one thing, no germs! They are planet-friendly, since no travel is
required, energy use is low, and a festival’s carbon footprint drops sharply.
From a programming standpoint, a virtual festival levels the playing field for
smaller outfits with tighter budgets, since there’s no need to pay for airline
tickets or accommodation. And digital events make conversations about books
available to new audiences around the world.

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 First Responders

One of the first out of the gate was The Stay-at-Home Literary festival
(27.3.20 – 11.4.20), organised by author and educator Carolyn Jess-Cooke. It
began as an idea mooted on Twitter on 13 March 2020. In record time Jess-
Cooke organised a wide-ranging programme featuring 145 events led by 220
authors writing across every genre.
Paper Nations joined as partners, including the festival in their “The
Great Margin” project, dedicated to giving voice to marginalised writers. The
festival was entirely pro bono. Forum Books, in Northumberland, functioned as
the bookseller. Jess-Cooke used Zoom as a platform.
The festival was a roaring success, engendering tremendous good will,
especially among writers who said they haven’t always felt represented at
mainstream book festivals. There was a lively “we’re all in this together”
atmosphere, and the overall feel was professional, no doubt thanks to Jess-
Cooke’s experience in teaching distance learning.
She said, “In terms of how the festival went, I felt I could take risks, in
that expectations were low. We were all stuck at home in this horrible, weird
moment. I didn't feel I had to make it all bright and shiny. As long as people
could access live literature, that was the main thing.”
The only negative that cropped up was Zoom bombing by trolls, which
was quickly sorted. The lesson learned was never share your access link on
social media and always monitor events.
Among the big, long-established festivals, Hay’s Wales programme ran
22-31 May, encompassing around 70 events, mostly live-streamed, offered free
on the day of transmission and by subscription thereafter. A Hay Player
subscription costs £10 per year, allowing unlimited access to their audio and
film archives. The festival had a tremendous response, with hundreds of
thousands tuning in.
May saw the arrival of the Big Book Weekend (8-10 May), spearheaded
by authors Kit de Waal and Molly Flatt. It was transmitted via MyVLF, and
supported by the BBC and Arts Council England. They built the programme by
asking cancelled UK festivals to pitch a couple of their best events for
consideration. Among the Scottish festivals, Aye Write, Ballie Gifford Borders
Book Festival, and CYMERA each won a slot, but with only 28 spots in total,
many more festivals were disappointed. (Presumably “cancelled” referred to
live events, as some participating festivals were able to pivot to digital.)

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 It was a lively and diverse weekend, and there are plans to mount a
second Big Book Weekend in 2021.
Another newcomer to the scene was the Lockdown Litfest, co-founded by
Paul Blezard (literary broadcaster and commentator), Wai Mun Yoon (tech
entrepreneur), and Palash Davé (cultural strategist and former VP of Hay
Festivals). All involved are doing it pro bono alongside their “real” jobs, and I
recall hearing Blezard at a webinar saying authors had been promised fees down
the road, when festival finances improve. They have banked an impressive
number of events featuring an international roster of high-profile names. Their
ambition is to go the distance as a global hub for literature post-pandemic.

What We Did Next

NB: This section provides an overview of some of the things that happened. Additional
information about specific aspects of different festivals appears throughout the report.

CYMERA, Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival, Bloody Scotland,

Edinburgh International Book Festival, Wigtown Book Festival, and Cove and
Kilcreggan Book Festival all moved to digital, and we welcomed Way Words,
mounted by students and faculty at Aberdeen University, to the digital realm.
The festivals rejigged their programmes to meet the challenge of getting
up to speed with new technology and new expectations on the part of the book
community and festival audiences.
For CYMERA, mounting their second ever festival with limited funds
and no time to lose ahead of its early June dates, the work had to be tackled in-
house by founder and director Ann Landmann and some festival stalwarts.
She explained: “At that point we’d seen how Zoom was working, and I
had seen what I didn’t want our events to look like, which was a whole lot of
people visible on screen. We sent a questionnaire to all our booked participants
to find out what kind of digital event they’d be happy to do, if any. Part of that
questionnaire discussed how we would pay them. We knew we weren’t going to
be able to pay what authors had received in 2019, since our money this year was
coming from ticket sales. Most authors said, ‘Thank god you’re going ahead,
don’t worry about the money.’”
Landmann rebuilt her programme with relative ease thanks to this
enthusiastic response. At CYMERA events were able to run simultaneously,
rather than one after another, which they accomplished by having both live- and
pre-recorded streams. Eighteen events were pre-recorded during the fortnight

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before the festival and stored on YouTube ahead of their air dates. Another
fifteen were live.
Audience members were asked to book for all events, even the pre-
records, because 100% of the ticket money went straight to the authors. Tickets
were priced free, £3.50 and £5.50. Therefore author’s remuneration varied. “We
sold 967 tickets in 388 transactions. That figure includes workshops, which
were not free, but priced at £3.50 and £5.50, and some bookings for our
Goldilocks launch,” said Landmann.
“Of the tickets sold, 67% went out free, 10% were sold at the concession
rate of £3.50, and 24% paid the higher rate. As expected, we sold more tickets
for the live events than for the recordings.”
All appearing authors had agreed to the fee arrangement in advance, but
it’s also true that their final remuneration fell below industry standards.
Excluding workshop leaders, 12 authors earned under £20; 20 earned between
£20-30; 16 earned between £30-40; 7 earned between £40-50; two earned
between £50-60, and two earned over £70. The five workshop leaders received
the income from tickets (sessions were capped at 20 attendees) plus an
additional £20 per session, funded out of a £100 donation from Writegear.
The festival had a separate donate button, and held back 10% of the
donations it received to cover its costs. It paid chairs £50, regardless of how
many tickets an event had sold.

Case Study: Digital’s Not for Everyone

The Colonsay Book Festival takes place over a weekend in April, when six authors are
invited to the island whose resident population numbers around 120. Event capacity is 80-
100 people. Visiting authors become part of the local community for two days, taking lunch
with audience members in the village hall and raising pints with them in the pub at night,
making for a blended experience for all concerned.
With the announcement of lockdown, the festival organisers — “an anarcho-
syndicalist commune that makes decisions by a 75% majority” — cancelled their 2020
festival. At the time of writing no decision had been announced about 2021, but festival
spokesperson Richard Irvine said that they are unlikely to go digital.
“I'm not sure if I believe that book festivals are the right activities to promote online.
There are so many existing channels that do all that already. If you want to sit in your pants
and listen to Martin Amis talk, you can do that on his YouTube channel, you don't need the
mechanism of a book festival for that.
“To me, book festivals are about the face-to-face personal experience. On Colonsay,
because we are so remote, the festival experience is intimately tied up with the island
experience. We get a reasonable number of locals coming to the events. Generally speaking,

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they wouldn’t travel off the island to spend three days going to the Edinburgh Book Festival.
Our festival is the only chance they'll ever get to meet an Ian Rankin or Sandy McCall Smith.
For us it’s about enhancing the reader experience for those on the island.
“And, if I’m being honest, it is also partly about tourism, to encourage people to come
and discover the island. We don't have the resources, nor, I think, the skills or the interest in
developing anything online. There are other people far better fitted to do that. It’s a very
simple thing we do here and we have no great desire to expand upon it.
“We've been back in touch with the [2020] authors and they've all confirmed that
they would be happy to do [2021], dependent on circumstances. It will absolutely depend on
what we're able to do. We make no money whatsoever and are very precarious in terms of
the economics of running the thing. If we can't sell a minimum of 60 tickets for the weekend,
we can't run it. That means if we use the village hall and can only safely put 40 people inside,
we can’t do it. [Safety] is always going to be an issue on the island because about 40% of the
population is over the age of 70. We have a very vulnerable community here.”
In addition to author talks, the festival hosts a “infamous drunken literary quiz” on the
Saturday night, and there is usually an industry event featuring an agent or visiting publisher
describing how the business works.
Irvine said, “It is conceivable that it will be two or three years before we will be able
to have these kinds of gatherings again. Of course, book festivals didn't exist until about
1982. I'm still amazed that authors are prepared to do it, and rather saddened, it has to be
said, that you can only get mainstream published if you're prepared to put yourself through
this mill.
“It’s conceivable that this could sound the death knell of the literary festival if so
much moves over onto digital platforms. In the future this might be seen as a staging post, an
historical anomaly. In 50 years’ time people may look back and say, ‘Yes, there was that patch
when writers used to get together with other writers, but now they’ve all got their own
channels, or their avatars appear for them.’”

While most festivals stuck to their traditional time slots, others

investigated moving lock stock and barrel to different dates. Boswell Book
Festival contemplated several autumn scenarios, including a drive-in book
festival, not unlike the one held at Appledore, in Devon. (See the Case Study.)
Ultimately that wasn’t possible, due to circumstances outside their control.
After contemplating a couple of date shifts, The Baillie Gifford Borders
Book Festival — which was poised to announce its line-up in April — decided
to reconfigure, spreading events out over the summer and into autumn. They
winnowed the 120 events that would have constituted a weekend in June down
to 30-40, making tough choices based around their determination to retain the
sense of the festival’s personality and character.

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 Seeing what other festivals were doing was a big consideration, explained
Director Paula Ogilvie:
“As we all know, there's a real danger of cannibalisation. That’s one of
the reasons why we spread our programme out so much. Because our festival
ran for so long, we were coinciding with Edinburgh, and Wigtown, as well. We
knew that certain names that would crop up in their programmes that mirrored
ours, and vice versa. You have to try not to have too many of those names, and
when you’re doing it, to think differently about who might chair the event. The
challenge for us, and for everybody going forward if we are still stuck in this
digital world, will be how do you manage to produce something different?
“There were a number of reasons for spreading our events out, but
another big decider was that it was essential to us to hang on to some of our
sponsors. Sponsorship benefits are many and varied, but a large amount of them
relate to being in a physical space, hospitality, physical signage, and so on. We
felt if we could offer this long exposure period, rather than just one weekend in
June, then they could see benefits. This was a steady heartbeat of engagement
with our audiences and sponsors, and we thought that was going to be our best
possible chance of hanging on to those who could afford to do it. We did not
want to have to rely on donations and possible book sales, which we thought
were great unknowns. We needed as much assurance as possible that we
weren’t going to dig ourselves into an even deeper hole by investing in this
digital programme. That was another compelling reason to spin it out.”
August saw Edinburgh International Book Festival unveil two studios, a
green room, and a special signing room set up within the Assembly Rooms. I
chaired two events for them and saw their set up in action. It was slick, and felt
safe, with social distancing and hygiene protocols carefully monitored.
Nevertheless, it was somewhat surreal not running into my book community
friends, as events were carefully scheduled to avoid overlap and unnecessary
interactions.
Their digital model saw various combinations: both authors beaming in
remotely, events where authors and the chair were all in the studio, and events
such as mine, where one person was in the studio, and another beamed in via
Zoom. Events were sound- and vision-mixed. If a BSL interpreter was present,
they worked against a green screen, and were filmed by a different set of
cameras. Viewers also had the option to enable a subtitle function when
watching from home.

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 Festival Director Nick Barley explained: “There were three parts to our
online operation. The first part was getting the images into the system to the
recording devices. There were cameras in the studio or on people's laptops.
When they came into our studio they were vision- and sound-mixed by our
team. A traditional Zoom call has two boxes, and the only thing that moves is
the yellow box around whichever person is speaking. With our vision mixer, if
the author was speaking, the studio manager would have made them big on the
screen and the chair small on one edge, and vice versa. If the author was doing a
reading he removed the chair from the picture. While this was going on the
sound team would be balancing the sound.
“Capturing this and mixing the VT, films, and other elements, was done
at one bank of screens in our studios. We had an intermediary company called
GloCast, who are a live streaming company. They would take that material and
feed it through the different platforms on which we were broadcasting. We had
a book festival platform, which most people would have watched, and where we
could see the number of people watching. Simultaneously, we were
broadcasting straight to YouTube, and there was a Vimeo channel. The BSL
interpreter was on a fourth channel, and the live captions were on a fifth
channel.”
Offscreen, staff members monitored the chat functions, dealt with tech
issues audience members might be having, and curated questions which were
fed to chairs to pick and choose from.
Attendance was free. Audience members could sign up in advance, or
arrive as the event began without signing up. More info about this option, and
about how they finessed personalised book signings, appears later in this report.

Come September, Bloody Scotland’s digital festival went live, featuring

an impressive roster of international crime writers. Programmer Bob McDevitt
said, “We had hoped to go ahead using social distancing. Then we thought
about supplementing live with digital. At one point we talked about a
completely Scottish Bloody Scotland, because international travel looked like it
would be impossible. As the summer went on it was clear we wouldn’t be able
to use our venues, so Craig Robertson and I each went to Stirling and did a little
filming, which we used as a trailer to open the events. We wanted to retain a
sense of place, even though we weren’t physically in Stirling.
“What really opened up for Bloody Scotland was the amount of
international authors we could have, and we used them differently. People who,

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in a physical festival, would probably have filled a venue, such as Tess
Gerritsen or Linwood Barclay, it was interesting putting them on panels,
instead. If you can offer unique panels where there are people speaking in a
fresh combination, or on a topic they haven’t covered at another festival, that’s
great. The danger of having too many big name people doing digital events is
that it becomes the same; they’re talking about the same books and the same
characters.”
The Wigtown Book Festival, which began building momentum at the
start of lockdown with its Wigtown Wednesdays programme, and by increasing
content on its website, also built a studio where they filmed events. They
augmented author events with short films featuring, among other things, the
booksellers of Scotland’s Book Town, and they reconfigured the length of
events to include short Tea With Words readings and half-hour lunchtime
sessions alongside traditional hour-long interviews. (For more about how they
broadcast, see Case Study: A View from the Tech Desk.)
Events were a combination of livestream and pre-recorded, with people
beaming in from around the world. I chaired one event with the author
physically in the room, but the rest found me ensconced with the tech team,
talking down a camera lens, looking at my author on a projector screen. The
festival team monitored chat boxes and fed chairs a curated selection of
questions to pose to authors.
Events were free and accessible via the festival’s YouTube page or
website. The Big Wig children’s and YA events were streamed via Facebook.
You could pre-register for an event or turn up on the day.

In England, The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary

Festival became a blended festival, offering a glimpse of how the future might
look. Lyndsey Fineran, Programme and Commissioned Manager, talked me
through their operation:
“Because we were further ahead in the year we wanted to do some live
events because we knew how saturated the digital market was, and how bored
audiences were. When Hay kicked off early in the year it was unique. Fast
forward a few months and everyone's done it. We started to ask whether we
could do a festival that had decent physical presence and footprint and deliver
that in a safe way, but also amplify all the content digitally?”
Their blended festival was considerably smaller than normal. “In an
average year we'll sell around 140,000 tickets to paid events around seven

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venues ranging in size from an 80-seater up to 1500. We also have an external
venue we can rent which is 2200. Once we knew we weren’t going to build a
big tented village we started exploring fixed venues in the town and ended up
using the Town Hall, which at full capacity seats 1000. With social distancing it
was around 240 seats. We had a smaller room within the Town Hall that usually
seats 180, which was down to about 45, and an external theatre that’s around a
600-seater, which sat 180, socially distanced and made safe.
“We used a combination of one-way systems, seating people in
household bubbles with appropriate distance in-between, and asking audiences
and speakers to wear masks when they were moving around the building. We
didn't do any public book signings. Pre-signings were carefully managed by
Waterstones with a fully sanitised setup. Authors would arrive early and do
their pre sign and sound check — but even that, having to get a mike fitted, had
to be done safely, so everything took longer. We had to ask guests to arrive
early, too. We sent out a lot of comms in advance talking through the process,
because for a lot of authors it was the first time they were doing anything live
since February or March.”
They were keen to allay fears authors might have while ensuring that no
one was excluded. “That's why we also had everything amplified digitally. The
contingency, if government guidelines were changed and we couldn’t have live
audiences, was that we’d still ask the authors to travel and treat the venues as
studio sets, to give the festival a sense of occasion. Worst case scenario would
have been total lockdown, when we'd have switched to the fully digital model.
Our plans had a few tiers.”
They did a series of eight filmed events with writers across the world,
sometimes in collaboration with an international festival, such as the Sydney
Writers Festival. “They had cancelled, so we said we’d love to offer some
support, please nominate an Australian writer that you think we should be
talking to.”
Those attending in person paid for tickets. For anyone watching at home
events were free at the point of air. The cost to view the whole festival on catch
up until the end of this calendar year was £20. For two of their big name
authors, they used the book-with-ticket model with their physical audiences.
Though both events sold out, Fineran said, “It's a model we try and resist. It’s
fine if you’re doing a one-off event. In a festival model, where people are
buying 10 to 15 tickets over the course of a week, suddenly adding a £30 ticket
in is problematic.”

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 Looking to the future, the trick, she said, “will be making the model
sustainable, working out what elements we would keep for future and what bits
we let fall by the wayside. What is it they say, never waste a good crisis?”
Another undertaking brightening things up this autumn was Reading is
Magic, created in response to the cancellation of the Bath Children’s Literature
Festival. Realising that digital offered the potential to open things up, they
invited other festivals to contribute elements of the programme. The ensuing
partnership comprised Bath Festivals, Bradford Literature Festival, Borders
Book Festival, Boswell Book Festival, Brooklyn Book Festival, Henley Literary
Festival, North Cornwall Book Festival, Wigtown Book Festival, and Toronto
International Festival of Authors.
A discussion about some of the nuts and bolts of pulling this together
appears later. All the events were school-centric, designed for, and in
consultation with educators, and offered back up material for use in the virtual
(or real) classroom.
Programme Consultant Janet Smyth said, “We were conscious that come
autumn, there would be a crunch point with festivals with geographically
specific audiences and strong children’s programmes. For the publishing world
it's perfect, because you set your author off on the tour and they go around the
circuit, effectively delivering kind of the same content over and over again. We
wondered what we could do that was going to be any different, and that an
author would want to be a part of.
“We felt we could identify key people and events that we wanted to do,
understand who else wanted to do that same event, and bring the festivals
together, so that we shared it. We decided to create Reading is Magic as a
completely separate brand, and everyone had their own identity within this
umbrella brand.
“Bath made a strategic decision to be the lead partner, so we took on the
production side. Everyone paid for their own author and chairperson, if it was
that kind of event. They supported in kind, in terms of the marketing and
organising their own book sales channels. This was quite important for the
North American festivals, whose sales channels were very specific to their
geography and their audiences.”
While all this took place, digital content poured out, and continues to
pour out, from a range of sources, including Penguin At Home, FANE
productions, MyVLF, At Home with 4 Indies, and a host of other bookshops.
For instance, Portobello Bookshop mounted safe in-store events which they

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livestreamed for public consumption. Similarly, indie publisher Orenda Books
now holds its book launches in the digital realm, alerting its fans via social
media, asking them to email in order to receive an invite.

Case Study: Britain’s First Drive-In Book Festival

https://www.appledorebookfestival.co.uk

A popular holiday destination, the fishing village of Appledore sits on the North Devon
coast. The festival began in 2006, when author Nick Arnold wanted to raise funds to save the
village library. Primarily run by volunteers, it relies heavily on supporters, patrons, friends,
ticket buyers, and the local business community. The 2019 festival consisted of 73 events,
which were a mix of Fringe events and author engagement. A Schools Week delivered more
than 120 events to 50 schools and four libraries.
Ann Juby joined the team as artistic director in January 2020. As pandemic restrictions
tightened, many of her plans were scrapped in favour of mounting the UK’s first Drive-In
book festival, consisting of 25 events delivered over five days.
Here’s what she said about the experience:
“Throughout March I was optimistic and carried on organising the festival as we
thought it would be. In early April we made a contingency plan. Would we postpone? Cancel?
Go digital? Go ahead with social distancing provisions? Putting together a timeline for that
really does focus the mind. As more festivals cancelled or went digital it was obvious we’d
have to look at something different.
“At the start of May I still had a nine-day festival in mind, though it was totally
understandable that some of our proposed authors did not feel comfortable travelling,
whether because of their health, or their age.
“Around that time I read about a drive-in cinema, and it was a lightbulb moment. I
made enquiries, found a company to work with, local to Devon, and we put together a plan
to create a safe, socially distanced, drive-in book festival. We had to change the whole format
and start afresh with a 5-day festival. I hadn’t realised we would be the first one in the UK.
“Our trustees had faith in us. As part of our contingency plan we set a cut-off of mid-
July for making a decision. By then I’d costed everything and had a sense from publishers and
authors about their feelings, and we put a robust Covid safe plan in place to guarantee
safety. On 13th July our trustees made the brave decision to let me run with it. We had an
amazing response in terms of writers saying I hope it works for you.

“It was more costly than our normal festival because the infrastructure was more
complicated, including getting an 8 metre wide screen, a big stage, a license to transmit
through FM radio, and an outside team. We had to buy in generators and fuel. We were used
to running the festival in the village community hall, churches, and the local school’s theatre,
for larger audiences. This year we had to rent a field! We found a fantastic local venue
attached to an activity centre, giving us access access to rooms we could use.

15
 “Historically we’ve used a yurt as our green room. We took that to the field, and
managed it so we could still socially distance hospitality for the author and chair, and also
create a space where authors could sign books. There was a second green room in the
building. Between each author the yurt or rooms were sanitised.
“We managed book signings without human interaction. Authors pre-signed all the
books, they went into a bag immediately, and that was brought to the Waterstones drive-
thru bookstore at the exit for collection. People were recommended to keep the book in the
bag for up to 72 hours because they’d been handled. We let everyone know what had been
touched and what hadn’t been. We wanted people to feel safe.”

“Each car was parked inside a designated socially distanced square. Groups had to
remain inside their squares. They were able to bring deck chairs to sit in front of car within
the designated box. We had no provisions for walk-ins.
“Of course none of us know what the weather’s going to be like. In the end, we were
lucky and only had some rain on the last day. But we noticed that even on the nice days, a
large number of people didn’t get out of their cars.
“We charged a per car fee, for a maximum of five people. Festival Friends had priority
booking a week before tickets went on general sale. (We also do special Friends’ events, and
they get a discount off at the bookstore. An annual Friends’ membership is £20.) Tickets cost
£20 or £30, depending on the event.
“We looked at the possibility of selling tickets per person, but to facilitate movement,
getting cars in and out through the entrance and exit, we decided a per car ticket was the
answer. Cars had their motors off during events. We were very clear about that, and posted
instructions on the screen about how to listen through the car’s radio.”
“We are hoping for small profit, but it was never about that. We did not want to
tickets to be unaffordable, and wanted people to feel it was good value for money. Even with
only two in a car, that’s £10 a head per event. We had to balance that with trying to break
even, and knew there was a possibility we might take a hit. We felt it was more about
keeping the festival alive, helping reignite the local community, and connecting people
again.”

“In terms of our sponsors, some of those who were historically sponsors were not in a
position to do so. We found sponsors for each of the events, but main sponsors were hard to
come by. That wasn’t ideal, but we understood. And the community understood. Hopefully
they’ll come back.
“In terms of sponsorship hospitality — bearing in mind that we are small and intimate
festival — we allowed an event’s sponsors to park in the front row. We created a 10 metre
gap between the stage and the first cars, both for the sightlines, and to ensure we had a
distance area to use for walking authors onto the stage. We could also use this area for
authors to be socially distanced but still meet and greet the sponsors. There was an

16
opportunity for safe interaction and photographs. Sponsors also received a signed copy of
the book. It was a completely different experience for them this year.
“One of our trustees was looking after an author, and after that the author went
backstage to be miked up, and the trustee thanked the sponsor again. The sponsor cut them
off saying, ‘No let me stop you there, I want to thank you for putting this on.’ I think we got
the balance right to ensure there was recognition from author to sponsor.”

“We didn’t go digital partly because I had come up with the drive-in idea, and partly
because our festival is in September, and I thought by then, people might be ‘Zoomed out.’
Looking ahead, I hope there will be room for both live and digital events. The concern for
most of us is that people are still going to feel nervous, even if restrictions are lifted. We
need to come up with solutions that will help people overcome those fears to ensure that
our festivals survive and thrive.
“During the events I’d walk around asking people how they found the experience.
They said it was nice to actually sit, listen, and be in the zone, rather than online. Audiences
want to connect with the writer. I want to feel I’m in the same room as them. That’s
something the drive-in brought, even though they were in their cars. The other lovely thing
we had was in those moments when humour erupted — it was lovely to hear the laughter
across the field. You don’t get that digitally.
“Festivals have had to adapt, and hats off for getting around the technology. I have
seen some wonderful digital events. We were very fortunate that our drive in festival
worked.”

• Additional information about logistics can be found on the festival’s website, in the
FAQs section.

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 WHERE WE LIVE NOW
Talking Points: Observations on aspects of the crisis

“ I’ll never have time to read them all and they keep making more!” —— Lee Randall, aged 8, driven to despair
by her first glimpse of a huge university library.

This section looks at some of the opportunities and threats our sector is
addressing going forward.

Innovative, Multi-Media Programming

Let’s be honest; all these months into the pandemic, many of us feel
inundated with content. At the start, digital book events were a novelty, now
they can feel like a chore, something to keep on top of rather than savour. In the
“before” days an average reader might attend one book festival and a couple of
bookstore events a year. Even if you’re in the business, as we are, one might
attend three or four festivals and a collection of in-store events a year. There
was no looming FOMO because most events took place at a remove. Even for a
programmer, keenly aware of what’s happening around the UK, an author’s
appearance at the Hay or Bath festivals wouldn’t preclude inviting them to
appear before a Scottish audience.
Our sector always knew digital was out there, always knew it would need
to step up, but we weren’t keeping pace. Which is not to say there’d been no
digital engagement, far from it. Book Week Scotland has had a digital element
for some time. Festivals have filmed events in the past, offering audiences the
opportunity to catch up with them online. Edinburgh International Book
Festival has offered visitors a chance to hear authors such as Norman Mailer
and Margaret Atwood beamed in and appearing on the big screen. At Granite
Noir we have offered livestreamed events, and in 2019, collaborated with
Crested Butte's Murder in the Mountains for a conversation where half the
participants were in Aberdeen, and half in Colorado.
Eleanor Livingstone, director of StAnza, told me they began creating
digital content in 2009, for the first Homecoming, and have maintained a
tradition of livestreaming some events. For one, they bounced around the globe
moving from author to author. “We organised events from Mumbai to
Sacramento, with people who organised their own half-hour performance and
their own audiences in their venues — theatres, art galleries, book shops. Then
they Skyped in. It lasted all day, moving against the clock. It was amazing. A
year later we were challenged to do a Skype cyber-slam with the Melbourne

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Winter Festival. That was more of a challenge, because it meant holding the
same signal for two hours, but we did it!”
Enter the pandemic, and boom, our sector was catapulted into digital,
forcing us to upskill at speed. We’ve coped, but there’s much to learn, and
technology isn’t the only area where changes need to occur. Programming must
adapt in response to the prevalence of digital events happening not only in the
moment, but lingering online indefinitely.

The internet is awash with content. It’s currently possible to attend a

dozen book events a day, but many feature the same faces, talking about the
same books. Therein lies the problem.
From a programmer’s standpoint, there was always a jolt of excitement in
being able to secure that big name for your festival.
Caroline Knox, Director of Boswell Book Festival, said, “It slightly takes
the fun out of everything if it’s easy to get any author you might like. Normally,
in Scotland, it's a battle to get authors to come to the festival, particularly if
you're somebody like us. Therefore the excitement that you engender around
having secured X conveys itself to the audience. I’ve looked at digital festival
programmes and they're full of big names, which is marvellous, but you think,
‘Well, they've got this big name, and then they've got them and they've got
them. . .’ What I don’t know is how local audiences are responding, because we
haven't tried it yet. Probably our local audience doesn't have this overall view of
what's going on the way we festival people have.”
Earlier I said that digital levels the playing field for festivals with smaller
budgets, who can’t fly in international writers for a physical festival. And it
makes sense that an immediate reaction to unprecedented hardship is to book
the biggest names possible in pursuit of hits on your channel. But the resulting
repetition is glaring because content lingers in cyberspace.
The hope, as it is with a physical festival, is that a big name draws people
in, making them more likely to attend events featuring lesser-known names. But
right now, with so much uncertainty and finances in disarray, festivals might
find themselves unwilling to take the risk of putting on a potentially fascinating
event if they are worried that it won’t generate views.
That’s why I’m concerned about authors who aren’t brand names losing
opportunities to connect with readers — losing opportunities to be the
bestsellers of the future. Midas PR’s Georgina Moore has the same concerns:
“The people who have lost out are the mid-list authors. It keeps coming up in

19
my conversations and it’s something that came up at the Big Book Weekend,
where all the top level programming was getting through. Of course, they
needed it to be big names to attract audiences. When you’ve got your audience
in a physical space they might take more chances — not unlike the 3-for-2
offers in bookshops, where you grab something that sounds interesting because
you have time to kill before your next meeting. There are fewer risks being
taken with virtual events.”
Along with authors, audiences also lose out, and will tune out, if they’re
offered an unvarying diet.

Programmers will have to think differently about what we do and why.

I’ll talk about Zoom fatigue later, but now that the novelty of digital events has
worn off, audiences may respond positively to having fewer, higher quality
events to choose from. That will test our mettle in matching chairs to authors,
and in building panels with the potential to spark fresh conversations that head
in unexpected directions. It should impel us to explore alternate digital formats,
away from the traditional talking heads set-up. As someone said recently,
“Book events can’t just be voices screaming at you from a computer.”
Back in April, Alison Barrow, PR director at Transworld Books (part of
Penguin Random House), told me, “I think at the moment we are preaching to
the converted, replacing what they would have had normally. They would have
gone to festivals and bookshop events. What the industry needs to do is reach
beyond that, but we can only do this if we are offering something that is high
quality, consistent, entertaining, educative, and that gives you a reason to keep
coming back.”
Drew Jerrison, Publicity Manager at Profile Books, said that the
industry’s immediate response to lockdown was to get as many events as
possible out online, targeted at groups with a strong core following. But things
dropped off dramatically, especially if an author did multiple events in a row.
From his perspective, cherry picking events for his authors to do proved a better
option. “We’re being more selective now. For example, Attica Locke appeared
at Bloody Scotland and she did a talk for Noirwich that was transcribed for The
Guardian. For us that felt like a real package.”
Alison Barrow recently said, “Exclusivity is a thing. What I’ve found is
where you have a clutch of events the audiences cannibalise each other. If it's
online, most fans will go to the first one. If they can't for whatever reason,
they'll go to the next one. By the time you've got to number six along the line,

20
forget it, you’ve had your moment. What you're looking for is something really
different.”

Authors know this. Ian Rankin said, “When you do a live event it’s a one-
off, not to be repeated. With virtual the event is saved forever and you’ve
suddenly got a worldwide audience for everything you do, which means when
you tell a story twice in a row, people will notice”
One way to mitigate that is by creating unusual pairings to spark fresh
conversations. Nick Barley did that with author David Mitchell, proposing that
he pair Mitchell with folk singer Sam Amidon.
“David kept saying, ‘He sounds much more interesting than me, why
can't it just be me interviewing Sam?’ I explained that a lot of people would
want to hear about Utopia Avenue.”
Mitchell pointed out that by the time Edinburgh rolled around he’d have
done 20 or so events around his latest novel. He was bound to repeat stories and
jokes over the course of those conversations, and worried about boring his fan
base with all those events cached online.
“He said, ‘Thank you for giving me Sam Amidon, and please let me try
and create an event which is totally different from anything I've done before. If I
do that, it's better for brand Mitchell.’”
Barley concluded, “That story is a blueprint for the kind of conversation
every single author should get: What are we going to do together? How can we
do it? Let's not do the same thing you did anywhere else in the past. I want more
of that.”
At the same time, Barley recognises that the bigger the programme, the
less likely it is that each event can benefit from such close attention. It’s also
true that he and Mitchell have a longstanding relationship, and were able to
speak directly, an option that’s not always available to programmers when
building their schedules.

We should ask what digital offers that a live event cannot, and strive
make the most of that. Our competition for audiences comes from not only other
festivals and bookstore events, but other media. Effectively, digital events turn
us into broadcasters. It’s worth looking at other artistic disciplines to see what
they do and how that might be adapted to our sector. That could mean creating
more content with films, more author- or story-led walks, more audio-only
events, or even multi-sensory experiences.

21
 That was the approach taken at Margate Bookie, said Director Andreas
Loizou. “Pivot is the most overused word at the moment. Because of my
working experience, I've used Zoom, Teams, Skype, and I knew that this was
not the solution [Margate was] looking for. I remember in April everybody
discovered Zoom, everybody. It has its place, but it was so overdone. I know
that from the events we’re running, it’s harder now to get an audience for a
Zoom-only event.”
When his team said, “Let’s go online,” he said, “Let’s wait.”
He wanted to innovate. Step one was a fanzine built around the Punk DIY
ethos, offering a showcase to writers in their network. Next they looked at a
scheduled poetry slam. “We took the slam and spread it over 15 nights, giving
every poet 10 minutes. It built the element of competition. We did it on
Facebook and noticed that instead of getting 100 people in a room, we ended up
with something like 3,000 views.”
Their third initiative was an online short film festival.
Finally, they launched A Different LENS, an interactive map produced
by Elspeth Penfold, an artist who incorporates walking into her practice. The
curated literary map uses locative media and can be accessed through a URL on
a phone or computer. It will keep evolving. One element is a series of shrines to
five authors and their books dotted around town.
Loizou said, “People can take a theme, such as sand, they can write a
poem about sand, and we can put it up with sound clips, pictures, videos,
capturing what it’s like at the beach. Another of our themes is blindness, so we
have people talking about Milton. Elspeth is working with people from East
Kent Mencap, who have a completely different view of the town. We got
funding for them to do artwork around their thoughts and feelings, and you will
click on the map to access ten people’s experiences. We felt that artwork was a
more creative response than ten people on a Zoom call — which is a valid
experience, but this is a different approach.”
Eleanor Livingstone, Director of StAnza, regularly explores imaginative
approaches for her festival’s celebration of poetry. “In the past we've used
sound installations and things like that. Just because an event has to be online, it
doesn't have to be visual. Part of the work we did over the summer was make
audio recordings, which are more concentrated. It’s not necessarily a poor
experience because there's no visuals coming with it.”

22
 Realistically, not every festival is resourced to be able to create cutting
edge programming. The team might be freelance or volunteer, the budgets could
be low. Are collaboration and co-production ways around that?
Lithub.com’s article, What Happens When Literary Events Move Online?
(Anna Leahy, Sam Risak and Tryphena Yeboah; 15.10.20), offered inspiration
about how collaborative programming might work:
“Wordplay . . . was among the first large-scale community literary events
to make the shift from in-person to online programming. Founding Director
Steph Opitz told us the organizers decided in March to switch formats instead of
cancel, in part because she was concerned about all the other cancelled events
for authors with new books and in part to curb financial losses. ‘It happened so
fast and it was new to us, so we thought we might as well try it,’ Opitz said.
Wordplay leaders quickly reached out to organizers of other book festivals to
collaborate, which worked out especially well. Wordplay, for instance, hosted
an interview with Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie, Oregon Public
Radio produced the audio, and The Believer published the transcript.”
The Reading is Magic Festival, and work the Scottish Book Trust does
with its nationwide network of partners, are other models we could study for
tips and inspiration.
Scottish Book Trust’s events run all year round, and all over the country.
They receive additional annual funding from SLIC which, in a normal year —
2020 was a blip — they use to fund Book Week Scotland events with every
library authority in Scotland. Philippa Cochrane explained, “This year not
everybody could participate, because of building closures and so on. In previous
years, every library service has taken part. The money comes in from SLIC and
goes right back out, and we put the Book Week Scotland framework around the
event.”
In the first half of each year Scottish Book Trust puts out a call for other
partner organisations to take part in Book Week Scotland. This year,
organisations could apply to either put on digital event or a socially distanced
community activity.
They ended up with some purely digital events, some that were socially
distanced, and some that blended the two approaches. Every interpretation
reflected the community and partnering organisation’s understanding of its
audience and their preferences. For example, the University of Glasgow’s
Creative Writing Programme put on a “Queerness in the 1980s” event with
then-Booker-shortlisted writer Douglas Stuart. An event programmed by

23
Ceòlas, called As an Tobar Stories, featured a collection of twenty of the best
Gaelic short stories, read by their authors, who were also interviewed about the
impact that writing in Gaelic would have on their future careers. (For more
information, visit https://www.ceolas.co.uk.)
Another example was the guided walk put on by Kinross-shire Local
Events Organisation (www.kleo.org.uk). During a walk around Kirkgate Park
with author, illustrator and designer Esther Kent, attendees were encouraged to
think about things they could make from a pine-cone and a feather, and finding
a favourite bird to draw, to cite two examples of activities. They were
encouraged to share photos of their creations on the KLEO Facebook page.
For more information about Scottish Book Trust’s year-round events,
please visit their website, www.scottishbooktrust.com, and feel free to drop
them a line. Cochrane told me she’d love to see more book festivals get
involved with Book Week Scotland.
At Reading is Magic, said Programme Consultant Janet Smyth, “We had
already chosen Cressida Cowell as our guest selector for Bath Children’s
Festival, so she migrated into the Reading Is Magic brand, which gave us a nice
framework in which to establish the partnerships and to slightly separate the
ownership of them. We created a new image and identity and tried not to
overlap on content, so that we could pool our audience groups and still provide
content that we may have had individually within the physical world. We could
bring this together and then put it out to a conjoined audience group.”
Another model to consider is Paisley Book Festival, which took place for
the first time just before lockdown, but is migrating to digital for its second
year. Paisley benefits from an array of grassroots activities, such as local writers
groups and reading groups. Libraries and schools are also engaged with
community events.
The festival’s Co-producer Jess Orr said, “What was different from other
book festivals that I'd worked on was that some of the events would come from
a local call out. That’s an interesting balance to strike between showcasing the
local authors and events that have been pitched to us, and the other part of the
programme which is us thinking about who we want and pursuing them.”
If they green-light a pitch it’s treated like any other event, with the same
fee, support, and so on. Proposals can come from individuals or organisations.
If the latter, the festival team creates a partnership around the event, though they
handle all ticket sales and marketing. The festival also works with guest
curators, working around a theme of their choosing.

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 As an aside, it’s worth noting that every time we collaborate we gain
access to additional mailing lists and networks. Alison Barrow noted, “One
benefit of [Penguin, Random House] partnering with festivals and bookshops,
or just any third party, is the access to that third party's database of contacts who
have previously signed up for events in real space or just have an interest in
connecting.”

Children’s and YA Events

Digital children’s events present an interesting challenge, and my

experience as a viewer (with no experience of parenting, it has to be said) is that
it’s easy to miss the mark. Without young readers in the room to focus on,
writers and interviewers can lose track of what the event is for, speaking as
peers rather than delving into questions that kids want answered. I have seen
writers read in uninflected tones, forgetting to look up and engage with the
camera. That’s bad enough before an adult audience, worse if holding a child’s
attention is required. It’s not the way to get kids to fall in love with books.
Janet Smyth said, “Kids are not hanging around for long. Rarely do they
sit down and watch a movie all the way through or even a TV series; everything
is short, sharp bursts of immediate content that has to be sparkly, has to have a
bit of music and has to be really sharply edited. The competition is more
challenging in the digital world for young people’s events — and they are
making their own content, as well. They’re all using TikTok, they’re all making
Instagram stories — and they’re better at it than we are.”
In other words, there’s a difference between a festival arriving in town
once a year as the highlight of the local calendar, or it being just one more thing
on a screen vying for a family’s attention. The goal of attracting live viewing
figures for kids’ events becomes even more problematic during holidays and
weekends and possibly shouldn’t be a goal at all.
Children’s author Vivian French told me, “The people who have a little
bit of a performance background really score because they know how to change
expression, and bring things for kids to watch. I think the online events work
much better if you've got somebody interviewing the author, because it gives
you a break, a different face to look at, and a different voice to listen to. Plus,
they can respond to what the person has said. As long as they both keep the
viewer involved.”

25
 She recalled being raised on programmes such as Tony Hart’s, and
recommends that we look to children’s television for inspiration. “Children's
authors and illustrators should be recommended to see how they do it because
they’re experts. Some of the draw-along events I’ve seen this year have been
great, but sometimes they go too fast. Keep it really slow, but chat a lot and
make it interesting — maybe even make some mistakes. In other words, making
it feel more realistic works better. You need to talk to the camera as if there is a
person there, which people sometimes forget, and then viewers feel left out.”
Tying digital content to a schools’ programme, complete with resources
— the model used by Reading is Magic — may be the answer.
In terms of numbers, by early November they’d had more than 10,000
video views with people tuning in from 67 different countries. The team
projected they would reach 176,000 children by the end of 2020.
I’ve written elsewhere in this report about some of the nuts and bolts
involved in putting on Reading is Magic. It was a carefully constructed,
dedicated children’s programme created with schools in mind from the very
beginning.
Janet Smyth said, “We packaged it so that there were resources around
each event that teachers could tap into. For example, for Adam Murphy's event,
the teacher could use that for a whole hour in the classroom. They could pause
it, get the kids to do their drawings, and then come back. We encouraged
authors to respond as if they were live, for example, saying, ‘Hi, I love what
you've just done.’ Kids events, unlike events for adults, are a different ballgame
if you want to do it in a way that it's going to be successful and going to be
watched, and in a way that’s going to be interesting. If an event’s production
values are at all ropey people stop watching.”
Smyth said, “We made a deliberate choice to be a schools programme,
because over the summer there had been a busy marketplace of family content,
not just book festivals but theatres and music. We decided the one thing nobody
had really focused on was a festival designed for schools use.”
In Scotland this past summer, Glasgow’s libraries took part in the
Summer Reading Challenge, delivering The Silly Squad, featuring 14 authors.
Viewing numbers across Scotland were low, said Glasgow Life’s Katrina
Brodin, Programme Manager (Reader Development and Literacy).
“By the end of August it was 1,795 views for 14 events across Scotland,
with heavy promotion. Events were about 20-25 minutes long and the average
view duration was coming in at 4.22 minutes. That’s only 20% of the event

26
being consumed digitally, whereas in that protected space or the live space,
those kids are captivated from beginning to end. To put that in context, it was
the holiday, so there wasn’t a schools route to promote it.”
Several festival directors I spoke to said the current approach to digital
children’s events would benefit from a tweak, whether that’s rejigging their
length, their content, or the way they’re produced. The answer might even be
that live audiences are essential for events aimed at very young kids.
It is worth considering Young Adult (YA) events separately from
children's events. Wigtown Book Festival’s artistic director Adrian Turpin was
particularly positive about the role of digital in the festival's Young Adult
programme: "Traditionally it's been hard to create satisfying YA events in a
physical space. Lack of access to transport for young people, a large, sparsely
populated region, and competing activities during the small windows in which
events are possible have meant that getting a core group together is always a
challenge outside of an education programme.
"This is also often a disincentive for publishers and writers who may be
asked to travel a long way and give up days of their time to speak to a very
small audience. Digital allowed us to reach a wider audience and to programme
consistently later in the day (for example, 9pm), at a time more appropriate to
the audience.
"We recognise that the experience and being in the same room as writers
is even more important for a YA audience than most. But this is one area where
a hybrid model in future may be particularly effective — offering live events to
small audiences that are simultaneously streamed to young people who can't
otherwise get there, and to authors' wider fanbases."

Measure for Measure

Data rules modern life, but in our rush to measure absolutely everything,
shouldn’t we stop to ask why we’re doing it — and how to translate those
statistics into meaningful changes?
Adrian Turpin asked, “What does it mean when you have 30,000
YouTube views? Is that still the same high quality level of engagement? Do we
know? We can talk about how successful we are in terms of numbers, but what
are we? What are we trying to achieve? Does what we're trying to achieve
change because of digital?”

27
 Nick Barley voiced similar ideas. “I'm not asking what digital success
looks like, I'm asking, ‘How can we create public discourse? A community of
thought?’ Thinking things through together is what really feels special when a
festival event works. Online and live events need to contribute to the sense of a
community of thought. If they're not doing that, then they're probably not very
good events. Success means creating a sense among participants that they are
part of something that's making them think, helping them understand their place
in this scary, confusing, chaotic anarchic world, and the sense of agency and
trying to make it a little bit better. If we can do that, then we've got a festival.”

What are we measuring?

Registration at events, is one measure (the benefits of using a registration
system are discussed elsewhere). Chris Bone, of Hay Festivals, talking about
this year’s May programme in Wales, said, “Some of our events were showing
up to 20,000 registrations, and we thought, ‘Okay but what will that equate to in
terms of live views? A few hundred?’ Not at all, it was an astonishing number,
like 70 to 80% of people who registered would turn up. That has changed. Now,
I think we're around 50%. But I've heard about some festivals that are in the
region of 10-20%. A lot depends on how early your programme goes up. We've
yet to see where the sweet spot is, but if you’re asking people to register, it
seems to be a month to three weeks before the festival, get to a good level of
commitment.”
We also measure the number of visits per event, though it’s worth
remembering that each tick represents a device, and we don’t know how many
people are sharing it. Visiting figures can be separated into ‘on the day’,
followed by a cumulative tally of catch-up views while a video’s available
online.
But once the audience is in, how long do they stay before logging off?
That varies event to event, festival to festival.
Paula Ogilvie said, “We saw an average 10% drop off between an event
starting and finishing. Our author Q&As normally started 15-20 minutes before
an event’s scheduled end time and we didn’t see any discernible reduction in
viewing numbers over this period. When the Q&A continued after an event had
finished (i.e. the screening was over and only the post-event holding image
remained visible), viewing numbers dropped by 55%, and steadily petered out.
We wouldn’t really expect any other pattern of behaviour.”

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 Nick Barley said, “Our audiences stayed in events on average for 43
minutes. Inevitably a proportion will have landed on an event, thought 'this is
not for me,’ and left after a few minutes, so if you factor those in, we think 43
minutes is very significant, because it means that the vast majority stayed for
the full hour. I very much hope it's a figure matched by other literary festivals,
and if so, it will prove that our online audiences are tenacious and deeply
engaged.”
Wigtown audiences watching on YouTube stayed an average of 15
minutes. That number requires context, however. Wigtown's figures are skewed
by the fact that they had many events (e.g. short films and readings) that were
15 minutes or less in length. Further analysis is taking place of individual
events, but Wigtown's experience of hour-long events outside the festival is
that about 80% of the audience stay for the entire event.
Bloody Scotland audiences stayed an average of 38 minutes on Friday, 45
minutes on Saturday, and on Sunday they stayed an average of 56 minutes, a
figure that might skew higher because that evening the festival broadcast a play.
As an aside, I experienced an interesting phenomenon thanks to the
rolling model of events at both Bloody Scotland and Cheltenham. Because they
followed in quick succession, I was drawn in. Having pencilled only one event
into my diary, I found myself hanging on to see subsequent events. If others did
that as well, it must have had an effect on the statistics. Presumably I was only
counted the first time I joined the feed?
Most festivals were viewed by far more visitors than they’d welcome in
person in a normal year. For example, Bloody Scotland had 27,000 visitors
tuning in from five continents and 20 countries, three times more than
physically attended in 2019. Bob McDevitt said, “For us, success was the
genuinely global level of engagement, which was brilliant. We got really good
feedback about the festival. I also thought panels were good, because we
weren’t competing against ourself, with three venues running simultaneous
events, and we were able to put at least one big name on each panel.”
Edinburgh International Book Festival’s 146 events were viewed more
than 210,000 times around the world, a number that will grow thanks to those
catching up on demand. During live events the screen displayed a ticker, and
watching Nicola Sturgeon interview Bernadine Evaristo I saw the viewing tally
race into the thousands — many more than would fit into their largest marquee,
which seats around 750 people. According to the festival’s website, a whopping

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5000 tuned in on the night and 11,220 watched later on demand. Audiences
came from every continent except Antarctica.

Event in the Spotlight

In July, Aye Write programmed a conversation with two popular crime

writers. Katarina Brodin said, “We sent an email out to about 18,000 ticket buyers
to tell them about that event. I think 34% opened the email and 6% clicked through.
In terms of cold call that’s successful, because 2% is usual in the industry.
“The event received 880 live views and playbacks. The average view
duration on that night on the live views and playbacks was 15 minutes 20 seconds.
Maybe a third of the event. The next day it was still up and we had 930 views, with
an average viewing duration of 17 minutes 22 seconds, which is 26%. By day two,
it had almost 9,000 impressions online. Twenty-four hours later that had gone to
11,044 views, but the average view duration had dropped to 16 minutes and eight
seconds.”
An impression is when digital content renders on a person’s screen.
They’re used to measure the performance of most kinds of online advertising. A
view refers to the number of times someone engages with digital content. To qualify
as “viewed” the content need not be watched through to the end. Five seconds
counts as a view on Facebook, and 30 seconds counts on YouTube.
For that summertime event, said Brodin, “Impressions were just under
12,000. Two weeks after the event we had 1,417 views, and average view duration
had fallen to 15 minutes and 40 seconds, and we had about 15,500 thousand
impressions. The biggest route for people organically discovering the event was via
suggested links that you get on YouTube, and the biggest social media push to it
was from Twitter. People accessed it via an organic search on YouTube 79 times.”

Still, what do we do with these numbers? Maybe we need a digital impact

toolkit, suggests Adrian Turpin. “Between our launch and the end of the festival
we had 325,000 page views on our website. We had 32,000 YouTube views and
38,000 Facebook views. The YouTube average stay was about 15 minutes. Is
that good? In the same way that we've become used to KPI figures for audience
attendance, we need some kind of metrics for digital.
“Out of all the people from abroad, Canadians watched the longest, at 17
minutes. Americans averaged nine minutes, which probably tells you something
about the different country’s attention spans, and reflects on Canada being more
attached to Scotland.
“If we're going to talk about the impact of our events, we've got to say,
‘What are we trying to achieve? Have we actually achieved it? What figures can
we bring to show that we're getting engagement? Do we need to do that in a
different way?’ Nobody's had time to worry about that. Everyone's worried
about surviving, and funders are worrying about organisations surviving, but in
the long term, we cannot have a sector where we’re saying, ‘We did really well,

30
we had 20,000 views.’ For all I know we should have had 300,000 Facebook
views and 300,000 YouTube views.”
Here we are beaming our content around the world, but what is it doing
for those audiences? Or for our festivals? How can we retain our new digital
audience without alienating loyal core supporters?

Audience Engagement: Are They Paying Attention?

Does this sound familiar? You log into a digital book chat and while the
introductions are happening, spend a couple of minutes checking out what the
participants are wearing. You twist your head to read spines and see how many
of the same books you own. You admire their paint hue, their cabinetry, their
soft furnishings, their artworks. Eventually your attention refocuses on what’s
being said, and it’s truly interesting — but does it require your eyeballs?
A friend of mine tweeted about how much he enjoyed hearing my
conversation with Rutger Bregman for Edinburgh International Book Festival
— while also framing a picture. This is pretty common. Lots of us, with the best
will in the world, treat digital book events like radio broadcasts or podcasts. We
listen but stop watching after a while.
It makes me wonder: how invested are we, really? (Especially knowing
we can go back and catch it again later, if we’re super motivated.)
Alison Barrow has organised thousands of book events over the course of
her career, and said, “For me there is something very flattening about an event
online. All parties need to massively up their energy; it has to be a performance.
When you're in a real space with people, picking up the chemistry in the room,
picking up body language signals, the audience picks that up too. There's a
ripple of laughter, a sense of discomfort sometimes, or maybe pathos —
whatever the emotion, you pick up much more of it in a group space.
“For viewers watching through a screen, so much of that is syphoned
away. Also, very often we're watching in our own space and distracted because
there's a noise outside, or a knock at the door, or something on the stove that we
need to attend to. There isn’t that same sense of community.
“Viv Groskop did a Zoom masterclass for us at work. She said, ‘Forget
the visual, because after five minutes, we're just listening more than looking at
what's happening on the screen. It's all about the audio, it's about the content.
It's not about the visual drama.’ When I'm briefing authors doing these things
for the first time, I now tell them to think about it as an intimate conversation,

31
as though they were doing a radio or a podcast, because very often your
audience is multitasking.”
And, as we’ve seen, very often your audience checks out before the event
concludes.
All of this makes me wonder, for traditional author interviews and panel
events, how much visuals really matter? Are we wasting precious resources
making them as good as they can be? Would we be better off directing our
efforts at ensuring the sound is pristine, providing transcripts, subtitles, or
translations, while funnelling resources into other kinds of digital events? What
must we do to hold someone’s full attention throughout? It’s a conundrum.
And if we do move to blended festivals, how can we avoid creating a
two-tier experience, creating a them-and-us schism between the fun those
attending in person are having, versus those watching online? Fairly or unfairly,
festivals are often branded “Too Middle Class” or “Too Exclusive.” How might
that scenario affect views about our sector?

How much deeper is our involvement when we’re actually in the room?
We’ve all seen people glued to their phones during live events, and I recall
doing one festival interview while an elderly author slumped in the front row
audibly snoring. But these are minority occurrences.
In Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018), Millicent Weber explores the idea of being part of a greater
entity: “Motivations for attending literary festivals are complex and varied. . . .
Seeing, hearing, and being in the same space as the creator of a work adds an
extra, valuable dimension to some individuals’ enjoyment of creative work.
Their satisfaction [comes] from encountering the author ‘in the flesh,’ and
particularly the way in which this encounter is believed to augment, rather than
undermine, enjoyment of the written work.
“Social engagement with other audience members, regardless of their
taste in literature, is the strongest motivator to attend. Literary festival audiences
seek experiences that combine engaging leisure activities with cultural,
intellectual, and professional development. Being physically in the space meant
that the audience member had undertaken to provide their full attention to the
event. Listening and responding to the same cues as a group of other people, in
the same physical space and within the same set of social and cultural norms,
offers a unique sense of interconnection.”

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 Factor in the excitement of enjoying a conversation and then queuing to
meet the author afterwards, and that chance of a moment together — which is as
important for authors as it is for readers.
Speaking from his home in Ontario at this year’s Bloody Scotland,
Linwood Barclay said, “This is great, there’s no jet lag or airport queues, but the
bad thing is the lack of human connection.”
Ian Rankin told me, “With digital events the screen goes blank. You
don’t go backstage and say, ‘Wasn’t that great?’ or, ‘Wasn’t that a really
interesting question from the floor?’ In the green room you keep the discussion
going, or at the signing someone might ask a question they didn’t get to ask in
the tent. After a live event you’ve got such a buzz when you see a queue of
people waiting with your new book in their hands. Everyone queuing up is a
fan, no one’s coming along to tell you how bad you are. You're getting all this
love and attention. It's like getting a massage.
“Writers spend most of their life thinking they are not really good, and
they work in isolation. Having that feedback sets you up for starting the next
book, and writers need that. It’s one of the things that’s been lost, that social
interaction. Part of it is also tactile — you’re touching people and shaking hands
and getting hugs. I miss all that.”

What I haven’t mentioned is the engagement of ideas, the way one live
event can propel you into another, until you can practically see ideas whizzing
through the air. StAnza’s Eleanor Livingstone said, “Festivals give you a kind
of aggregate experience. If you go to one thing, and you're thinking thoughts,
and then you're sitting at another event, and it resonates with something that
was just said that morning or the day before. And then you come out of an event
and meet people who've been to something different and you compare notes.”
Similarly, a digital festival lacks the kind of author-to-author and author-
to-industry engagement happening behind the scenes. In public spaces, green
rooms, restaurants and pubs, friendships might be forged, collaborations
launched, or fresh industry alliances created, such as an author meeting a new
agent or publisher.
Getting out and pressing the flesh, is especially vital for authors at the
start of their careers. They need to engage with readers, meet festival teams,
meet booksellers — in person. Going to a festival located someplace their book
tour wouldn’t visit brings them face to face with potential readers.

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 Ian Rankin speculated, “What might happen is that authors at the start of
their career will still be taken on tour because they need to build up that
readership, and the best way to do that is through personal appearances. Going
to book shops in the middle of nowhere and talking to six people is how your
career evolves, and it's a valuable part of the process.”

The Importance of Good Chairing

Thoughts about engagement lead me to thoughts about the increased

importance of good chairing in the digital realm. To be blunt, bad chairing is
even more noticeable online, and it’s a major turn-off.
Before you cry, “You would say that!” let me quote others, beginning
with author Ever Dundas, who said, “Chairs can make or break events. They are
really important. I don't think some festival programmers take this seriously
enough. I get really aggravated when chairs aren't doing what they should do.
It’s a real skill.”
Author Gavin Francis said, “It's not easy chairing digitally, is it? In
person you can pick up on nonverbal cues, and can communicate with your
author if you feel they're running out of steam and need a bit of a nudge. Online
it’s hard to communicate that when everything you do can be seen by the whole
audience.”
Paula Ogilvie pointed out that her festival didn’t have heavy edits to
make on its pre-recorded events because they deliberately chose chairs who
knew their stuff. “They knew how to lead an event and how to keep it tight.”
And with so much repetition out there online, choosing a good, perhaps
unexpected chair can put a new spin on an event. You wouldn’t find Marian
Keyes interviewing Ian Rankin at your average crime festival, but when Fane
productions teamed these two popular authors up, the event proved successful
and distinctive.
Ruth Wishart said, “[Digitally speaking], it helps if you've already either
chaired or have a personal relationship with the author. I chaired Kerry Hudson
for Ullapool. I was at home, she was in Prague, and the technician was
somewhere in Wester Ross. It could have been a nightmare but it was perfectly
agreeable, because I’d met Kerry at another book festival and gotten to know
her. Where you're starting from scratch with somebody digitally, without being
in a studio setting, it's more difficult. You don’t have the facial signals and the

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body language and so forth. The two dimensional space is never quite as
intimate.”
She added, “I know I'm hopelessly biased in this regard, but it is very
important to get good chairs. If there is a shy author, or one who needs a lot of
steering, it's helpful to know that the person that you've got chairing the event
has been down that route before and will know how to bring them out.”

Let’s think about body language for a minute, because it’s an aspect of
good chairing, and its absence, on digital, may be part of the reason why many
of us are treating digital events as if they were radio programmes.
The pandemic inspired a rash of articles with titles such as Why Zoom is
Terrible (Kate Murphy in the New York Times, 29.4.20), Zoom Fatigue and the
New Ways to Party (Anna Russell, The New Yorker, 17.9.2020), and Why the
Zoom Gloom Has Set In (Maya Levitin, Unheard, 27.5.20)
Murphy explained, “The way the video images are digitally encoded and
decoded, altered and adjusted, patched and synthesized introduces all kinds of
artifacts: blocking, freezing, blurring, jerkiness and out-of-sync audio. These
disruptions, some below our conscious awareness, confound perception and
scramble subtle social cues. Our brains strain to fill in the gaps and make sense
of the disorder, which makes us feel vaguely disturbed, uneasy and tired without
quite knowing why.”
This matters because we’re sensitive to facial expressions. “Authentic
expressions of emotion are an intricate array of minute muscle contractions,
particularly around the eyes and mouth, often subconsciously perceived, and
essential to our understanding of one another. But those telling twitches all but
disappear on pixelated video or, worse, are frozen, smoothed over or delayed to
preserve bandwidth.
“Not only does this mess with our perception, but it also plays havoc with
our ability to mirror. Without realizing it, all of us engage in facial mimicry
whenever we encounter another person. It’s a constant, almost synchronous,
interplay. To recognize emotion, we have to actually embody it, which makes
mirroring essential to empathy and connection. When we can’t do it seamlessly,
as happens during a video chat, we feel unsettled because it’s hard to read
people’s reactions and, thus, predict what they will do.”
Trying to read these cues on a screen consumes a lot more energy than
sitting opposite each other in person. And there’s no audience on hand, radiating

35
energy and good will while you’re beavering away on stage, trying to draw out
those ideas and stories.
Anna Russell’s piece described the work of Jeremy Bailenson, founding
director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University:
“Bailenson has argued that Zoom and other video platforms cause users to
experience ‘nonverbal overload.’ On video calls, faces appear much larger than
they would in real life, creating the impression that you are very close — too
close — to one another. (Everyone’s a close talker on Zoom.) Then there’s the
fact, often remarked upon, that on Zoom you’re always on. In real life, when
members of a group aren’t speaking, they’re looking at the speaker or they’re
looking down, or they’re looking at their notes.”
When I chair a digital event I tack my notes to the wall behind my laptop
so that I can look across, rather than down. I concentrate on my author’s face, as
if we were really eye-to-eye. I nod and gesticulate more than normal, to reassure
them that I am paying attention and engaged with what they’re saying. It’s more
intense than chairing live.
Interestingly, when I’ve chaired in a studio with an author who was
beaming in, the experience was intense, but a degree less fraught, possibly
because their image was enormous on screen, and it felt more like being
together. Maybe it was having the tech team for an audience. It might also have
to do with the difference between working in a bigger space versus feeling
confined within rigid parameters in my flat, trying not to move too much so that
I don’t fall out of the laptop camera’s frame.
(One notable exception was an event I filmed in a studio during which an
author’s image froze repeatedly. It became a stressful hour of second guesses,
listening extra-hard to cadences to anticipate when an answer might end in order
to be ready to fill the space without allowing awkward gaps.)
On a final note: some of the people I spoke to felt that digital events can
feel more intimate than live events because author and interviewer go into a
kind of bubble. Safe in their home, with no sense of an audience’s presence, an
author might open up in a way they wouldn’t otherwise. I’d like to think this
was another example of the beauty of skilful chairing, rather than a function of
digital transmission, but then I would say that.

Cultural Tourism or Cultural Exporters?

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 If any festival anywhere in the world can theoretically book any author
from anywhere in the world to be part of a digital event, how will festivals
retain their individuality? And if festivals live online, what happens to the local
communities they serve? In my mind these questions are linked.
In April I wrote that “a festival is not simply a place to hear authors in
conversation, it’s a destination in its own right, playing a significant role in the
local community. The revival of Wigtown’s fortunes is a case in point. At live
literary festivals . . . attendees become part of a community in a designated
bubble for book lovers. Magic happens. They meet fellow readers, favourite
authors, and discover new things to love.
“Festivals encompass activities beyond book panels. At Granite Noir, for
example, we programme drama, music, and film events, and held one talk in the
refurbished Aberdeen Art Gallery. Research has shown that festivals increase
tourism, provide spending opportunities, and provide employment. Their effect
is much bigger than what happens in the auditorium.”
How much bigger? Well in year two of Granite Noir we noticed an influx
of new ticket holders. A little digging revealed that they were the friends and
family of the dedicated crime fiction lovers who’d supported us initially. Those
early adopters had gone home, enthused about having a fantastic time, and
brought us reinforcements from around the world.
Adrian Turpin said, “We have a tradition in Scotland and the UK for
people coming together at book festivals to listen to authors, dispensing
wisdom, entertainment, whatever. It’s been very grassroots based and
geographically specific. Festivals reflect their communities. If that element is
taken out, what are we left with? Even if we can say we’re reaching these huge
numbers, we’re reaching New Zealand and Canada, what happens to the
cultural tourism aspect of it? Or are we being ambassadors for Scottish culture?
“In a digital age, should we still be thinking our core audiences are our
locals? Is it more important than I'm pumping out an image of Scotland and
Scottish literary culture, and Dumfries and Galloway around the world? Or that
I'm actually serving an audience that we've built up, who have been coming to
events in Wigtown for many years? Questions like that probably sound really
pretentious but they’re important to think about.”
He added, “If one of the opportunities the digital approach gives us is
audience development, okay. In a digital model this becomes a large chunk of
our audience; in a hybrid model this is a chunk of our extra audience, which

37
we’ve got to come up with more effective ways of developing, because
competition becomes harder.”

The audience for Edinburgh International Book Festival was noticeably

different, said Nick Barley. “This year 50% of our audience came from outside
the UK. In a normal year, 75% come from Scotland, and most of those are from
Edinburgh and the Lothians. Of the remaining 25%, the vast majority come
from England or elsewhere in the UK.
“The proportion of people who come from outside the UK is probably
4%, representing people who have come to Edinburgh for the festivals,
intending to go to a range of things. We’ve gone from 4% to 50%, which is
astonishing in terms of the international reach. But it also means that quite a
significant proportion of the people who were or have been regular audience
members didn't come. Whilst it was a really interesting shift in the pattern, it
also marks a diminution of the number of people from Edinburgh and the
Lothians who would normally be stalwarts of the festival.”
Lyndsey Fineran said, “A lot of the changes we made this year were
because our hands are forced. We often get told, and I'm sure a lot of festivals
are the same, ‘Why don't you film your events? Why don't you record your
events?’ Because festivals create this incredible content, and it just goes. But
that's part of the magic of it, because for the people in the room it only happens
once.”

The lack of footfall has economic ramifications for everyone, but is

perhaps more noticeable in smaller communities.
Ullapool’s Joan Michael said, “My thought, and this is not the
committee’s thought, it’s my own, is that we do our festival digitally next year,
but if we had to go digital after that, forget it. Part of our thing is the place.
People come for the views, the pub. They come because it’s small and they mix
— we don’t have green rooms, the writers come and take part in other people's
sessions and ask questions. Without that, the whole atmosphere is gone.”
Isla Rosser-Owen, Director of the Islay Book Festival, said, “The festival
grew up out of a book club in one of the fishing villages, and has always been
very much rooted in the community. Most of our visitors in a normal year
would be from the local community, or people who are on holiday on the island.
It's not so much about attracting cultural tourism, although, because we have
expanded over the last few years, it is sort of slowly moving in that direction. I

38
think we're at the stage where we don't necessarily want to expand much
further. We don’t want to lose that community rootedness.
“During our online events we had a very different audience. Normally
our audience would be maybe 80% local community. Online that was more like
20%. Viewers came largely from mainland Scotland and the rest of the UK. We
got some international audience as well.
“I think we attracted people who would normally come on whisky
holidays. We picked up a lot of people from Twitter and Facebook. There was a
lot of interest from Canada, but also US people with Islay ancestry who tune
into anything about Islay. We also partnered up on an event with Bocas Lit
festival in Trinidad and Tobago, because there’s an anthology of Island writing
that we've been looking at. This is where digital events are very handy, because
we thought, ‘How could we ever do that with the authors coming from islands
across the world?’ We ended up hosting a conversation with the editor, based in
Trinidad, and writers from Barbados, Tonga, St Lucia and Bermuda.”
Retaining a sense of place was one reason why Edinburgh International
Book Festival built a studio, to be seen to be broadcasting from the Scottish
capital (this is discussed elsewhere). It’s why Bob McDevitt and his colleague
made a film showcasing the beauty of Stirling for Bloody Scotland. And it was
a vital element of Adrian Turpin’s plans for this year’s Wigtown Book Festival.
The team established three key goals for the festival, the first being: “To
create a kind of digital simulacrum of what it would have felt like to be in
Wigtown at the festival.
“That meant our soundscape project and videos, and using social media
to amplify that. We wanted to make sure we were profile-raising for the region,
and I think we did that quite well. We wanted to work with businesses, because
one short-term aim is to survive the next couple of years. We built the
bookshops into it, and the book town. That was a positive thing for us.
“The theoretical part was asking ‘How can we work with and for the
book town and its people?’ And it was hard to achieve. Then it was about
working out that there was a wider audience that could be brought in. I think the
jury’s still out on that. Early stats suggest that there’s a slightly higher
percentage of people from overseas and outside Scotland [watching events], but
again, that’s a very different quality of engagement to getting them to actually
come to Wigtown.”

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 Bringing tourists into an area is more than a PR exercise, it provides a
necessary jolt to the economy, as well. It’s estimated that the combined
Edinburgh August festivals bring anywhere from £300m to £1bn into the city.
In 2019, Wigtown Book Festival generated £4.3 million for the regional
economy, primarily from tourist visits and spend during the event itself. No one
who attended the 20th anniversary event celebrating Wigtown becoming
Scotland’s National Book Town could fail to be moved by the before and after
photographs and stories telling of a dramatic reversal of fortunes in what was a
struggling town.
Sure, digital attendees might be inspired to come along in person at a
future date, but in significant numbers?

The Environment

Watching Ann Patchett speak at The Times and The Sunday Times
Cheltenham Literary Festival, I enjoyed hearing her admit to being an introvert
living as an extrovert on behalf of her career. Post-pandemic, she thinks she
might object to getting on a plane and coming to a book festival, from personal
preference, and out of concern for the environment. She said she hopes she’ll
have the courage of her convictions and feel able to say, “No I won’t come but I
will do it digitally.”
I heard similar thoughts from Ian Rankin: “An author might say, ‘I can
come here and speak to 650 people, or we can do it from my living room, and I
can speak to 2,500.’ They’ll think, why should I get on that plane? Why should
I use up that carbon footprint? Why should I spend the time?’ An event can take
up three days of my life, while a digital event takes an hour. I've got three days
back to be doing some work, and it’s a real benefit to the planet.”
StAnza’s Eleanor Livingstone points out, “There is a contradiction
between the idea that cultural tourism is something Scotland is trying to
encourage, and the idea of us all being as green as possible. At StAnza we
always try to make everyone travelling within the UK come by train, but the
logistics don’t always work. And of course, it doesn’t work for international
guests.” (Here is a link to The Environmental Strategy for Scotland.)
Digital events are good for the environment and may offer Scottish
festivals a simple work-around post-Brexit, and where visa issues arise, as has
happened in the past. But if we do not bring in international authors or those

40
coming from some distance, we risk excluding them from the physical space
and all the benefits that come from live interactions.
It’s already common to work around a publisher’s plans to bring their
author to the UK, so conversations between festivals and the industry about how
to tackle this should prove useful. And if a spirit of cooperation and co-
programming develops, it may be that the damage done by flights can be
ameliorated by making great use of an author’s time once they are here.

Monetisation (and Book Sales)

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that people are reluctant to pay for
content on the internet. We’ve seen the effect that has had on the newspaper and
music industries. I would hate to see our festival sector endure the same fate,
but in reaction to a global crisis, a precedent was set and most events were
offered free of charge, at least at the point of delivery. Now we have to figure
out how to convince audiences to pay for access to all or part of our
programmes. If we don’t, we won’t be able to put them on at all.
Janet Smyth spoke for all of us when she told me, “The digital content
being offered free is really expensive to make. I think there’s a slight disconnect
with our audiences. We’ve not been particularly good at telling them what we
have to do to make their content. We pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime and the
BBC, but we know the production values and the quality. We have to try and
get that message over that even though it’s a writer sitting on their Zoom, it still
costs us money to make that for them.”
Opinions seem divided between those saying we place less value on
things we can access for free, and those opposed.
Ullapool’s Joan Michael said, “In a way, putting events online is doing
authors a disservice. People say, ‘I can just go and watch them, it's up there for
free, so why should I go out and pay? Doing my risk assessment for a funding
application, beyond COVID, one risk I’ve put down is that we won’t get our
projected income. People might think, ‘Why are we going to pay when we can
see all these things for free?’”
Still, it’s been heartwarming watching social media and scrolling through
streams of messages thanking festivals for providing this trove of free content.
Many of the messages explained that the cost of travel, childcare and
accommodation, as much as the cost of tickets, has always been a prohibiting

41
factor, and for the first time ever they were able to take part in a festival they
longed to visit.
Eleanor Livingstone said, “I don’t agree with the argument I’ve heard,
which is that if people get events for free they don’t value them. I’m not saying
that never happens, but I think that’s a UK attitude. I started going to festivals in
Eastern Europe about 15 years ago and there, the tradition is that culture is
valuable, culture is something that will be paid for by your taxes. You don’t
expect to pay for it personally, but you value it and make sure your children get
to experience it. I went to events in small villages that were not for children, but
the parents in these villages thought that this cultural offering was something
their children should appreciate. It really made me think, it's not you don't value
it because you pay for it, you value it because there’s a tradition which
encourages you to value it.”

Festival income comes from many streams, including Creative Scotland,

local council, and private funding. It comes from sponsorship deals, ticket sales,
and for many festivals, from book sales, either through their own shop, or as a
percentage cut of its bookseller’s on site sales. For some festivals there’s
revenue from on-site cafes and bars to factor in. All of this goes into paying
annual and casual salaries, authors’ appearance fees, chairing fees, venue costs,
printing costs, equipment costs, travel and accommodation, entertainment costs
(including the author care provided in green rooms), etc..
Without ticket sales, festivals who don’t charge are forced to go cap in
hand to the public asking for donations. And while the public is generous, the
sums coming in are a fraction of normal income.
Digital festivals are not inexpensive to mount, and if the immediate future
includes socially distanced seating for live events, audience numbers will have
to be lower. Even if the vaccine does turn out to be a miracle, there’s no
guarantee that the public will feel safe about gathering in theatre-settings
anytime soon. We must figure out how to monetise our digital events.
Nick Barley said, “The normal turnover of our festival income is just over
4,000,000. About 1 million is ticket sales, and just over 1 million is book sales
and cafe and bar income. When we announced the cancellation of our physical
festival, the million pounds of the ticket sales and the million pounds with the
book sales — gone. The remaining roughly 2 million is split quite easily: half a
million from public sector subsidy, government and the council and expert

42
funding, that kind of thing. One and a half million from sponsors, friends,
benefactors and donors to private support.”
Wigtown mounted a fundraising drive that brought in around £30,000,
but that’s a fraction of the normal income from its ten day festival.
Ian Rankin said, “We want to try and get people used to paying a few
quid to be at the festival. We've got to try and manufacture a sense of goodwill
so that people would be willing to pay. Look at how many people are watching
events. At Bloody Scotland and Edinburgh they got 1500, 2000 for some. If we
can get 2000 people paying even a small amount of money that's going to make
this viable.” In other words, while there may be a perceived value difference
between digital and physical events, meaning we can’t charge as much for
digital, we have an exponentially greater audience. Small sums add up.

Most festivals around Britain wanted to protect their relationships with

sponsors, not only for their 2020 programmes, but looking to the future.
Pandemic economics meant not all past sponsors were able to participate this
year, but the general consensus from my conversations is that there’s been
tremendous support. People value the sector and what it delivers.
Elsewhere in this report, Paula Ogilvie talked about the decision taken by
Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival to spread out its programme in order to
offer something special to sponsors. In the case study about Appledore’s drive-
in festival, Ann Juby described their efforts to create special moments for
sponsors.
Nick Barley said, “We spoke to our major donors very quickly after we
cancelled on the first of April, asking, ‘Would you support us in this attempt to
do something online? If you keep your money with us this year, it won't be what
you initially signed up for. But it will be something and we will offer you
certain benefits.’”
Naturally some said that digital wasn’t for them and dropped out, but the
majority of sponsors stuck with the festival and some new ones joined up. Not
only did they receive branding on screen, but there were events as well, for
example a cocktail party that involved sending a bottle of wine to each sponsor
and gathering together in a Zoom room with an author and an interviewer to
enjoy a conversation that was not open to the public.
The festival generated enough income to pay staff salaries throughout the
year, to maintain the skills and expertise it needs to keep going, and to mount
the sophisticated set-up we saw on screen in August. It also enabled them to

43
invest in their online bookshop, which will remain open throughout the year. In
the end, said Barley, they managed to break even.

Where digital festivals are markedly problematic is book sales. Even at

festivals where sales were respectable, they were nothing like the numbers
shifted in a normal year. It’s reasonable to think that the digital audience
migrated over to retailers such as Amazon, but publishers told me they can’t
easily track those sales in relation to a festival appearance.
With so many out of work or furloughed, it’s hard to begrudge anyone
choosing to spend 99 pence on an ebook rather than several times that for a
hardcover or paperback, but it stings. And as sincere as we are about festivals
being about exchanging ideas, they are also about book sales.
“The big challenge is how we support the book sales. We didn't see much
click through to the book buying [at Reading is Magic]. Traditionally the reason
an author was offered to a festival was because of book sales. It’s a key part of
the entire ecosystem,” said Janet Smyth.
(Another knock-on effect could be that if bookstores fail to factor in the
pandemic, they’ll notice an author’s annual sales are down and scale back their
order for stocks of the next book. Sales figures are based on Neilsen BookScan,
which is both a record and driver of commercial performance in the booktrade.
Wholesalers and other supply chain participants seek to manage stock levels
informed by data and therefore the performance of an author's previous titles is
a significant consideration in determining the sales/performance of subsequent
work.)
At Edinburgh International Book Festival, said Nick Barley, they sold
around 3,500 individual books. “The income was about 50,000 pounds from
book sales. In a normal year, our income would be a million pounds from book
sales.” Bear in mind that there were fewer events, but roughly the same number
of viewers, albeit many of them coming from outside the UK.
Ogilvie said of her festival, “Book sales were not great, and that's going
to be the topic of some very difficult conversations with publishers going
forward. All festivals jumped into the unknown with this, nobody knew how
well or badly the book sale conversion would go. All we could do was try to
attract as many viewers as possible and keep signposting them to the bookshop.
But the reality is that it does not compare to book sales at a physical festival.”
Hay Festivals’ Chris Bone said that where book sales are concerned, “My
opinion is that it's about value added products for festival goers. What deals can

44
you do with publishers to incentivise people to buy from you, or buy from your
local independent bookseller? For all of our Book of the Month sessions now
we've been doing signed bookplates. There’s a marked increase in the sales of
titles on the back of that.”
The book with ticket model is one option, but it’s problematic. It can be
off-putting for people who’d love to hear an author speak, but don’t want (or
can’t afford) the added cost of the book. As noted elsewhere, it’s probably not
sustainable if you’re hoping people will attend multiple events, and even in the
physical realm, that arrangement only works with a big name author.
Ian Rankin also talked about creating incentives to get people to purchase
tickets. “This is the very beginning of our journey with this new technology.
Things will change and evolve. Maybe there will be a way, if you buy a
premium ticket, that you can click on an after party and find yourself in a Zoom
meeting with the author and the person who's been interviewing them, maybe
the publisher, the editor, and a few other friends, other authors involved in the
festival, and they're all hanging out, you're sitting with a drink, and you chat.
“That could be something to do for a gold or platinum ticket holder. You
can go along to an event for free, or nearly, but if you want the extra content
you pay for it. This happens a lot online with bands. I'm sure that people
organising festivals and bookshop events are thinking of all of this. Last week I
did a contest with Waterstones and my six prize winners got to join me for a
virtual drink. They were sent some booze and a glass and snacks, and we
clicked into a Zoom room and sat around shooting the breeze. As part of the
deal I had six books here. I signed all their books and they saw me do it. Then
we got the books got packaged up and sent to them. It was quite time-
consuming to set up, but a lovely thing to do.”

What are some of the other ideas around monetisation I heard?

From Hay Festivals’ Chris Bone: “There’s an issue for writers and their
ability to get fees if something is going up online free. You're not going to see a
model where they can do 20 individual events and get a fee for each one. It will
be three or four. At the same time, add in the fact that a lot of publishers now
have their own event models. With a big name a publisher will do its own event,
maybe with a bookselling partner, doing a book with ticket deal. That goes out
first. Then a week later they'll do a couple handful of free to view things online,
whether that’s a festival or a bookshop. If you're a smaller festival relying on

45
the big names to bring an audience to you, then it becomes really problematic
quite soon.
“But even in the physical space another problem is that you have outfits
like Fane who are going out on the road with writer tours. For the Hays of the
world, we have a sense that when people come to us it’s for our curation and the
groupings, the unique conversations. They don’t just come because it’s a
celebrity author. They come for the mix, and to be immersed in that.
“In terms of charging, I think [the answer is] some kind of membership
scheme, which we sort of have with our Friends of the Festival and the Hay
Player subscription. I think at the sensible thing is to have year-round support as
model, rather than an event by event by event payment.”

Nick Barley told me, “It's risky for us to rely only on sponsorship
donations and public sector money. There are question marks over how much
the government can afford to put in, and who knows how deep the recession
will be, and how it will affect our sponsors. We've got to try and find ways to
encourage audiences to part with their money. This year, we had a donation
scheme, which yielded approximately £100,000, plus Gift Aid was another
£40,000, so we're talking about roughly £140,000, which is not enough.
“I've been talking to Spotify. A version of Spotify is available free but
you have to put up with adverts and other constraints. It's a minimal free option.
They then have a thing called conversion economics, which incentivises people
to pay some money to be able to download what they want, when they want,
where they want. They offer three months of Spotify for 99p, or something like
that. At the end of month three you go onto their direct debit scheme. People
think they’ll cancel at the end of three months, but most don’t, and end up
paying a reasonable amount on the subscription to listen to whatever they like.
“I'm not certain of the numbers, but I think approximately 200 million
people around the world are paying roughly 10 pounds a month to be part of
Spotify, when they could listen to it for free. The music industry has already
been working on this for 10 years, and I think we can learn from other sectors
about how to find a way to get subscription-based involvement. I don't think
any of us think that pay-per-view is going to work in the book festival context.”
What if Edinburgh was able to land a massive name in 2021, a Barack or
Michelle Obama, and one could access that digital event plus the rest of the
line-up for the cost of an annual subscription? “That will allow experimentation

46
and opportunities for new authors, which is so necessary to the health of the
publishing sector,” he said.
Season tickets could be tiered, for example, £100 for complete year round
access to every event, or £40 for access to ten events.

Some festivals already charge in various ways. The Manchester

Literature Festival used a sliding scale: “This event will be available for ticket
holders to watch for 72 hours after the streamed broadcast. Tickets for this event
are available on a Pay What You Can £6 / £12 / £20 basis. There are also a
number of Free tickets available for those that need them.
“Please pay £6 (low income / concessionary rate), £12 (standard ticket
price) or £20 (if you are watching at home with another member of your
household) if you are able to. Any ticket revenue we receive will help
Manchester Literature Festival survive these challenging times and hopefully
bounce back with a live festival in 2021. However, if you can't afford to buy a
ticket please do join us for free.”
As noted earlier, CYMERA offered tickets at three prices, and while the
bulk went out free, people were willing to pay because prices were low. They
also have a scheme of annual memberships with assorted benefits attached.
Boswell Book Festival also has a friends and patrons model, with different
benefits at different price points.

The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary Festival offered
events free to watch live, while an access pass to watch the entire festival on
catch up through the end of 2020 cost £20. Hay Festivals run a subscription
scheme which, for £10 a year, gives book lovers access to thousands of videos.
Looking ahead to 2021, if their funding comes through, Ullapool plans to
charge for admission for a blended festival. Joan Michael said, “We are thinking
of charging £9 to see the event in our village hall live, £7 to watch it streamed
through to additional seating in a marquee on site, and £4 to stream it at home.
“I know if I pay to watch something online I make sure I’m there
watching it. I signed up for quite a few events in Edinburgh and only watched
about half of them live. I still have to catch up. If I’d paid for them I wouldn't
have booked the same number, I’d have been more selective. We think £4 isn’t
beyond, because they're not having their accommodation to pay for, or travel,
and they’re secure in their own home.

47
 “Plan B, if our venues are closed, will be to go digital. There will be one
event every week at the same time until all of the programmed authors have
been on. That way people will just pay £4 a week over ten weeks or so. They
will be live events, not available on catch up.”
While speaking to Bob McDevitt, he pointed me towards the Iris Prize
LGBT+ Film Festival, in Cardiff, as a possible model for staggered payments
that allow audiences to tap into their specific interests. “Once you signed up you
had 24 hours to watch the films in that package for free. There were various
other things such as Q&As with filmmakers, or a package of short films for 24
hours. As soon as the festival week finished they had all the content in
purchasable packages at inexpensive prices.”

48
 SOME INCLUSION TALKING POINTS AND SPECIFICS

Digital events have the potential to offer unprecedented access to a

greater range of people than it’s possible to reach in person, and to do so in an
unthreatening way. Anyone with a device and wi-fi can access an event without
leaving home and, at least at present, often without spending money to attend.
Digital events are a gateway into festivals for people who have not regularly
attended in the past. While it’s true that people who are used to attending live
events are more likely to attend digital events, audience feedback tells us that
many who never attended events in the past have been enjoying them virtually.
Digital events are more convenient, time-saving (no travel or overnight
stays), and more accessible to those living at a remove from cultural venues.
For those with mobility, mental or physical health concerns, learning
disabilities, physical disabilities, caring responsibilities or financial constraints,
digital events can feel more inclusive. They are relatively easy to access and
thanks to catch-up availability, can be enjoyed when it’s convenient.
In theory, digital events offer opportunities for audience outreach,
welcoming everyone who previously found festivals too intimidating,
expensive, middle class, elitist, and simply “not for the likes of them.”
Allan Wilson, Information Officer for CALL Scotland, spoke to the idea
of inclusion via email, saying, “My observation would be that the crowds
associated with book festivals could be very scary for someone with autism.
Physical access to venues could be an issue for children using a powered
wheelchair. Children with complex disabilities often have to leave a room, for
toileting, etc., which would not suit the normal book festival practice of closing
doors during sessions. Digital could be very beneficial for children and adults
with disabilities. I was struck by a comment by Nick Barley made on the Good
Morning Scotland review of the festivals, in which he told of feedback from a
person who was housebound and had been able to engage with the Edinburgh
International Book Festival for the first time, saying how much she enjoyed it.”

• The Government Communication Service said: “At

least 1 in 5 people have a long-term illness, an
impairment or a disability. Many more will have a
temporary or situational disability.”

• 21% of the UK population identifies as disabled.

• The Social Model of Disability said people are not

disabled because their bodies or minds aren’t ‘normal’.
They are disabled because of barriers in society.

49
 This complicated issue deserves deeper scrutiny beyond the scope of this
paper. There are some links to articles in this section, and more in Appendix A.
I offer what follows as a springboard for future discussions.
We have the opportunity to harness digital’s capabilities in order to
deliver events to a wider range of people facing particular challenges. (At the
same time, we must never lose sight of the need to make venues and live events
accessible and welcoming to authors and visitors alike.)
Bearing in mind the nine protected characteristics covered by the
Equality Act 2010, I contacted more than 30 UK charities asking six starter
questions (below), and whenever possible, followed up via email or with a
conversation. The reactions occasionally surprised me: several charities failed to
respond, some wondered why I had approached them and told me to look
elsewhere. Those happy to engage included: Deaf Action; Dyslexia Scotland;
the British Dyslexia Association; The Scottish Refugee Council; RNIB
Scotland; the Scottish Association for Mental Health; HIDAYAH; and CALL
Scotland.
I also spoke to author Ever Dundas, founder of the Crip Collective, to get
her perspective as both a participant in and viewer of online events. Her
thoughts are presented as a Case Study.
Regarding digital poverty, I spoke about it specifically with Katrina
Brodin, Programme Manager (Reader Development & Literacy) at Glasgow
Life, which produces Aye Write, with the SCVO, and The Good Things
Foundation. It cropped up as an issue during my interviews with festival
directors, too.

My starter questions were:

1. What kinds of events does your community* attend in person and/or
digitally?
2. Do they normally attend book events? Has that changed with the move to
digital?
3. What feedback, good or bad, have you received about digital book festival
events?
4. What should book festivals keep doing to serve your community?
5. What are we getting wrong?
6. Do we need to widen the channels that alert your community to our events?
If so, what do you recommend as the most effective approach?

50
*NB: I explained that the word “community” was a generalisation employed by
necessity, and that I understand any group of people with some shared
characteristics is as diverse as its members.

Two Vital Takeaways

In every conversation, one message predominated: inclusion begins at the

programming stage. The importance of inclusive programming — already a key
concern within our community — was consistently cited as more pressing than
how we deliver events.
It stands to reason. If we programme with a specific group in mind, they
will feel greater ownership and by extension, greater impetus to attend. But we
also have to build relationships. Those I spoke with encouraged us to spread the
word directly and specifically to their individual communities, especially when
events might have special relevance.
But that kind of outreach, while valuable, is only part of the job, said
Scottish Book Trust’s Philippa Cochrane.
“Inclusion has to be about building trust with people in a way that’s
more than a box ticking exercise. This is a genuine, committed, long term
process that we want to get involved in, and something we want done from a
basis of equal footing and equal input. It shouldn’t be asking them to tell us
what they think we should be doing, then we go away and interpret what’s been
said and offer it back to them, expecting praise and applause. We've got to give
ourselves the time to get it right. Digital throws an extra layer into that.
“There is still work to do; it's about how you reframe what you're
programming. You have to change the messaging of why it's relevant to them.
That's why Scottish Book Trust does what we do in partnership, because we
don't know how to reframe it, but our partners, who do this work day in day out,
absolutely do.”
Before dipping into specific examples that emerged from my
conversations, I’d like to note that some authors now stipulate that they no
longer wish to appear on all white or all male panels. That is great and
welcome, but it shouldn’t fall to authors to police our programming. We should
be doing it ourselves.

• https://scottishbamewritersnetwork.org/safer-spaces-policy/

51
 • Morton Smyth’s 2004 report, How To Reach a Broader Audience:
https://www.culturehive.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Not-
for-the-Likes-of-You.pdf

Tapping into Existing Technology

The range of access needs might feel daunting, but get your platform to
do some of the work. When choosing which one to use, venture into the
accessibility pages and explore its built-in features. This might include screen
reader accessibility, keystroke functionality, or subtitling and closed-caption
capabilities. Even the record function allows people to return to a session for
clarity, or watch when they are able, rather than at a prescribed time.
Of course nothing is glitch-free. For our network in particular it’s worth
noting that Scottish accents are notoriously difficult for AI to translate.
Inaccurate subtitles or closed captions benefit no one and can damage
reputations. If you employ a human transcriber then, like a BSL interpreter,
their fee must be incorporated into your budget. Where a platform lacks an
automatic captioning system, it probably affords connectivity to a human
captioner (such as Stagetext) or, depending on the type of account you hold, an
outside transcription app.
Luckily, technology regularly improves. For example, Zoom
reconfigured their settings not long ago to ensure that a BSL interpreter is
always visible. This function “pins” the video of the interpreter in place,
whereas in the past they dropped off the display during a presentation.

• Some interesting points about accessibility features, with special

emphasis on Zoom:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/06/accessible-video-
conferencing-tools/

• This, about running accessible digital meetings, has crossover relevance

for book events: https://abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/how-host-
accessible-online-meeting.

• Every event host or monitor should be briefed about dealing with “Zoom
bombers” (thankfully, increasingly rare) and how to deal with audience
members using racist, homophobic, ableist or sexist speech. There are

52
 methods for silencing and removing these individuals, which vary from
platform to platform.

Dyslexia

• 10-15% of the population is genetically predisposed to

dyslexia; 4% of them very serious, 6-8% mild to moderate.

• Tips on dyslexia-friendly formats to keep in mind when

creating print matter or web pages:
https://www.dyslexiascotland.org.uk/sites/default/files/libr
ary/DyslexiaFriendlyFormats.pdf

Cathy Magee, Chief Executive of Dyslexia Scotland, said, “So many

people with dyslexia have fantastic imaginations. Many have had bad
experiences at school and will think of reading as their Achilles heel. Quite a
few dyslexic authors say, ‘The biggest achievement in my life was getting
something in print.’ It's the opposite of what they were taught: they were told
they were never going to get anywhere with literature. It would be inspiring to
get dyslexic authors to talk about their journey into print at their events.”
There’s no shortage of dyslexic authors, either! Roald Dahl and A.A. Gill
were dyslexic, and among living authors, the roster includes John Irving, Sally
Gardner, Richard Ford, Lynda La Plante, Fannie Flagg, and Fleur Hitchcock.
Highlight the inclusion of dyslexic authors in the programme,
recommends Sue Flohr, MBE, Head of Policy at the British Dyslexia
Association. Then, get the message out via social media, or an article in one of
the association’s publications. “Many dyslexics think that literary festivals are
not for them because it's all about reading, whereas nowadays it could be a
completely different experience. We can receive text in all sorts of formats.”
Consider those alternative formats for your marketing and PR, suggests
Magee. “Get the word out via YouTube or on social media, with messages that
include photos or videos. Maybe a one-minute talk by someone about the book
festival that explained what was coming? That could inspire someone to think,
‘Actually, there's something there for me.’ Don’t assume people know what
book festival content will look like.”
She adds, “We are always happy to share festival information on social
media and with local communities and branches. People are always looking for
events. But remember, regarding children’s books, parents are going to be the

53
route in, and dyslexia is hereditary. You can’t assume that the parents or
grandparents won’t also be dyslexic.”

Additional Ideas

• Online forms for booking can be challenging. Having a phone sales

option helps, though be aware that dyslexia can make it difficult for some
people to read out the numbers on a credit card.

• When presenting information, keep the design uncluttered and avoid

large blocks of text. Short, digestible chunks are easier to manage. This
kind of short, sharp writing will be familiar to bloggers and anyone
writing online content, not to mention journalists aware of the visual
relief provided by a pull quote. More ideas about dyslexia-friendly
presentation can be found via the link in the box at the top of this section.

• Magee said: “In terms of instructions — because for some dyslexics

organisational skills are an issue — make them as clean and as simple as
possible. Following instructions and sequencing can be issues.”

• Shorter festival sessions consisting entirely of readings — elements of

this year’s Wigtown Book Festival, and the Toronto International Festival
of Authors — are another option. Magee said, “Most dyslexic people say
they love listening to stories being read aloud.”

• Dyslexia Scotland runs members events throughout the year and saw
attendance rise with their move to digital. They’ve dedicated sessions to
helping people improve their digital skills, focussing on Zoom, which
they’ve found more user-friendly than Microsoft Teams.

• Speaking with Flohr and Magee makes me think we might occasionally

substitute the phrases “story” and “storytelling” for “book festival/event”
and “literary festival/event.” Magee said, “My nephew, who's severely
dyslexic, earned an A star grade on his English A level without reading a
single book because he did it all on audiobook. Let people know that a
book can be an audiobook, a graphic novel, an ebook. And that it’s not
always about highbrow literature, it’s about stories.”

54
 • Creative writing workshops with dyslexic authors are a way to encourage
participants to tell their stories and discuss the different ways that stories
can be enjoyed.

Mental Health Challenges

SAMH (Scotland’s Mental Health Charity) referred me to Maeve

Grindall, the Social Movement Support Officer for See Me Scotland
(www.seemeescotland.org).
She said, “In terms of how people feel about accessing digital events, as
you can imagine, there are a lot of different perspectives on this from the
feedback we’ve had. For some people with lived experience online events can
be particularly draining and sometimes overwhelming if there are a lot of
participants/voices involved. For others they are a practical and straightforward
way of accessing events and connecting with people at a time when they have
become much more isolated. For some people, e.g. with physical health
problems, life in lockdown has not been such a dramatic difference, but now
finally the world is providing many more ways for them to engage and socialise
from home. We are currently trying to learn more about how best to engage
digitally and grappling with these questions too.
“We have found it useful in Zoom events having someone separate to the
host to manage the chat function, and to highlight at the start of the session that
this person can be privately messaged for technical or other support
(particularly if there is challenging subject matter). This person would at least
be able to signpost to relevant organisations. Content warnings can be useful,
but a general feeling of someone on hand to offer support is helpful as well. It
can also be good for hosts to say they will be sticking around for a few minutes
after events, if practical. Unlike physical events, people can suddenly find
themselves abruptly alone when they end which can be quite jarring.”
Grindall is leading on a piece of work around tackling mental health
stigma and discrimination through art, and shared her findings with me, along
with permission to quote from them.
Again the message was clear: programme events that open up
conversations about mental health.
The full report is here: Using the arts to challenge stigmatising attitudes
and behaviours associated with mental health:
https://www.seemescotland.org/movement-for-change/get-involved/partner-
with-us/communities/the-arts/

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 A key point is the importance of creating art centred around people’s
lived experience of mental health problems. “Art which included the voices and
stories of people with lived experience had the highest response rate of
respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing that this had helped to improve their
knowledge and awareness of mental health (48%) and helped to positively
change their perceptions of people with mental health problems (55%).”
For our festival community this translates into booking authors who are
writing about their personal experiences, alongside those writing more
objective, investigative books on mental health issues, and having those
conversations. This is something I feel the book festival community does well
already, and will continue doing.

As noted in Grindall’s comments and elsewhere in this paper, one of the

drawbacks of a digital event is the abruptness of the way they end, with a wave
and a click and everyone dispersing to their private space.
On 18 October, Liz O’Riordan, a consultant breast surgeon and award-
winning author and broadcaster, tweeted: “Here’s a plea to anyone organising
virtual conferences. Could you give your speakers some love immediately
afterwards? Giving an emotional talk and then hanging up as the next section
goes live is hard, often as we’re home alone. It’s draining and can leave you
feeling empty.” Her tweet received 2,000 likes.
Perhaps it’s possible to create a transition space. Festival teams are not
therapists, and their mental health must be safeguarded, too, but we might think
about creating a safe post-event digital break-out space where people could
meet, converse, and decompress. (It might be worth reminding those entering
the room that they can turn off their camera and identifying name, if anonymity
is an issue.)

Sight Loss

• In the UK, there are almost 2 million people living with sight loss. Of these,
around 360,000 are registered as blind or partially sighted. — NHS UK

• The "more than two million people living with sight loss" is an estimate
based on how commonly different eye conditions and resulting sight loss
occurs. The figure takes into account factors such as age, gender and
ethnicity, and builds up a picture of the numbers of people who are living
with significant sight loss. This not only includes people who are registered,
but also those who are waiting for treatment, those whose sight could be
improved, those who have not registered, and people whose sight loss is not
at a level that allows them to register. — RNIB

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 Ian Brown, Senior Communications Officer for RNIB Scotland,
responded to my questions via email:
“There are some general issues around communicating digitally with
people who use screen-reading technology. For written information on screens,
as in print, san serif fonts are preferable. Also preferable is a strong colour
contrast between the text and the backgrounds, not superimposing text on
photos or graphics (this can confuse screen-readers), and avoiding lots of italics
and block capitals.
“In terms of how au fait people with sight loss are in using digital
technology, this is hard to generalise. While blind and partially sighted people
tend to be older, some are quite savvy in using new technology. Others might
find it quite daunting, although RNIB Scotland does offer a technology advice
service on request. We maintain the biggest Talking Books library in Europe.
Books are lent out free via downloads, on disc, memory-stick and in braille. We
organise book groups throughout the country.
“For around 12 years RNIB Scotland hosted an invite-only event at the
Edinburgh Book Festival where we launched one of our latest Talking Books.
We invited people with sight, along with publishers, library staff, literary
bodies, councillors, etc.. I'm not sure what, if any, book festivals our individual
members attend themselves. Unless some provision has been made for physical
accessibility, and information in accessible formats, I suspect probably not
many. I’m not sure if digital has changed that, but again, I suspect that not many
attend.
“To attract blind and partially sighted people information will have to be
in accessible formats. Some thought would have to be given to the physical
layout of venues, avoiding lots of clutter. Guide dogs should be permitted and
perhaps a few water-bowls provided for them. If there is an attendance fee, a
sighted guide should be allowed to accompany a person with sight loss free of
charge. Audio announcements in the venue would help in giving information on
the day, rather than everything being in print. Some basic disability awareness
training for staff would also be useful, as would provision for indicating that a
person applying to attend an event has a disability.
“RNIB reaches out to our members via our social media and our website.
We could inform the participants of our book groups and other social and
leisure groups [about book festival events].”

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 Additional Ideas

• Adding image descriptions to social media:

https://www.rnib.org.uk/rnibconnect/technology/making-your-social-
media-accessible

• How to describe images: https://ud2016.uk/some-guidelines-for-

describing-images-for-visually-impaired-people/index.html

• How to write text and image descriptions:

https://www.perkinselearning.org/technology/blog/how-write-alt-text-
and-image-descriptions-visually-impaired

Hearing Loss

• According to www.Gov.Uk: Roughly 11M people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing

• 2M people in the UK use hearing aids

• Nearly 42% of those over 50 have hearing loss, rising to about 71% of people aged 70+

• There are 151,000 BSL users in the UK

• Deaf people are more likely to: have poor mental health — up to 50%, compared to 25% for
the general population, and to be unemployed — 65% of working age deaf people are in
employment, compared to 79% of the general population

BSL interpreters are familiar figures at book festivals, and have been an
integral part of digital events throughout the pandemic. At Edinburgh
International Book Festival this August I was intrigued to see a green screen set
up, with its own cameras, to capture the work of the BSL interpreters. When
watching the event, all you had to do was click a button on your computer to
pull up an interpreter or subtitles.
At Granite Noir, in Aberdeen, we have traditionally provided BSL
interpretation for our headliner events. At Edinburgh International Book
Festival, where there is a team of interpreters on hand, certain events are
assigned BSL interpreters from the start, but then a generous request system
operates. So far requests have never topped out the upper limited budgeted for.
In 2020, however, for technical and practical reasons, all BSL events were

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chosen in advance in consultation with the interpreters, who selected a range of
things they felt most likely to work for the deaf community.
I spoke to Philip Gerrard, CEO of Deaf Action, an Edinburgh-based deaf-
led charity providing services to the estimated 1,012,000 people in Scotland
living with some degree of hearing loss. He’s been a frequent visitor to
Edinburgh International Book Festival in the past, and praises their system of
taking requests.
Booking a ticket is normally the biggest barrier for first time festival-
goers, he said. Deaf people can have difficulty navigating the system if they
don’t have English and don’t know how to request an interpreter. “That has to
be a positive experience for them, to get them to go. If I had to suggest an
improvement at Edinburgh, the festival I attend, it is that it would be helpful to
be able to request an interpreter as part of the booking process rather than
having to do it separately.”
As far as digital book events, Gerrard cites some wins: “I use digital radio
equipment to help me hear better. It’s a bit like plugging headphones into your
computer to listen to music. I can’t do that at a book festival, but I can use it
with my computer. Another win is that you can have subtitles on some
platforms, though they’re not all equally good. Not all deaf people have
English. Those who are already used to festivals usually do have English, and
they tend to prefer subtitles. Digital events can make lip reading easier, which is
another aid to comprehension.”
On the down-side, sometimes an interpreter is hard to see on screen.
Gerrard is a fan of the new Zoom function allowing a dedicated fixed screen for
interpreters. And he reminds me that in common with everyone else working
remotely these days, the deaf community can experience “Zoom Fatigue.” “The
last thing I want to do after working online is go back online in the evening.
And it’s not the same unique experience as attending a live event.”

Additional Ideas

• Budgetary constraints mean most festivals cannot engage a team of

interpreters, therefore organisers become curators, making decisions on
behalf of the deaf community. That may not be welcome or as efficient as
a request system. Gerrard said we should be up front about it, saying:
“We only have money for X amount of interpreted events.”

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 • Gerrard recommends alerting charities such as Deaf Action, and
dedicated Facebook groups, such as Deaf Community in Scotland, to
spread the word about our festivals. In other words, bring the party to the
people. “I get frustrated with so many book festivals or theatres that just
put things on but don’t engage with the community,” he said.

• Ticket booking for first timers can be difficult because of the language
issue. Make it as simple as possible.

• Stagetext explains why subtitles are important:

http://www.stagetext.org/about-stagetext/digital-work

Reaching Out to Refugees

“When people arrive in Scotland, a new journey begins. The

UK’s asylum system is tough and takes its toll on individuals
and families. Settling into a foreign country and a whole new
system can be disorientating and challenging.” — Scottish
Refugee Council

Soizig Carey, Art and Cultural Development Officer of the Scottish

Refugee Council, answered my questions by email:
“Generally speaking, there is so much potential in literature to appeal to
and reach refugee communities, particularly as a medium which is already
multi-lingual. I wouldn’t describe refugees living in Scotland as one
community, but rather multiple communities from a diverse range of
geographical, political, social backgrounds. It would be useful for book festivals
to collaborate with local organisations and communities and build long term
meaningful relationships.”
This might include:
“Programming multi-lingual events (for example, Arabic, Farsi) and
activities which reflect refugee communities. This can really enable access for
new arrivals and people with limited English. For people with a more advanced
grasp of the language, it can mean so much to hear in their mother tongue and
equally participate. Perhaps interpreters and translators can be on hand at certain
events.

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 “Budget for access and welfare to support participation. Before COVID-
19 this meant financial support for travel and food, as people in the UK asylum
system are either on extremely limited funds or nothing at all if their claim has
been refused. It is difficult enough to get by, never mind attend cultural events
and activity. COVID-19 has highlighted this poverty in terms of digital
inclusion. Access to devices, and most markedly to broadband, is a big
challenge which needs to be a consideration. We are still trying to find ways
around this ourselves.”

• There is more information in the Refugee Council’s report on

impact of COVID-19:
https://www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2020/09/Covid-impact-survey.pdf

• In addition to the Scottish Refugee Council

(https://www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk/working-for-
change/arts-culture/), groups such as The Welcoming
(https://www.thewelcoming.org) and Open Book
(https://openbookreading.com) are longstanding festival allies
doing a lot to connect new Scots with our community.

CASE STUDY: EVER DUNDAS, AUTHOR AND FOUNDER OF THE CRIP COLLECTIVE

“I'm a queer disabled writer living in Edinburgh. I write literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I
gained a Creative Writing Masters with Distinction from Edinburgh Napier University in 2011, and I have a First
Class Degree in Psychology and Sociology from Queen Margaret University.”

“As an audience member, digital events have definitely opened things up. I've got ME and
fibromyalgia. The main symptoms are chronic pain, sensory issues, cognitive problems and
exhaustion. I have limited energy reserves, which can definitely be an issue in terms of
attending events. For instance, Edinburgh Book Festival is one of my favourites, but partly
because it's handy to me. In normal circumstances, I’m able to get there easily. For friends of
mine, it’s more difficult. They’re not necessarily disabled, they just live a bit further away, and
they're on a lower wage. It costs a lot for travel and the tickets, and is not something they
can afford.
“Even though I live close by, it's still a lot of effort to get myself together to maybe go
for an hour’s event, then maybe meet up with friends, but after that I'm quite exhausted. I
can't go to several events in one day. But this year, one day I attended three events,
practically in a row. That’s still quite a lot, because it can be exhausting even if I don't need to
go anywhere. But I could never have done that normally in the physical world.

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 “This year I could be in my bed watching, and if I was too tired to watch all three in a
row I could catch up later. Being able to catch up later for most events was really helpful. For
a lot of people with ME, fibro and energy issues, being able to catch up when we have the
energy and the cognitive reserves to be able to do so is good. We can get flare ups when we
least expect it.
“As far as monetising events is concerned, I see it from both points of view, as a
writer and also as an audience member who is disabled and on a very low wage. From that
perspective having all these events free, or by donation, or pay what you can, is amazing. I
could access a lot more events.
“On the flip side, in terms of being a writer and doing events myself, it's a lot of work
from me and from the festival staff, which should be valued. It did concern me a little bit that
online events weren’t being as valued as they should be, given the amount of work they are.
To see these events offered free made me a little bit uneasy, as well. Although I did see a lot
in the chat discussions where people said ‘That was amazing. I'm going to donate right now.”
“Disabled people are always having to prove ourselves and jump through hoops, fill
out forms, prove that we're disabled, or at a low wage. It's tiring. I'm wondering if, in terms of
these things, it would be better that we didn't have to. I'm assuming most people are going
to be honest about what they can afford. But yeah, it's tiring, always having to prove that
you're low wage. It's a little bit humiliating as well.
“So far, from my point of view, digital festivals have been quite a positive experience.
It's been great seeing things like captions and BSL interpreters and transcripts available
afterwards. Going forwards, I think the important thing is not to leave us behind. Disabled
people have been fighting for decent online access for a long time. It would be good to have
more hybrid events in the future. It’s also important to still invite disabled people to
participate in person at live events. There could be a slight danger of assuming that the
disabled person could join online and doesn’t have to be there physically, an assumption that
it’s automatically easier for them. I don't want anyone to use it as an excuse not to make
events physically accessible.
“Talk to the disabled person about their needs and preferences. I actually prefer to do
live events, even though online events are possibly a little bit easier for me. I’ve missed being
there in person, and there are by-products of that, in terms of networking, that are easier in
person. I don't want disabled people to be further marginalised by organisers thinking, ‘Oh,
we'll just have them on remote, we'll be fine.’
“A lot of disabled people couldn't attend events in person, whatever accommodations
are made. It’s been quite a revelation for them to be able to attend all these things. We need
to continue that. And I love that we were able to have online questions that audience
members can type in, and the chair can curate them. It makes people at home feel that they
are part of the event.”
Additional Reading

• https://disabilityarts.online/accessibility/

62
 • https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/news/uk-cultural-organisations-
join-up-to-promote-seven-inclusive-principles-for-disabled-people-in-
arts-culture/

• Disability Arts Online’s FAQ about the accessibility of their website is a

great overview of best practice:
https://disabilityarts.online/accessibility/accessibility-statement/

• Beyond the mandates: The far‐reaching benefits of multimedia

accessibility:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1153

Digital Poverty and Exclusion

If you’ve ever walked down a crowded street cursing fellow pedestrians

who were glued to their mobiles, you might be surprised by the extent of digital
poverty in the UK. The Guardian reported that lockdown had created a stark
digital divide, with 1.9 million households having no access to the internet, and
tens of millions more reliant on pay-as-you-go services to make phone calls,
access healthcare, education and benefits online. People often face a devastating
choice: food or data.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) 2019 report, Exploring the UK’s
Digital Divide (link in Appendix A) tells us: “The number of adults who have
either never used the internet or have not used it in the last three months,
described as ‘internet non-users,’ has been declining over recent years. Since
2011, this number has almost halved, but in 2018 there were still 5.3 million
adults in the UK, or 10.0% of the adult UK population, in this situation.
“Circa 2018, the percentage of non-users in Scotland was around 10.7%
of the population, while 7% of the population lack any basic digital skills.
Among non-users, in 2018, 58% (3.1 million) were women. In 2017, disabled
adults accounted for 56% of non-users. That is higher than the percentage of
disabled adults in the UK as a whole, which was estimated at 22% in 2016-
2017. Among non-users aged 16-24, 60% were disabled, which matches
numbers for people aged 75 and older.
“In 2018, 12% of those aged between 11 and 18 years (700,000) reported
having no internet access at home from a computer or tablet, while a further
60,000 reported having no home internet access at all. Of those in this age

63
group, 68% who did have home internet access reported that they would find it
difficult to complete school work without it, suggesting that there may be
educational implications for those without internet access.
“Since 2011, adults over the age of 65 years have consistently made up
the largest proportion of the adult internet non-users, and over half of all adult
internet non-users were over the age of 75 years in 2018.”
According to the Lloyds Bank annual Digital Consumer Index, pre-
lockdown, 3.6 million people (7% of the population) were almost completely
offline. The report said those over 70 are statistically more likely to be without
the internet, nevertheless, 44% of those offline were under 60. The statistics
also suggest that four out of every 10 benefit claimants have ‘very low digital
engagement’ and that women are more likely to lack online skills.
In 2014, research by social and economic wellbeing group the Carnegie
Trust, found that more than a third of households in the lowest socioeconomic
groups lacked internet access. In Scotland, where the group is based, just 51%
of households who had an annual income of between £6,000-£10,000 had the
internet at home.
Unfortunately there’s no single, simple solution to digital poverty.
Digital poverty consists of three primary barriers, said Aaron Slater,
Digital Participation Project Manager at SCVO: “Access to an internet enabled
device, having access to connectivity at all, and having the skills and confidence
to be able to use the device and the internet.
“A significant number of people in Scotland don’t have full digital
access, or aren’t digitally included. Those from more deprived areas are more
likely to be digitally excluded. People with disabilities tend to be
disproportionately affected by digital exclusion.
“There are also challenges based on geography, and in Scotland, with
more rural areas. One of the core offerings from the Connecting Scotland
programme is a Vodafone mobile wi-fi device, but for parts of the highlands
and some of the islands, specifically Orkney, you really struggle to get a signal.
“Early findings from data we're collecting through Connecting Scotland
suggests that connectivity and devices have been more of a barrier than the lack
of skills and confidence. There, it tends to be older people who are lacking in
skills, but we should not make the assumption that young people are digitally
literate.

64
 “Smartphones aren’t a silver bullet. Just because someone can use
Snapchat or TikTok doesn’t mean they can meaningfully use the internet to fill
in forms, create CVs, apply for jobs and so on.
“We see a lot of organisations that are motivated to support people to get
online where they have the capacity to do that, in order to help people use their
services.”
That makes sense. For example, if you’re an energy provider asking
customers to submit meter readings online, or a retailer hoping to entice online
shoppers, having digitally savvy customers is vital. We’ve all seen pop up chat
boxes asking, “Can I help? Want to talk?” And in that sense, book festivals are
no different. We already operate online ticket sales, and with the move to digital
streaming it’s even more important that visitors are able to navigate our
websites easily.
But it’s not our remit — or within our capabilities — to combat poverty.
The help we offer has to come in other forms.
Slater agreed. “It’s everyone's business to help the digitally excluded.
Every service stands to gain by having a user group that can access them. But
it's no single organisation’s primary responsibility to get that person's digital
skills up, which is the point that you're making about the book festivals. It's not
your responsibility alone to address this, but you are a potential beneficiary of a
digitally included nation.”
One of the difficulties is that a lot of the basic up-skilling — here’s how
the device works, here’s how to create an email account, how to get online — is
best done one-on-one and face-to-face, but with libraries and community
centres shut, that kind of interaction has been put on hold.
Slater said, “One of the things we're looking at is working in partnership
with each of the 32, local authorities, and understanding local dynamics, local
partnerships with local support structures that already exist. We need to
understand what resources are there and then ask, how can we connect dots?
How can organisations, support each other, so we're working together for that
greater good and greater benefits?”
I also spoke to Emma Stone, Director of Design, Research and Comms
for The Good Things Foundation, which has been involved in supporting digital
inclusion for over 10 years. Pre-lockdown, much of their outreach was done in
person, through community organisations.
She said, “Issues about digital and data poverty have become more
exacerbated because the workarounds that those on lower incomes previously

65
had are no longer available to them — whether that's children accessing the
internet in schools, or families going into libraries or community centres. Next,
is that it's become so much more essential. If you cannot afford reliable
broadband in your home, and — classic example of ‘poverty premium’ — if
you're poor and you can't afford a contract, then pay as you go mobile data is
more expensive. There's been a huge shift onto digital platforms, which is great
if you are enabled and have the skills, confidence and access to do this. Because
many of us struggle to get our time off screens, it’s dangerous and easy to make
assumptions, forgetting that this isn’t an issue for everybody.”
Just how widespread is digital poverty in Scotland? Katrina Brodin,
speaking specifically about Scotland’s biggest city, said: “Glasgow, by its very
nature is quite a challenging city, there is a high representation of BAME, and a
lot of poverty and deprivation, to the extent that you don't really see in other
places in Scotland. We've got one community in Glasgow where 49% of the
kids were living in poverty pre-lockdown. That's going to be moving into the
50s and 60s now, as people will be losing their jobs, not maximising their
income and benefits and things like that.”
That means 31% of Glasgow’s homes have no access to broadband.
“That’s a third of the city,” Brodin said. “It's obviously going to be a higher rate
when you get to the literacy hotspots, which tend to be in the more deprived
communities.”
Looking ahead to next year’s Aye Write, she said, “One of the things that
we'll have to build into our plans is a digital community ticketing version,
where you have organisations that support the individual’s access, either at
home, or when they're doing a one-to-one activity with them. If we've got fixed
periods for digital content being up, which I think is completely right and
proper, we may build in additional licensing for that organisation to be able to
use it for an additional month in order to engage more people with the content.
It has to be something that's not unfair to the author, to try and mirror the kind
of reach that you would have had before. I think that is going to be tricky.”
My conversation with Philippa Cochrane, from Scottish Book Trust,
touched on the problem, as well.
She said, “I have a range of thoughts on this that aren’t around event
provision specifically, but what we as a sector do more generally. All the teams
at Scottish Book Trust are wrestling with it, as everyone else has done. We have
migrated all of our programmes into digital formats for this year.

66
 “There’s a question around, for lack of a better word, functional
accessibility. Can people hear, see, interact with and take part in what you’re
putting online? There’s also the digital access gap.
“I don't really like EDI as a term, but let's use it. When we start talking
about making sure that our programmes are available to a diverse range of
people, obviously, the crossover between whatever communities we might
identify as being diverse communities who find the work of Scottish Book Trust
difficult to engage with, are also likely to have a higher prevalence of people
who are sitting in the digital access gap. So we're doing a number of things with
the digital festival. We have been doing this for a number of years, but we're
leaning into it further and further. Every year I'm upping the representation of
groups that don't normally engage with us in our programming. Everybody's
doing that, it’s not a new thing, but it's worth articulating and it's the right thing
to be doing.
“We're trying to do that both with authors that we're programming and
also chairs that we're pairing with those authors, and making sure that that's
happening in a comprehensive or as comprehensive a way as possible.”

Additional Ideas

• Internet access should be recognised as an essential utility, like

electricity. To quote Iain MacRitchie, speaking at Edinburgh
International Book Festival this August: “We need to treat connectivity as
a water supply, that it’s a given and a right.” This is a non-partisan issue
that book festivals or Creative Scotland might champion. (NB: At
present, households and businesses pay 20% VAT on connectivity,
whereas VAT on electricity and gas is 5%.)

• Buses offer free wi-fi. Could we find a sponsor for a Story Bus — with
socially distanced seating for now — where people with devices could
climb on board, access free wi-fi and enjoy events through their
headphones? Might we commission route-related bespoke stories?

• Could we distribute pre-recorded events on USB sticks or DVDs to

libraries for users to access via their membership? NB: Wigtown
experimented with this following their 2020 festival. Cove and
Kilcreggan Festival is looking into a similar initiative.

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• What if we streamed events into libraries, cinemas, care homes, prisons,
theatres and other facilities with internet access, where safe, socially
distanced screenings of festival events can be held?

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 NUTS AND BOLTS
“Our live-streaming studio is lit red in support of everyone in the event industries who needs urgent support at
this time. Collectively, we don’t just make events: we create employment and opportunities, build communities,
educate, inspire & entertain.” — @WigtownBookFestival via Twitter

In this section I’ll address some of the specifics and issues around how we’re
making digital events happen.

On the Day or In the Can?

Whether to livestream or pre-record, that is the question. Or is it?
The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival,
Edinburgh International Book Festival, Wigtown Book Festival and CYMERA
are just a couple of examples of festivals that offered a combination of the two
formats. Others, such as The Ballie Gifford Borders Book Festival, Islay Book
Festival, and the Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival, went with primarily pre-
recorded events.
Let’s examine those options.
A livestreamed event has a sense of immediacy, much like live television.
You never know what might happen. Participants may react to news of the day,
bringing headlines and current events into the conversation. Someone might fall
off their chair. Their internet might crash. At Hay Festival, when the
interviewer’s system died mid-event, author Anne Enright calmly filled the gap
by reading from Actress, to the delight of all watching.
Depending on how the festival is using its digital platform (see the
section on templates), on some of the more informal live events pushed out
straight through Zoom (the most commonly used platform), an author might be
able to see the chat box unfurling, and read and react to questions as they arise.
Generally, though, they are moderated through the chairperson.
At other live events a festival staffer monitors the chat function,
interacting with attendees and curating questions. They’re fed to the chair
through a tablet or other device. This happened at Edinburgh International Book
Festival and Wigtown Book Festival, to cite two examples. All live events can
be topped and tailed with trailer videos and “Thank you for coming” slides
incorporating links to donate buttons and book buying portals.
On the other hand, a pre-recorded event can be edited for time or content.
Pre-records were the primary choice Islay Book Festival, Cove and Kilcreggan,
and The Ballie Gifford Borders Book festival.

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 Isla Rosser-Owen, Committee Chair and Festival Director for Islay Book
Festival, is also the Cultural Producer for Wigtown Book Festival. She
explained that pre-recording was a pragmatic choice, made to safeguard against
Islay’s pernickety wi-fi.
The team took advantage of the YouTube function allowing them to load
videos in advance, scheduled to go live at a certain time. (This was the method
employed by CYMERA, as well.) Rosser-Owen said, “Once you've scheduled
it, you can kind of wash your hands of it, therefore we didn't have any of the
high tech streaming stuff that others were doing. It was all to try and avoid
connectivity issues, which is obviously a big thing on the islands.”
Once recorded, events were topped and tailed with a short intro slide and
final thank you. All the editing was outsourced to a contractor.
“Pre-recording meant a lot of extra admin — arranging to do the
recordings, reviewing them, sending them off for editing with notes, reviewing
them when they came back from editing, uploading them to YouTube, making
sure everything was properly scheduled and that the links were sent out to
everyone. There seemed to be an endless string of things that needed to be
done,” said Rosser-Owen.
Lyndsey Fineran, The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham
Literature Festival Programme and Commissions Manager, also remarked on
the amount of work involved.
“Cheltenham might look quite glossy from the outside, but like most
organisations it's a very small, hardworking team. It was all hands to the pump,
but we knew that to do something of the size we were hoping to do, and at the
quality level we wanted, we would need to bring in some expertise. Our agency
worked with us on the pre-records with the international writers that we did in
the lead up to the festival, as well as the children and young family and schools
programme, which we filmed to give us a package to offer free to schools. They
worked on the ground as well, because it was basically a broadcast scenario.
“The density of the experience was interesting. I felt as tired on the
opening day as I usually feel at the end. There were a lot of pre-recorded events
that needed to be finessed, so some of the events I had already seen three times.
Some of our editing was just getting it down to time. With our tight broadcast
schedule everything had to be under 55 minutes. Sometimes it was removing
tech glitches, maybe someone’s internet had a little moment. But we never
edited the content.”

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 Here in Scotland, the team in Melrose decided that pre-recording offered
them the most control, given that digital was new territory. Paula Ogilvie,
Director of the Ballie Gifford Borders Book Festival told me:
“There were so many moving parts to everything we were doing, and this
meant one less moving part to worry about. It meant we could edit anything that
needed it, and could brand things up better. But then we decided that the
experience would be really flat, so we made the decision to have the live chat
feature. I would say 99.5% of the authors were able to come back on the day for
the chat, which took place during the last 15-20 minutes of the event.”
Pre-recording made for extra work for this team, as well. Ogilvie said,
“We didn’t have to edit events too much because we made sure the folks we
were working with as chairs knew their stuff. They knew how to lead an event
and keep it tight. That was really important to us. When it came to the raw event
there wasn’t much for Walter to do, but each event still took about five hours’
worth of work. As well as recording them, after we got all the right systems in
place he was uploading them and filing them out. It had been recorded on his
equipment, so he had to make sure everything was put up onto Vimeo. If you
walk into a tent where the tech station’s already in place, yes, that might have
taken five hours to set up, but you amortise that labour over the whole
weekend.”
Ann Landmann, director of CYMERA, told me: “We had a solid seven
days of recording, sometimes four events a day. We used the same filmed intro
of about two minutes in length for all the events and had a thank you slide and a
CYMERA 2021 slide at the end.
“What takes forever is the rendering — after you’ve done the video you
have to convert it into something you can watch. The computer does it all for
you, but I had issues with my hardware and software, and some events rendered
for 16 hours. When I changed programmes they rendered in an hour, though I
didn’t feel the quality was as good. I may be the only person who noticed that.
“I liked our mix of pre-record and live. We didn’t take as much
advantage of pre-recording as we might have. We didn’t want to ask our authors
to come back on the day because we’d asked them quite a lot already, and
practically for free.”
Control of the end result was a concern for the Reading is Magic Festival,
said Programme Consultant Janet Smyth:
“We felt for children’s events it was important to control the structure
and the editing. You can't expect an eight-year-old to sit in front of a computer

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and listen to even their most favourite writer talk for an hour. In the digital
world it’s hard to control the quality of the interaction and the experience. If
you're a grown up and you’ve been reading someone’s books for years,
nothing’s going to stop you listening to that event. If you're a kid, you're like,
‘I'm gonna go on TikTok now.’
“We decided to create episodic events. You could watch it as a single
event, or as a series of different events. We had our podcast, our story time, our
manifesto event, and our assembly event. Each had a different structure within
the themes of each day. We worked closely with as many of the writers as we
could to get them to think carefully about exactly what they were going to
include in their event. We storyboarded every event as if it was a television
programme.
“Another reason to pre-record was so that schools could use it as and how
they chose. We packaged it so that there were resources around each event for
teachers to tap into. It was important for us right at the start to pull together a
focus group of teachers and librarians who advised us how to structure the
events, with opportunities for the teacher to hit pause and get the class to do an
activity, then come back to it.”
Book Week Scotland, run by Scottish Book Trust, has always featured
digital elements, and 2020 relies heavily on pre-records. Philippa Cochrane told
me: “This year we’re not doing any livestreams, even the panel events are pre-
records, because we want to be able to share them with our partners and make
them accessible as quickly as possible after they go live, so that they're there as
content for the week.
“The fastest way we can do that with the resources that we have, which in
terms of bodies is very small, is to pre-record. And this then gives us the space
to get the best solution in terms of closed captioning, transcription and BSL that
we can. We’re putting all three of those elements into all of our pre-recorded
panels, which accounts for six of our Book Week Scotland events.”
As Paula Ogilvie mentioned, another phenomenon of the digital age is a
pre-recorded event where the author returns for all or part of the session to
interact directly with audience members. Technology puts them there in the past
and present, their recorded self on screen interacting with an interviewer, their
present self, chatting away to fans.
Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival asked their six authors to return on
the air date. I spoke about this, and the decision to pre-record, with Ruth
Wishart, Director of Events for Cove Burgh Hall:

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 “I had watched MyVLF during the Big Book Weekend and thought their
set up was impressive. One of the principal attractions was the idea that
somebody else would be doing the filming and the editing — and that they had
some 20,000 people on their mailing list.
“We gave MyVLF our programme and they contacted everyone and
arranged for the Zoom calls. I’ve done mine — all I had to was sit in my office
with my laptop.
“Our authors agreed that they would be available at the hour that their
event went up online in order to have a live chat with the audience. Because of
that we're paying them a double fee. It's more of their time and energy.”
[NB: Ogilvie said participation in the live chat was built into her
festival’s fee agreement with their authors.]

As a chairperson, I find pre-recording an event without an audience

roughly equivalent to any other digital interview. Whether sitting in a purpose-
built studio, or in my flat talking into my laptop’s camera, I have little sense of
an audience’s presence and little sense of whether I’m making an impact. I
simply pretend I’m making television, and proceed as normal, relying on years
of experience to tell me if the conversation’s going well.
The chief differences with a pre-record are the absence of audience
questions — and the occasional re-recorded introduction.
As a viewer who dislikes like engaging with chat boxes, I truly don’t
notice the difference between pre-recorded and live events. They are equally
enjoyable — or not. For me it’s about the quality of the conversation. And not
one person, in the many conversations I’ve had about this, expressed a strong
preference either way.
As a programmer, I like knowing there are options, since circumstances,
and authors’ availability, can change rapidly. Having a Plan B is vital.

YouTube, Vimeo or Crowdcast ?

A tech team will be invaluable in helping you review your best options, but
here’s a little background to get you started.
There are no special requirements to be able to embed a YouTube video in a
website. To embed a live stream from a YouTube channel you must be a YouTube
partner. (More info here: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/32175054?hl=en.)

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 Channels more than a few years old are often not required to meet these
guidelines, which can be confusing. Check in your YouTube channel's setting to see
what is allowed. Requirements for embedding are not related to bandwidth.
Bandwidth refers to the speed of your internet connection for uploading or streaming,
e.g. 720p video requires 2.5 megabits per second, 1080p requires 5 megabits per
second. It’s possible to invest in bandwidth load sharing, which will help keep a
website from crashing and reduces the risk of losing your internet connection.

For The Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival and Bloody Scotland, Vimeo
proved the best broadcasting option. Bob McDevitt said, “Bloody Scotland’s decision
to use Vimeo was to make use of their unlimited bandwidth. The bigger your audience
gets, the more you have to pay for bandwidth. You can't do it in small increments,
you've got to do it in thousands, and per thousand, that's about two grand. If you were
looking at a big audience, you could quickly go to four or five grand extra. GloCast
said, ‘Why not go out on Vimeo Live? Because you pay for a year’s subscription with
unlimited bandwidth and can have as many people as you want.’
“We didn't know how many people were going to sign up. They said if we went
up on Vimeo then it didn’t matter. We streamed from Zoom, then they vision-mixed it
up onto Vimeo Live for us. Having unlimited bandwidth also meant we didn't need the
Eventbrite sign up we’d put in place, but it was good to have because it provided data,
and enabled us to email people and say, watch out for such and such coming up
tomorrow. Also it was another way to get out the Please Donate message.
“We added two chat boxes on the website, one for comments and a second
(using Slido) for questions and polls. We couldn't embed YouTube on the website as
we didn't have enough views logged. We almost have now, after the 2020 events went
out after the festival.”
Paula Ogilvie said, “We used Vimeo because of the live Q&A. If we hadn’t
done that we could have pushed out on YouTube and that would have been fine. I
made things difficult for the tech team, because I wanted that live element to it.
“When they were looking at the formats that we could use, it was going to be
really expensive. We could buy a system that would allow us to do the live chat
feature, but that was a quite a lot of money. They discovered that Vimeo had a
package where you could be running it pre-recorded as live and could also have this
chat feature. Vimeo was the only platform we could find that could do that, and it was
affordable. We were happy with the quality and the analytics on Vimeo.”

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 Crowdcast was used by Hay Festivals for their May events in Wales. Chris
Bone, Publicity Director for the festivals, said, “Crowdcast is the broadcasting
platform we used to put out our spring events and subsequent ‘Book of the Month’
live Q&As.
“We recorded them using WIRECAST and broadcast that through our
Crowdcast platform. Of course we also had a couple of pre-records and broadcast
films that went out directly through Crowdcast. We operated a back-up feed on
YouTube for anybody that had technical issues accessing Crowdcast.
“For Hay it’s very important to understand who our audience is, and owning
that data. Thinking very long term, it's important that we understand who we're
speaking to and have a handle on where that audience is and who they are. The digital
space offers so much opportunity in terms of being open and accessible and having
hundreds of thousands of views, but that needs to be weighed against a need to have a
committed audience that are going to support you in times of need financially, and
when we return to a physical model.
“It was important to us to ensure we had a process of registration, some process
of control over who is doing what, some way of comparing the viewership of our
digital events with the people who would normally be buying tickets. That has been
the main driver for us to now have our own platform behind the festival registration
page. Crowdcast does have ways of seeing who and where and how, but we can’t
connect that directly into our system because of GDPR — quite rightly, I should add.
But it provided a level of that functionality that YouTube and others didn't.
“For our spring event, we didn't have time or the financing to invest in our own
registration system that we could skin on a Vimeo or YouTube thing, which is what
festivals with a bit more time were able to do. So that was one consideration.
“The other thing, slightly tied to that, was that we made a decision early on to
make the festival free, because we had just done a big public fundraising drive. And
we felt there was a need, given the digital opportunity, to go wide and let people view
if they couldn't afford to, during that really crappy time that we were all in.
“At the same time, we needed to offer an option for people to donate. Now, I
know YouTube offers that, and I think Vimeo now offers that too. But there was a
constellation of factors that made Crowdcast feel like the right platform for that. There
are lots of things that you could control on there that we couldn't control on YouTube.
For example, Crowdcast has registration messages that go out before, to which we
could add our own festival fundraising messages.”

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 A Word About Templates
When you log onto a video conferencing platform the display is basic:
people appear in boxes and a coloured line appears around the person speaking.
The display can be adjusted at the host’s end to eliminate non-participants, such
as audience members or staffers working behind the scenes. Webinars show
only the speakers and not attendees.
Using a template allows you to give an event a more polished look. It lets
you brand the event with your logo or festival colours, and any other info you’d
like front and centre, whether that’s a sponsor’s logo or a link to your festival
bookshop or affiliated bookseller. I was impressed by the Bloody Scotland
template, which kept large “Donate” and “Buy Books” buttons prominently
displayed beneath speakers’ faces throughout every session. (And the 10% off
deal they negotiated with Waterstones for books sold via that link.)
You can read a little more about templates in the following Case Study.

Case Study: View from the Tech Desk — Purplebox for the Wigtown Book Festival

In 2020, Wigtown Book Festival Book Festival ran a combination of live-streamed and
pre-recorded events of varying lengths, which remained available for catch-up viewing. A safe
studio space was set up in The Print Room, adjacent to the festival offices at 11 Main Street,
where those chairs and authors able to attend in person filmed their part of the
conversation.
Abby Burn, a director of Purplebox Productions, describes the work involved:
“We had a conversation with Wigtown about how they wanted to run their festival.
Up to that point, they’d been running Wigtown Wednesdays through Zoom onto their
Facebook page. They really wanted to use Facebook [for the festival], but after going through
all our research, and based on our experience, we raised concerns. Facebook is a barrier to
entry. To be able to see anything you have to have an account. We pushed the festival to
look at doing it on YouTube. It’s the world’s video streaming platform. This is what they do,
and they do it well.
“The festival did not want audiences to see events presented as Zoom calls, and
wanted the option of filming live in their studio. This set-up was literally two cameras, some
lighting, and a backdrop.
“We were still using Zoom as the platform for interaction between host and author,
or between our tech team and the author, but we were no longer using it as the platform for
the audience.
“Wigtown Book Festival also required the ability to gather information and statistics,
the equivalent of ticket sales. We used the basis of their website to create YouTube
scheduled live streams. You could sign in from the festival’s website, or pop into an event
directly through YouTube. We gave them something that was easy for them to manipulate

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and wasn't going to fall over. We did have issues, of course. In one case it was YouTube’s
issue and not ours, but we ran the event later, once the problem was resolved.
“Those are the fundamentals. A lot of technical wizardry goes on underneath, like a
duck paddling underneath the water. It had to look smooth. It had to be easy for the
audience to understand and use. It had to be stable.
“For the best look, we used templates, which cover up the fact that we’re using
Zoom. They take away the yellow borders and help even things up — for example, so that
people’s heads appear roughly the same size. The templates give us the opportunity to
physically move people around the screen in order to place them, so both participants look
roughly equal. That makes it look more like the participants are face-to-face having a
conversations, which was another of the festival’s requests. And a template gives you
branding and a consistent look across the festival.
“We had one template for the chairperson’s introduction. Another template, for the
conversation, was two boxes of the same size. A third template was for an author’s reading.
Each template was slightly a different size, in order to give the effect that something different
was happening.
“For live events, where someone was in the studio, we did vision mixing. That’s the
equivalent of having a small television studio with two cameras, and cutting between them.
At the same time, we’re making sure all the graphics go out correctly and that everything else
happens. It’s not a case of sitting back and letting Zoom take control.
“One thing we insisted on was that everyone did a pre-Zoom. We’d go through their
setup with them, and as kindly and nicely as we could, might say things like, ‘Could you face
the window?’ ‘Could you liven up the space a little bit?’ ‘Could you put your laptop on a box
so it’s at eye level?’ And we’d explain, ‘This is because we want to make you look as good as
possible.’ We also sent everyone an email with detailed instructions. Of course, not everyone
took us up on this. That was a circumstance we could not control.
“But I cannot overemphasise the importance of a tech rehearsal. I wound up with
sheets of notes, things like, ‘Connection may drop out because they are in Beirut,’ or ‘Their
internet connection isn’t the best but they’re going to try and improve it, remind them to do
this.’ It was helpful having that heads-up.
“We had three events with serious tech issues. One was YouTube’s problem, as I said
earlier. For one of our children’s events, the issue was twofold: we were asked to help run it
late in the day, and it was going out on Facebook. Their requirements for livestreaming are
different than YouTube’s, so we did not have the right settings in place. A quick Google
solved that and we made the adjustments.
“Another problem was that this event happened on the first Saturday, and literally
every festival staff member was in the office above us using the internet for work. The
system wasn’t capable of handling that and kept dropping out. We made sure another piece
of equipment was brought in overnight, which gave us an independent 4G wi-fi connection.
The lesson we learned was know your platform’s tech requirements ahead of time. Another

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lesson was never rely on internal equipment, always bring your own. It meant the festival
team could carry on doing their jobs while we did ours.
“With another event the problem was that the speaker’s internet died. Just stopped.
They rebooted their router and it crashed out again. I pulled the event. Technically, it wasn’t
going to happen. We wound up taping the talk, getting it sent to us digitally, and editing it
before transmission. Of course while that was happening, behind the scenes the festival had
to put out a blog post explaining the change of plans, and notify everyone who’d signed up to
attend that it would go out later.
“YouTube creates an archive of your livestream. We were running what's called a pre-
countdown, a holding screen with a countdown to the start of the event. It automatically
notifies anybody subscribed to your channel that you've gone live and gives them 5-10
minutes to get themselves a coffee and get set to listen. When you end the stream, YouTube
automatically creates a video archive for people to revisit. You can go in and edit these
videos, and top and tail them if you want.
“Vimeo is an alternative platform, but to do professional streaming on Vimeo you
have to have a professional or business account, which costs money, whereas YouTube is
free. YouTube has a built in subtitle feature, which doesn’t often work for Scottish accents,
but they also allowed us to provide a URL for Stagetext’s subtitles.
“How Stagetext works is that they are part of the Zoom call, typing live during the
conversation. By the time it goes into the YouTube link the timing matches up, with maybe a
one- or two-second delay. On average, we were looking at between a 14- and a 32-second
delay from when I hit ‘go live’ to actually going out on YouTube. The Stagetext software
interacts to make sure that it happens at the right time on YouTube. They take the systems
we give them — the equivalent of our address code — and plug it into their system.
“We always acted as Host in order to control everything happening in the Zoom call.
Everyone required to take part gets sent the meeting invite — the chairperson, the author,
the Stagetext person if that was happening, and any staff members who’d be curating
audience questions for the chair.
“To do that, I had to set up my iPad, using another account, which the team sent the
questions to. We’d tried doing it using texts, but it looked really strange having a chair look at
their phone to try and select questions.
“I was adamant from the start that I didn’t want Wigtown Book Festival’s audiences
visible in the Zoom. I wanted it to look as close to what you would have experienced if you
were in the main marquee.
“Finally, each night, after everything was archived on YouTube for adult events, and
on Facebook for kids’ events, one of the day’s most interesting or successful events was
restreamed out to Facebook to see if we could reach more viewers around the world. And it
did work!
“One of the pieces of software that I use is called OBS, which is an open broadcasting
system. It’s free software, and they have loads of tutorials. We use it because it's
exceptionally stable. I can plug all my hardware into my computer and OBS picks it up and

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enables me to manipulate the captured video within OBS. It records the output of the whole
720p stream.
“Limiting ourselves to 720p meant that we used a lot less bandwidth, which is
important when relying on 4G rather than, say, fibre internet. This creates fewer issues when
streaming. We recorded everything onto our spare hard drive, date- and time-stamped, and
with the graphics in place.
“OBS has a great way of changing between systems. One of our templates on OBS
was Facebook, one was YouTube. All I had to do was chose one or the other from the hard
drive and all the information was there. Then I would go onto Facebook to make sure it was
ready, then hit ‘go live.’ With OBS we created an archive for ourselves, as well, which meant
if there was a problem transmitting, I had an archive of the event regardless.
“One of our biggest lessons was that we should have ensured we had multiple
channels, because there were issues when events ran simultaneously. When there were
crossovers we had to put one out on Facebook and one on YouTube. We’ve recommended
that if they do this again next year they should have a separate Big Wig YouTube channel.”

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

“I don’t know if people realise it, but I keep changing the posters behind
me,” said Ian Rankin, when we Zoomed to talk about this project. Not every
author worries about boring fans by beaming into their homes from the same
location, and there are some rooms I could navigate blindfolded, even though
I’ve never met the author in person.
Many relish the chance to see an author’s home, and it’s part of the lure
of a digital event. Entire Twitter accounts are devoted to authors’ shelves.
When I asked Nick Barley why he decided to build a studio, he said,
“The first reason was that we wanted to make sure the audience experience and
the audience journey was enjoyable, and in some way replicated part of the live
literary festival experience. We wanted it to be different from feeling as if you
were joining a Zoom call. One way we thought we could make our festival
different was by being able to say, ‘Here we are coming to you from our studio
in Edinburgh.’
“We did it in a short time, in a certain kind of way, and we'd probably do
it differently next year with different kinds of backdrops and more evidence of
coming from Edinburgh. [Having a studio] meant that we could anchor the
festival from its location and have people coming in from all over the world feel
connected to this city.”
Only about 15% of their events featured all the participants broadcasting
from the studio, but, he said, “What we did have was that all events were being

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broadcast through our studio. We also had a sign language interpreter in the
studio, and live captioning streams”

Bearing in mind the adage borrowed for this section’s heading, and
factoring in everything I’ve said elsewhere about audience attentiveness, I’m
aware that the contentious opinion I’m about to offer is highly subjective.
Until we can deliver cinema/television level visuals for a traditional
author interview, I’m not sure how much production values matter to me as a
viewer — especially since I can enjoy a digital book event without looking at it.
In some cases I find the visuals actively problematic. One festival uses a
branded backdrop and silhouettes participants using some kind of cut-out
technology. It regularly chops off nose tips and wreaks havoc with hairlines and
I cannot bear to look. Often the participants are silhouetted to face each other
throughout the conversation, and it’s disconcerting watching an event whose
participants rarely, if ever, glance my way. To be fair, that situation has
occurred on other platforms, depending on the speaker’s camera angles. It’s
especially vexing when someone delivers a paper. There’s only so long I care to
stare at the top of their head.
While I’ve heard complaints about cold, sterile backdrops, there are some
that are too busy, which I find taxing on the eyes. In some cases that’s resolved
by hitting full screen, which eliminates the dissonance by bringing the speakers
to the fore.
And as I say, other opinions are available. No festival can please all the
people all of the time.

Case Study: North Cornwall Book Festival At Home: Using Film as a Placeholder, an
Entertainment, and an Offering
Despite cancelling their 2020 festival, the North Cornwall Book Festival was
determined to signal their intention to regroup and return. They’ve done this via a series of
short films featuring authors who would have appeared. They are personal, witty, and
enjoyable. I asked the festival’s Artistic Director and Chair to explain how the films came
about.
Artistic Director Patrick Gale:
“The process, in theory, has been pretty straightforward. I booked each author for a Zoom
interview and used Zoom settings to block my own face and voice. (I had to nudge them
occasionally when they forgot to speak as though they weren’t answering a question.) We
also got them to give a reading.
“It has been a great success. Viewing and sharing figures get better and better,
proving that we’re reaching a wider audience than would come to us in the flesh. It was

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squeezed in under our pretty tiny budget, which was puffed out by grants from FEAST in
Cornwall, and the Arts Council’s Emergency Fund.
“It has also been a lot of work. There’ve been several lengthy edits, and several
reshoots and re-records. What I have really liked about the format is that each film has
ended up — for better or worse — really reflecting its subject’s personality.
“The project has made us realise we must definitely continue with a strong digital and
filmed element in festivals to come, post COVID. That will have repercussions on funding,
budgets and staffing in a hand-to-mouth festival with no paid staff!”

Chair of the festival, Pippa Hyam:

“Disappointed at having to postpone our festival, I started to look around at what
other festivals were doing. Though I think this is going to change dramatically over the next
few months, all of the ones I looked at were trying to replicate a festival interview session.
That meant 45-60 minutes of people talking on a Zoom video. We decided that wouldn’t
work, people won't sit and watch a video for that length of time.
“North Cornwall Book Festival is part of a group of festivals that includes two music
festivals, and lots of music and art exhibitions throughout the year. That means we have a lot
of very creative people whose skills we could call on.
“The initial idea came from the committee member in charge of our children's
authors, who came up with the idea of filming authors setting tasks for children. Patrick and I
said, ‘Yes, that's great. Let's do it with all the authors.’
My daughter works in film production and suggested that we look at vloggers,
because there's some really engaging content out there. She said, ‘Do interviews, but edit
them and get the authors to do some filming.’ The Zoom interviews were originally around
30-40 minutes long, and the final films are around 8-12 minutes long, combining interview
footage, and B-roll footage filmed by the authors. We produced a very clear brief for them to
follow, and a list of suggestions for things we wanted them to film.
“Authors used their phones to show us their working space, the view from their
window, or their dog running through the garden. Some went on walks. Petroc Trelawny
used his iPhone to track the bicycle journey from his London flat to the BBC. We intercut this
with him walking up the stairs in Broadcasting House into his studio.
“Not all the authors were up to that standard, but personally I think the authors’
characters shone through. We did have a couple of authors who were incapable of filming,
and we ended up doing a B-roll on their behalf.
“My daughter edited the first seven films. We relied heavily on her ability to put it together
with the funny little captions, and trusted her to choose the best bits. She reckons each film
took her about five hours to do.
“We have another good festival friend, a photographer and editor who worked for
the BBC and is now freelance, and he took on the rest. They did it for tuppence. We have a
budget, but it’s small. There’s another very nice friend of the festival who put together the
graphics.

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 “We've got 29 films in total. That includes all the schools films. As for the rest, we’re
uploading one a week. We discussed whether to do it all at once, in a confined period of time
as if it was a real festival, and thought no. People might be excited at first, but they’ll run out
of steam. We decided to publish one a week, and they will go on till Christmas, when we’ll
have a bit of a finale, possibly with the musicians. That’s another point, because getting the
rights to music is important. If you don’t, you get into hot water. Again, we were very lucky.
The Rowan Tree, one of the local bands we work with, said they’d let us use their music, as
did Tom Hickcox and Helen Porter. Again, they’re friends of the festival, and said ‘just credit
us and use the music.’ It’s been lovely having really nice music to lay alongside the films.

Chatterboxes — A Tool for Boosting Engagement

I confess, I have no great love for chat boxes (I’m using that term
interchangeably with the Q&A function that co-exists on some systems). My
first digital event, when I was brand new to Zoom, felt profoundly chaotic
because not only could I see all the attendees, but the chat box let me see them
interacting nonstop throughout the panel conversation.
“Pay attention, we’re talking here!” I wanted to scream.
Job one was rejigging my display to eliminate the sight of the man
picking his nose, the couple fighting over the popcorn, and the person scrubbing
their dishes. But as the chair, I had to engage with the chat box, using my
periphery vision to make note of audience questions to pose to my writers.
It turns out my misanthropy is wide of the mark. It turns out the chat
function is beloved of audiences and festivals alike.
The conversation you had while queuing for an event? That’s the chat
box. The enthused post-event discussion held en route to the signing queue?
That’s the chat box. The collective gasp of amazement, the ripple of laughter?
That’s the chat box. The encounter with someone visiting from overseas about
how much you love the same writers? You know what I’m going to say.
That first digital event I did was for Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s Stay at Home
Literary Festival. She’s a passionate advocate for chat boxes:
“Feedback from our festival drew attention to the audience participation
aspect via the chat box. It was lovely seeing the way they’d use it to have a
conversation while the event was going on, a parallel conversation not about
irrelevant things, but a dialogue opening up amongst the audience while the
event was happening. The Q&A would emerge from that, and there was an
organic discursive interaction. Digital events that don't facilitate interaction run

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a risk of [making audiences feel like they are] eavesdropping on someone else's
phone call.
“There's something to be said for the digital space. In the chat box over
and over again I saw people saying they were tuning in from far away, and
having conversations about the event that you can't have in a physical event. I
never got the sense that people were using chat box to have a chinwag. They
were actively thinking and unpacking what was being discussed. It made me
feel like this offers a lot to people.
“With a Zoom room you are in the space, you’re part of it. You don't
have the speaker up on a stage in the distance, as you would have in a physical
event, but have this levelling experience of everyone being part of it. I loved the
informality of my festival. There was something very human about it. People
seem to respond to that. Maybe it was of the moment, but those are some of the
things I would take forward.”
It’s also worth mentioning that someone who’s too shy or intimidated to
raise their hand during a live event might feel comfortable — and more seen —
engaging digitally. In terms of inclusion, that’s another bonus.
Author Ian Rankin said he noticed the lively ambience of the chat box at
Two Crime Writers and a Microphone: The Locked Up Festival, which took
place 2-4 July.
“It was great because you had people from all around the world who felt
very connected to this and to each other. All the sidebars where people were
getting to chat while the events were going on were full of friendships being
formed, not only people commenting on the events themselves, but just chatting
to each other. It was very collegial, very open, very democratic.
“People's brains have been changed by cell phones and social media.
They're used to watching or listening to something and also texting or tweeting
about what they’re watching. It doesn’t mean they're not focused on what's
happening on the TV. When you're on stage at a book festival, you don't look at
the audience think for a second that every single one of them is 100% focused
on what you're doing. They'll be drifting in and out of the conversation. I think
[the chat box] is just an extension of that.”
At Edinburgh International Book Festival, the team used chat boxes to
conduct nonstop audience interface behind the scenes. According to Director
Nick Barley, “The web team who built it also operated the festival platform,
which included the chat room and the Q&A function.

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 “There were two groups, one was our front of house team of moderators,
usually two or three people per event, who’d be talking to people. For instance,
if someone had a problem, say their sound wasn’t working, our team would
troubleshoot. Or if someone said, ‘I hate this speaker,’ they could answer,
‘Thanks for your comments. It’s really great to hear from you.’
“At the same time our Q&A moderators were responsible for selecting
the questions we fed through to the interviewers. They’d select the best
questions coming in that hadn't already been asked.”
He added, “There's a second part of this, which is about the interactivity,
or the participatory quality of what we're doing. During the festival BBC
journalists said, ‘What you're doing is different from what the BBC does,
because the BBC broadcasts to viewers, while you’re doing interactive
broadcasting to participants.’ Obviously, there's a fine line between when a
viewer becomes a participant. If you're watching a football match on TV you
probably are a kind of participant because you're cheering. But we were adding
in as many participatory elements as we could, bringing people into the process.
I think the future lies in how we can find imaginative ways to enable people to
be participants and not just viewers.”

Ruth Wishart —like me, both a frequent chair as well as programmer —

also feels chat boxes can be distracting, but recognises their value.
“Audience participation is a huge part of a book festival. It's why you
find 750 people packed into a tent in Edinburgh. In the digital realm, the chat
function is the only way they can interact. It’s far from perfect, and it can be
distracting, but at least the audience has a small chance to be involved. It’s a
great joy to me [for Cove and Kilcreggan] that MyVLF moderate the chat.
Because the author talks directly to the audience, the chair can concentrate on
their questions without having to worry about anything else.”
For my part, when attending events I keep my camera off and rarely
participate in the chat. From a chairing perspective, I’d say the ideal scenario is
a curated set of questions to pick and choose from. Yes, it involves more
technology (and the ability to use it) but it means an end to hearing (or scrolling
past), “This is more of a comment than a question,” and orations from members
of the audience certain that they know more about a subject than the bona fide
expert who’s written an actual book about it.
Lyndsey Fineran, of The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham
Literary Festival, developed an appreciation of the curated Q&A. For their

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blended festival, some events had live audiences, but they couldn’t use a roving
mike, for safety reasons. “We came up with two methods of asking questions. If
you were in the venue, you could use the digital platform Slido to ask questions.
If you were watching at home, we used a live Q&A function, with someone
behind the scenes collating all the questions. The chair would be handed an iPad
in the final 10 minutes to take audience questions.
“This is something we might keep in future, even if life is completely
normal. It stopped all that fumbling of passing the mike around, or people
saying, ‘This is more of a comment than a question.’ The energy was better and
the chair could pick which question they wanted to end on, and ignore those that
had already been covered.”
Chat boxes were a key part of the experience for visitors to Hay Festival
as well, said Chris Bone: “The comment thread is incredibly important for the
user experience, at least for the festival’s experience, and we had to resource
that well. At every session we had someone dedicated to interaction within the
comments. That was separate to our social strategy, separate to our digital
marketing, just them in the comments — because it's a sales pitch. If you have
sponsors, you can add their messages. It's also answering tech issues, making
funny remarks and trying to make it chatty, encouraging that kind of
engagement. It was by far the most fun part of the festival. Sometimes you
would have an event taking place, and the comments became its whole own
thing.
“We kept it separate, so our speakers and our chairs do not see the public
interface at all during their event, and questions are fed to them. And some
sessions always get a lot of heat. Anything about women and gender, and
equality? The comments can get quite nasty. You have duty of care to your
speakers not to have them bombarded with those kinds of things.
“Logistically it was a big resourcing issue, because that’s someone just
doing that one job for the entire time, and it’s an investment.”

Case Study: Personalised Signings at Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh International Book Festival made it possible for some fans to get their
books personally signed, face to face — albeit digitally. The festival bookshop delivered
signings with 22 UK-based writers, where the first fifty book purchasers were offered access
to short, private Zoom sessions that they were able to record. Authors involved included Ian
Rankin, Val McDermid, Ali Smith, Maggie O’Farrell, Amelia Gentleman, Gavin Francis, Philippe
Sands and Hallie Rubenhold.
Festival Director Nick Barley explained how it worked:

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 “There were two different streams. First, if the author was able to come to the studio
at the Assembly Rooms on George Street, we had the books in a special room upstairs after
their event. People who had registered to have their books signed with the author would
would be sent a Zoom invitation. It was very specific, for example, ‘You’re invited to meet Ian
Rankin at 7:48 pm on Thursday night, to have your book signed.’
“They’d arrive and be put into a waiting room, along with all the other people. It was
essentially a digital version of the signing queue. When their time arrived, a member of our
bookshop team would let them into the Zoom call with the author. We also had a third
screen, an overhead camera with a light that shone down on the book, and enabled the
audience member to see the author physically signing their book.
“The sales receipt was an important part of this process. When you bought the book
you would write down the dedication you wanted, for example, ‘To Nick, Happy Birthday,
with love from Lee.’ Or whatever dedication you wanted. The author would see that on their
screen. It’s not unlike the way we use post-its at signings, because that helps with spellings of
names. The signed book was then put in a pile with the receipt inside for dispatch.
“The slower, harder way of doing this was when an author could not be with us in the
studio, and that is why we limited the numbers. We had to send the number of books
needed for the signing to the author’s home, and afterwards, organise getting those books
back to our warehouse to get them dispatched. It was a slightly longer process, and a bit
more problematic.
“With these signings there was no overhead camera, so you couldn’t see the signing
happening. Nevertheless, the audience member had the Zoom experience and was able to
speak to the author.
“I think some people were confused about what exactly this experience was, which
probably inhibited the demand a bit. Those who did understand realised that it was just like a
signing at a festival. And how long do you get with an author when there is a signing queue?
We didn’t impose a time limit. We don’t say, ‘You have a maximum of exactly one minute.’
We say, ‘You can see lots of people behind you, so be reasonably quick, but get a selfie, have
a chat.’ People would have between one and three minutes with the author.
“It partly depended on the author. For example, Rob Biddulph, the children’s author,
had 50 people in his signing queue, the maximum allowed, and it took four hours! He was
obviously spending 10-15 minutes with each person.”

Sign Up or Rock Up?

There are a variety of ways to access free digital events, from signing up
directly through the festival’s portal for specific events or a block of events, via
an intermediary ticketing agency such as Eventbrite, or simply rocking up on
the day, hitting the link on the website or YouTube channel (or Facebook,
Instagram Live, etc.).

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 Sometimes it requires a combination of these steps, which can confuse
even the computer literate. I ran afoul of Eventbrite more than once, finding
access tricky. I’d register for events and receive a confirmation email, only for
the system to fail to recognise me, despite using the link provided. It meant the
palaver of re-registering for the event all over again to gain entry.
At another festival I registered for free access across all their dates, only
to get so tangled in the system that it was easier to leave the site up, muted, as
an open tab on my browser. I would toggle in and out to see what was on — a
bit like leaving the television or radio on in the background. One festival asked
visitors to build an itinerary as an access route to events. You could add new
events at any time, even right as they began, but again, it felt a tad fussy to me.
The drawback to rocking up is that you do not have access to the chat
function. (Though some festivals also import queries from their social media
channels, offering another way to participate.) No sign up means no reminder
email, so the responsibility for remembering what you want to see rests entirely
on the viewer. Then again, if you hate a cluttered In Box, this is a plus.
From a festival perspective, getting people to sign up allows you to build
your mailing list and collect data. It allows you to repeat the “Please donate”
message and send follow-up questionnaires, which provide valuable audience
feedback. That mailing list can keep working hard, helping you generate fresh
income after the festival. For example, Cheltenham got in touch offering me a
chance to purchase on-demand viewing rights for all their events for the reduced
price of £15, down from £20.
For free events, then, it feels as if this either/or option has a lot going for
it, since leaving the options open maximises your potential audience.

The Tech Dry Run

If you read the case study with Purplebox, you have some idea of the
importance of a tech dry run for a livestreamed event. It’s worth emphasising.
Joe Vaughan, who ran his own Publicate Festival and came on board in
the new role of Digital Production Liaison for Edinburgh International Book
Festival, explained that the production team played a much bigger role in the
creative process this year, and he was there to keep the lines of communication
open between the tech team, authors, and their publishers.

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 Much of July was devoted to liaising with everyone who’d be using
Zoom, and then conducting a pre-check about a week beforehand. It was a
mammoth scheduling job, coordinating time zones and availability.
“The time spent was really worthwhile. We'd start with an internet speed
test. If their internet speed was lower than we want it to be we had several
options: we could ask them to plug a cable directly into the router, to change
rooms, and to make sure that partners or children weren't using the internet at
the same time.
“We’d also talk about lighting and camera angles. A lot of it was about
putting people at ease. I’d explain that we were possibly doing things differently
than they've done before. We knew that by the end of July some authors would
have done five or six Zoom events. We had to say, ‘I know you know what to
do, but we have our systems in place.’”
In addition to these pre-checks, participants were initially asked to log in
two hours ahead of their event, though that dropped to one hour after the first
weekend passed without too many issues. “One of the main reasons we had that
much time set aside was to account for people arriving late, and people logging
in who hadn’t done the pre-check. In the end, for 80-90% of our events we
didn’t need that amount of time.
“Part of what we did in the pre-check was prepare authors for what they
would see at every step of the way, for example when we moved out of the
digital green room and into the studio. With a live event there might be 5000
people watching, but you're in your bedroom, completely alone. I think some
people feared that as soon as they logged in they’d be live.
“A common question was ‘What should I do if my internet drops out?’
We had a process for getting people back into the event quickly, but that
required the authors to follow several steps, and we had to talk them through
that process. We sent them that information at first contact, by email, and went
through it again at the pre-check. It was a phone number which would bring
them into the Zoom call. It’s simple, but the thought of the internet going down
makes people very scared.
“It’s a feature of Zoom that you can use your mobile or landline to phone
into a Zoom call. It means you can have no internet at all but can still phone in
and appear on screen. It would sound like mobile phone call into radio, a little
bit grainy. I think that happened twice across all our events this year. There
were troubles across the whole industry.

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 “Another question I was asked quite a lot was, ‘Where should I look on
my screen when I'm talking?’ Some people say you have to look directly into
the camera, but that’s really unnatural. When I'm talking to you now, my
instinct is to look at your face in the box. Even though if a third party was
watching, neither of us would be looking at the audience, we’re having a more
natural conversation.”
Vaughan’s job never existed before because this situation never existed
before in the book festival sector. “We were asking authors to do something
different from what they are used to. A majority were very adaptable and
accommodating. Some authors who have been doing this for decades, rightly or
wrongly, are used to a certain kind of event, where you turn up, meet your chair,
someone gives you a glass of water, you have a conversation, you sign books
and you go home. This year, I had to have their phone numbers and email
addresses. Suddenly, it doesn't work to go through publicists all the time,
because we're going into people's homes.
“In an ordinary year, working with a publicist is fine and very efficient,
but when you need to get back to an author in their house and say, ‘I'm really
sorry, but your background doesn't look right. And your lighting is bad. And
your internet's bad . . . ’ People aren’t used to being spoken to like that — and
we're not used to speaking to people like that.”

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 WHERE MIGHT WE GO FROM HERE?
Towards a game plan for best practice

“Culture is not a solid, it’s a liquid.” — Jerry Seinfeld

The impetus for this report was a a global pandemic that forced the arts
community to react fast, almost before it had a chance to think things through.
Many months on from the government’s original UK lockdown, the book
festival sector has much to congratulate itself for, and much still to refine.
The hope is that this paper, by gathering many of the sector’s pandemic
achievements and lessons in one place, and by asking questions about fresh
innovations and approaches we might take — as well as things we may have
overlooked — will provide inspiration for a range of communities as we head
into a dramatically altered future.
Creative Scotland’s goal is to reinstate a network of Scottish book
festivals as a safe place for communication, commiseration, and creative
collaboration. With that in mind, I asked the festivals I spoke to what they
might hope to gain from a revived network. Here are some of their answers.

Ann Landmann, CYMERA: “It would be helpful to talk to other people

about what they’ve done and what’s worked. I’ve been to some webinars, but
no one seems to have really concrete answers, beyond the obvious ones. It’s
good to have real-life examples, and for people to be happy to share. For
technology, it would be great if someone had found a tech package they could
recommend. It helps just knowing that other people are out there struggling with
the same things, and that you’re not alone.”
Eleanor Livingstone, StAnza: “Resurrecting the book festival alliance
digitally could prove successful because in the past the travel to meetings was a
stumbling block. The main thing I got from it then was the connections I made.
To have someone to ask questions of and to speak with people facing the same
issues you are. Support.”
Joan Michael, of Ullapool Book Festival, said she’d welcome technology
sharing, but “my number one” would be bilingual interpretation equipment,
maybe housed at Creative Scotland, with funding for it to be transported to
whoever needs it. She would also welcome a way to ensure there were no date
clashes across Scottish book festivals.
Jess Orr, Paisley Book Festival: “This conversation [we’re having] is a
good example of how a network would be useful, because every time you have

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articulate what's in your head with people facing the same kinds of issues and
problems it is useful and affirming. It helps, when you’re stuck in your head,
trying to figure out if you’re making the right decisions. It's nice to talk to
someone else in the same boat.”
Katrina Brodin, Glasgow Life: “It’s got to be about propositions. The
solutions we had up our sleeves to problems we experienced before don't work
for this one. What would be useful is something that stimulates shared
experiences, developing good practice, connections and co-production, and
maybe co-hosting of content between festivals, which doesn't feel threatening,
so that one festival doesn't dominate the other. If it made sense for a consortium
bid for a money to invest in a tender to get the right supplier of a platform that
worked for everybody across the year. A degree of honesty around the table
around issues of money and other things. Joining forces has to be about how we
help everyone have the best chance of coming through this, and our audiences
ultimately all care about this space, so we should be getting together to deal
with that.”
Isla Rosser-Owen, speaking for Islay Book Festival, said she’d welcome
peer support and help, because smaller festivals don’t have the same kind of
people resources or skills to hand. Ideas about how to upskill volunteers were
also on her list of benefits. We could also ask ourselves “Are the smaller
festivals getting lost?”
Adrian Turpin, of Wigtown Book Festival said he’d like to see the
following issues on the table:
“If this is an audience development opportunity what does that actually
mean? And a lot of that’s talking about diversity — but in a digital sense, it’s no
use saying we can talk to the world, without saying how we’re going to find the
world and make that work. It would be great to come up with a few constructive
ideas for doing that. It’s a skill.
“There will be a new degree of technical know-how among everyone.
There’s a fear of working in silos. We need to ask each other ‘How did you do
this?’ Ask the hard questions.
“Shared resources and shared information. I’m not a great believer in
sharing in the sense of let’s all use the same system, but there are probably
modules we can use within that. Is there a toolkit for smaller festivals for using
digital? Does Creative Scotland need an external tech team working on demand
with festivals? Or would they feel that’s preventing supporting the supply
chain? Let’s talk about it.

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 “Monetisation is another obvious thing to discuss. Do we need a survey:
‘What have you been paying? What would you be prepared to pay?’ Does
monetisation include fundraising? It’s usually thought of as something separate.
“We can get lost talking about the tech details, but shouldn’t we step back
and say, what is this actually, what does it mean?

Let’s Brainstorm

Ideas for best practice pepper this report but here, again, is a collection of
possibilities, some repeated, others new. They are my own suggestions and
suggestions from others.
Thus far our sector has been reactive. We were caught on the hop and
plunged into crisis. We’ve done our best and it’s been darn good. Now we have
the opportunity to look to the future. It’ll be a challenge, with everything in
turmoil and endless uncertainties. Technology evolves rapidly. COVID-19
regulations alter every few weeks, and region to region. Recent headlines say a
vaccine might be with us sooner rather than later, altering the terrain yet again,
though what it will mean for public gatherings remains to be seen. Programmers
working on their 2021 projects are scenario-planning like crazy, second-
guessing delivery options and different ways to make them happen. Every
version leads to a different outcome and targets a different audience. This
requires us to stay alert and flexible.

We can’t solve everything here and now, but we can think about the
questions that need asking, such as:

• What do good events really require? And how does that change,
delivering them live versus digital?
• Are we cultural importers, bringing incomers to our cities, towns
and villages, or cultural exporters, using the internet to beam our
ideas across the globe? Can we be both?
• How can we help one another? How might a Scottish Book
Festival alliance work? What do we want it to achieve?
• What opportunities should we seize over the next 12 to 18 months?
How should we prioritise them?
• What could we be?

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 In that spirit, here’s a collection of ideas and questions to get the
conversation rolling. (NB: Some of these things are already underway, some
may be too fanciful.)

GENERAL

• Let’s take the points made in this article on board:

https://ashmann.medium.com/cultural-sector-digital-after-the-storm-
72eab62acfde

• Use the new Scottish Book Festival to share experiences, talk shop,
brainstorm, collaborate, and share resources. Use it to communicate,
collaborate, and co-programme.

• Adrian Turpin offered the following suggestions for opportunities our

network might explore:

o A digital toolkit, which includes a streaming toolkit. Something

clearly laying out the issues and choices, with case studies. We
should ask why people went down a particular route and what
happened as a result.
o Ask ourselves about the relative importance of our existing
audiences and our international audiences. What's the relative
importance of age groups? What's the relative importance of
young people's and children’s audiences?
o “We worked with The Bookshop Band, who have built up
streaming partnerships. They did their morning talk show; it
would go out through our website and their Facebook page, then
through our Facebook page, through the booksellers Association,
and something like 30 or 40 other partners, largely bookshops,
across the world. Partnerships are something we're always
encouraged to talk about later, but streaming partnerships are
really interesting. How do we make those work? How do we
piggyback on other people's digital streams without cannibalising
our own, and while also maintaining our identity?”

• Create a mentoring programme around festival programming, production,

to complement the new chairperson mentoring programme.

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• Organise opportunities to set up conversations and workshops with
television and filmmakers, since digital events are effectively
broadcasting. Once we understand the intricacies of broadcasting rights
we will be better placed to review our fee structure for appearing authors
and chairs, to determine if they are fair and in keeping with industry
standards.

• Do we need a legal fact sheet and checklist (akin to recommendations on

Scottish Book Trust’s website) highlighting permissions and copyright
issues for all music, film clips, and readings used during digital events?
Ex: if your technology collects IP addresses, that information needs to be
incorporated into their privacy policy. Permission must be given for a
festival to share any recording showing someone’s home or location.

• When events are pre-recorded there is usually a quick post-event

conversation to ensure that nothing needs to be re-recorded. Livestreamed
sessions might also funnel into a space where the participants can debrief
and say a proper goodbye, and festival staff can say, “Great job, thanks.”

• When travel is safe and permitted, an international travel bursary scheme

would enable programmers, especially those from smaller festivals, to
visit their peers around the world to forge alliances in order to see what
they do and how it’s accomplished. These relationships and new
friendships could lead to fantastic international collaborations.

• In lieu of a green room, some festivals hold an authors’ tea or cocktail

party to make them feel part of a festival community. (Send them snacks,
drink, branded merchandise ahead of time, and meet in a Zoom room.)

• Festivals are places where audience members connect with one another.
Can we expand on the spirit of the chat room, involving them more in our
digital events? What possibilities exist?

• Explore outdoor options, such as drive-in festivals (see the Appledore

case study), though it’s worth questioning whether Scotland’s notoriously
variable weather makes this a viable, reliable opportunity.

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• Taking a cue from Reading is Magic: provide branded merchandise to
participants ahead of time, encouraging them to decorate their filming
space to differentiate an event from other digital fare living online. (This
entails expenses that might be problematic for some.)

• Offer digital-pivot support sessions to less well-resourced book festivals.

This might include specific, centralised assistance in elements of
production (for example: editing a pre-recorded event; creation of
templates).

• Events need to be monitored/hosted. This is a new aspect of the job for

festival staffers, which should be recognised in terms of training and
financial compensation. In fact, if the future is hybrid, this raises staffing
issues, as the work involved is enormous on its own, and an extra burden
in conjunction with the renewal of live events.

• In the interests of fairness to authors and festivals, how long should

digital content remain available online?

• It’s worth remembering that digital events are more tiring for authors and
chairs than live events. In addition to the attention required to connect
down a camera lens, we need to be aware that we’re now asking
participants to dress the room they’re in to look good, worry about
microphones, cameras and lighting, and do their own hair and makeup.
These are not things they’ve had to worry about, or were things that a
publicist looked after on their behalf. On top of all that, we’re often
asking them to work at odd times of the day or night, to coincide with
international time zones.

• Make websites as simple as possible, including FAQs about how to

access events, or even videos demonstrating the process. Be explicit
about which events will not be available for catch-up viewing.

• Per Chris Bone: “Hay Festivals held a digital press conference to launch
the programme, which felt like a good way to give journalists the
rundown of what was happening. We also ran through the tech we would
be using for the festival, so we flushed out all of the journalists’ tech

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 problems. It meant they were invested and registered to then watch the
sessions and do the same level of reporting they would have done for our
live events. One of the opportunities now for smaller festivals is that
national arts correspondents can attend them digitally if there is
something attractive on the programme.”

• Think hard about that pre-show trailer, is my recommendation. They

get old, fast. Chris Bone said, “The pre-show reel got incredibly
repetitive for people that watched more than four events, and we had to
mix it up. It had our sponsor messages and our please donate message,
so for the winter weekend we’ll make sure each one is slightly different.”

PROGRAMMING

• Encourage greater creativity and experimentation. Ex: Do digital events

have to be an hour long? Might they be shorter, like the Tea with Words
events at Wigtown, or longer, like CYMERA’s live (and simultaneously
live-tweeted) Dungeons and Dragons session, or Bloody Scotland’s tour
of Tartan Noir, featuring dozens of authors in short bursts over the
space of three hours. Do they have to be conversations? This year
Edinburgh International Book Festival ran a Scran and Words event,
and Wigtown Book Festival ran a whisky tasting.

• We might seek out advice and inspiration about author-led walking

tours, interactive events and performances. Let’s collaborate more with
other art forms and see what grows.

• How can we make digital events more theatrical, cinematic? Might we

create opportunities for our sector to liaise with filmmakers to create
unique content? How might the sector facilitate this?

• Would it be possible to offer mailing list subscribers personalised

recommendations based on their previous purchases/attendance?

• My feeling, echoed by several others I spoke to, is that panel events

sometimes suffer online. They are visually taxing. There’s little
opportunity for organic give and take of a live conversation. The chair
has to work harder to integrate each element into a cohesive whole.
Several people I interviewed said, “I prefer single author events.” Could

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 our sector put its heads together to figure out how to make panels truly
effective in the digital realm?

• Janet Smyth points out: “Marketing used to be all front loaded. It was
about selling tickets, so everything was pre-event. With events that stay
up on line for a few months, there’s incredible freedom to do post-event
marketing. You can take the time to reach out to different people and
think slightly differently about how to approach it. For example, we're
using things like children's hospital charities, letting them know that
there is material sitting there for kids who might have iPads in hospital.”

• Make the most of social media, recommends Chris Bone: “The festival,
in a digital space, means all of your other channels become more
important and should be seen as an add-on to your programming. If
you're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc., curate content for that in
the same way that you would curate what happens on your stage. We
found that an overwhelming number of people were doing really fun
things at home, like setting up their own festival sites with their own
Hay signs. Not only did our content strategies try and rally them more,
but it became a part of the experience as much as what was happening
in the event.”

• CYMERA’s Advent Calendar for 2020, offered free on their website,

features short films with authors that include readings, tours of their
workspace, and much more. Labour intensive to create, and done on zero
budget, therefore requiring a lot of good will on the part of the authors,
but a terrific way to keep this festival’s specific audience engaged. (NB:
As I explained earlier, I am a festival trustee. This was not my idea.)

• Might funding be found for a group pitching session enabling festivals to

travel to London and engage with the publishing community as a group,
with an introductory greeting, followed by one-on-one meetings
throughout the course of a day?

AUTHOR CARE

• As we’ve said, though digital events don’t require travel and overnight
stays they are still fatiguing. That’s worth being aware of as we build

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 programmes, especially if we would like an author to do multiple events
across a festival.

• In the absence of a green room or other hospitality, could we find fresh

ways of making authors feel welcome and engaged with our festivals?

• This also applies to the kinds of industry interactions that don’t exist
within the digital realm. Can we bring authors together with their fellow
authors, and with publishing professionals, in a way that doesn’t feel
forced and does appeal to all involved?

• It can be useful for panellists to have a chance to meet ahead of their

event. How can this be built into the digital experience? (Or the hybrid
experience, where some authors are “live” and some are beaming in?)
Should the festival facilitate this, or the chairperson? If the latter, is that
extra step being considered in their remuneration?

• As Ever Dundas points out, digital may feel like an easier way to include
disabled authors, but should not be the only way we include them in
future. Physical spaces must always be accessible and welcoming.
Perhaps we will offer a variety of ways for all authors to attend, and the
decision about which to choose will be arrived at with, rather than on
behalf of, each author.

• Authors love meeting their readers, and it would be great to investigate

more options around digital meet-and-greets, whether that’s via a digital
signing queue or another innovative approach.

• We might examine how we can serve mid-list and lesser known writers,
many of whom are getting lost in the digital shuffle with the rush to book
big names and big name debuts. This will also create the much-needed
programme variety that engages audiences. In partnership with publishers
and bookstores, we need to address the problematic nature of book sales
following online events. That might mean special festival discounts,
special festival editions or extras (a special book plate, extra content. . . ).
All of which has to be factored into our schedules and budgets. I include
this point again here as it’s of special importance to authors because

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 bookstore orders (and publishing contracts) are directly linked to past
performance. In 2020, even bestselling authors took a hit in their
numbers, a problem that’s compounded, and more serious, for less well-
known writers.

INCLUSIVITY
• Can we do more to provide content free to the digitally excluded, via
memory sticks, DVDs, by combining forces with libraries, care homes,
schools, cinemas, etc.? Content could be borrowed, like audio books, as
well as aired live in accordance with appropriate social distancing rules in
effect. (NB: Permissions and rights issues must be taken into account.)

• It would be fantastic to source funding for simultaneous translation, or

post-event translation for recorded events. This would help us reach
Gaelic speakers, as well as new residents of Scotland, such as the refugee
communities and our Polish friends, and encourage them to feel welcome
at book festivals. It would also open up the world of Gaelic literature to
those who don’t have that as a second language. As Adrian Turpin
suggested: “We need to think harder about the different languages of
Scotland and how we can provide for them, whether it’s through subtitles
or something else. And figure out how to pay for this.”

• At the same time, we can discuss how to build inclusivity into our
programming, with events that are specifically targeted to different
communities, whether that means events featuring dyslexic writers,
special audio events for the visually impaired, multi-sensory events, and
so on.

CHAIRING
• More support for chairs would be ideal, including increased fees
commensurate with the work involved. Chairing is even harder in the
digital realm, and there’s a strong argument for festivals creating green
room or other opportunities for a pre-event chat. (NB: Some of us already
contact authors ahead of time as part of our prep.)

• It is helpful having a question screener/curator to interact with the

audience in the chat room, and cut through the chaff to feed the chair the

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 best and most relevant questions. This requires more human resources, as
well as hardware and the training to use it.

• This comes from Julia Wheeler via:

https://www.gaolf.org/blogs/post/virtually-the-same-or-is-it

“If it’s possible to reduce the number of things you need chairs to
remember to say — sponsors, website, crowdfunding address,
bookshop, etc. — especially at the beginning of an event, they will love
you. And so will the audience: even more than at an onstage event they
are there to hear what the author thinks, but now other entertainment is
only a click away. Captions and graphics can be used for essential
information and again, borrowing from telly, branded ‘bumpers’ at the
top and tail of each event make for clean starts and stops. A simple
static logo can work or, even better, a brief ‘festival feel’ film of last
year’s highlights.”

• We are already in the process of widening the pool of chairs in Scotland,

to promote greater inclusivity and diversity. Here’s hoping the new
mentoring programme continues beyond the first intake of mentees.

• Training for freelance and staff is at the heart of this idea, written about
in Lit Hub’s What Happens When Literary Events Move Online:
“Victoria Chang, chair of the low-residency MFA program at Antioch
University . . . [said] ‘For every event, we had hosts, emcees, co-hosts.
We trained every person giving a seminar, reading, or workshop, not
only on how to use Zoom, but also on how to bring their presentations
alive.’ She recognizes how difficult it is for presenters to maintain their
energy and keep the audience engaged when everyone is staring at a
screen. ‘We also shortened all presentations by just a little to avoid as
much Zoom fatigue as possible.’”

TECHNOLOGY
• Pre-checks are vital. Everyone must understand how to use the
technology. This is the time to advise about lighting, camera placement
and backdrops; check sound; broadband speed; ambient noise, etc.. If the
author is reading a paper or doing a long reading, gently suggest where to
place the text so audiences are not left staring at the parting in their hair.

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 It might be necessary to ask that other members of the speaker’s family
stay off the wi-fi to ensure a strong signal.

• Integrate your digital production person into the team. Let them attend
planning meetings and offer input from the start about how to structure
things. Build their experience into the fabric of your programme and
there should be fewer problems down the line.

• At the tech dry-run it is worth reminding writers and chairs broadcasting

from home to remove anything that could could reveal their location, the
identities of their children or other vulnerable people, or photos that
infringe on another person’s privacy.

• As an audience member, I like seeing participants’ names on screen

throughout an event, much as they appear projected onto backdrops
during live events. This would benefit less well known writers
enormously. If you join a digital event that’s underway it can be baffling
knowing who’s talking.

• Could we create a database of Scottish tech services to encourage

working with companies and individuals based here? Using local
companies benefits the Scottish economy and our national skill set.

• Could we create ongoing digital skills development opportunities to keep

pace with evolving technology, prioritising assistance to festivals without
the resources to hire in a dedicated tech team, and those in the sector who
wish re- or upskill to improve their employment opportunities?

• Digital costs are significant and we’d benefit from a central hub for
sharing information. Adrian Turpin said, “There will be a new degree of
technical know-how among everyone but there’s a fear of working in
silos. We need to ask each other, ‘How did you do this?’ Ask the hard
questions. It’s harder the smaller you are.”

MONETISATION
• How will the sector deal with audience expectation that digital events will
be offered for free?

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• With the advent of digital streaming, will there be an expectation for
year-round programming? If so, what does that mean for festivals reliant
on seasonal, freelance, or volunteer staffing?

• How can we increase book sales through festival bookshops or our

affiliated booksellers at digital events? Can we create added-value
merchandise only available to those buying through a festival’s web shop
or bookseller?

• Could the sector investigate income-generating models, such as

subscriptions, friends of schemes, memberships, etc.? (NB: CYMERA
and other festivals already have such systems in place, and might be able
to kick-start the conversation.)

• Additional ideas can be found in the discussion beginning on page 41.

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APPENDIX A: RESOURCES AND FURTHER READING

• Cultural sector + digital: After the storm:

https://ashmann.medium.com/cultural-sector-digital-after-the-storm-
72eab62acfde

• The Space’s guide to live-streaming options:

https://www.thespace.org/resource/live-streaming-arts-lo-fi-and-low-
cost-options

• The Space’s Digital Rights Toolkit:

https://www.thespace.org/resource/spaces-digital-rights-toolkit

• The Space’s Online Audiences Toolkit:

http://assets.thespace.org.s3.amazonaws.com/Toolkits%20%28on%20the
%20webste%29/The%20Space%20Online%20Audiences%20Toolkit_03
1212.pdf

• The Audience Agency’s Digital Engagement With Culture Exploring the

Act Two Survey: https://www.theaudienceagency.org/asset/2347
Contains lots of stats and useful talking points. NB: Does not primarily
address literary festivals.

• The Audience Agency’s Digital Audience Survey Findings:

https://www.theaudienceagency.org/bouncing-forwards-digital-audience-
survey-findings

• The Audience Agency’s report: Understand the impact of lockdown on

the behaviours of different Audience Spectrum groups:
https://www.theaudienceagency.org/bounce-forwards-audience-spectrum

• Audience Development is Dead, Long Live Audience-Centred Design:

https://www.theaudienceagency.org/resources/audience-development-is-
dead-long-live-audience-centred-design

• Equality and Human Rights Commission:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en

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• Making social media campaigns accessible:
https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/guidance/digital-communication/planning-
creating-and-publishing-accessible-social-media-
campaigns/?utm_source=The%20Audience%20Agency&utm_medium=e
mail&utm_campaign=11705385_Digital%20Snapshot%20112&dm_i=1
X0O,6YVXL,1WQH1Y,S1WF6,1

• Beyond the mandates: The far‐reaching benefits of multimedia

accessibility: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1153

• Creative Scotland: Covid-19: Public intentions on returning as audience

members https://www.creativescotland.com/resources/professional-
resources/research/creative-scotland-research/covid-19-audiences

• Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre’s Ten Reflections on the

Consumption of Culture In Lockdown: https://pec.ac.uk/blog/ten-
reflections-on-the-consumption-of-digital-culture-in-lockdown

• Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre’s How Are Our Habits of
Cultural Consumption at Home Changing: https://pec.ac.uk/policy-
briefings/changing-habits-of-cultural-consumption-at-home-as-the-uks-
covid-19-lockdown-insights-from-the-six-week-study

• Scottish Book Trust’s advice about online workshops:

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading-and-stories/how-to-run-an-
online-workshop

• Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Remote Event Guidelines:

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-authors/live-
literature/live-literature-remote-event-guidelines

• Age UK Report on Digital Inclusion, circa 2018:

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/reports-and-
publications/age_uk_digital_inclusion_evidence_review_2018.pdf

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• Connecting Scotland, Supporting the Most Vulnerable to Get Online:
https://connecting.scot

• Article about an Edinburgh International Book Festival event discussing

the digital divide: https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/news/we-need-to-treat-
connectivity-as-a-water-supply-digital-connectivity-discussed-at-the-
book-festival

• Good Things Foundation Report, Blueprint for a 100% Digitally Included

UK: https://www.goodthingsfoundation.org/sites/default/files/blueprint-
for-a-100-digitally-included-uk-0.pdf

• NESTA report Data or Dinner?: https://www.nesta.org.uk/project-

updates/data-or-dinner/

• NESTA report Shift + Control The Scottish Public and the Tech
Revolution: https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/shiftctrl-scottish-public-and-
tech-revolution/

• Elle Magazine piece on digital exclusion: https://www.elle.com/uk/life-

and-culture/a34201759/no-internet-in-lockdown/

• Office for National Statistics 2019 report on the UK’s digital divide:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdchara
cteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/articles/exploringtheuksdigit
aldivide/2019-03-04 NB: there are good links to additional studies in
their resources section.

• Lloyd’s Bank UK Digital Consumer Index, 2018:

https://www.lloydsbank.com/assets/media/pdfs/banking_with_us/whats-
happening/LB-Consumer-Digital-Index-2018-Report.pdf

• For more advice and ideas about effective digital outreach:

https://scvo.org.uk/support/digital,
https://scvo.org.uk/support/digital/guides/digital-inclusion,
https://www.goodthingsfoundation.org

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• https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-
2020/

• 7 Inclusive Principles for the Arts in Covid-19:

https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/news/uk-cultural-organisations-
join-up-to-promote-seven-inclusive-principles-for-disabled-people-in-
arts-culture/

• The Equality Act, 2010: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-

guidance

• Indigo’s Slump in disabled audiences’ confidence presents major

problem for the arts sector:http://s3-eu-west-
1.amazonaws.com/supercool-indigo/Disabled-audiences-Act-2-wave-1-
Andrew-Miller.pdf

• Via Spot-Lit project, An Overview of Literary Tourism in Scotland:

https://www.spot-lit.eu/an-overview-of-literary-tourism-in-scotland/

• Virtual Tourism:
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/may/05/helsinki-huge-vr-
virtual-reality-gig-potential-virtual-tourism

• Global Association of Literary Festivals session notes from Who Do You

Think You Are, 5/2: https://www.gaolf.org/conference-programme

• Via LitHub.com, What Happens When Book Events Move Online:

https://lithub.com/what-happens-when-literary-events-move-online/

• Scottish Book Trust’s Reading in Scotland: Reading Over Lockdown:

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/uploads/store/mediaupload/3552/file/
Reading%20in%20Scotland%20-
%20reading%20under%20lockdown%20FINAL.pdf

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APPENDIX B: LINKS TO FESTIVALS CONTACTED FOR THIS PAPER

https://www.appledorebookfestival.co.uk
https://ayewrite.com
https://bloodyscotland.com
https://bordersbookfestival.org
https://www.boswellbookfestival.co.uk
https://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com
https://www.colonsaybookfestival.com
https://coveburghhall.org.uk
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk
https://www.islaybookfestival.co.uk
https://margatebookie.com
https://www.ncornbookfest.org
https://paisleybookfest.com
https://www.readingismagicfestival.com
http://www.StAnzapoetry.org
https://stayathomelitfest.co.uk
https://festivalofauthors.ca
https://www.waywordfestival.com
https://www.wigtownbookfestival.com
http://www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk

For a more complete list of Scottish book festivals:

https://literaturealliancescotland.co.uk/events/find-a-book-festival/

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Creative Scotland for funding this research.

I would also like to thank all the festival directors, authors, experts, charities
and publishers who spoke with me, and Robin Ince, who told me about Otter.ai.

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