Most readers of a certain age will tell you that they’ve spent most of their adult lives chasing the high of the Scholastic Book Fair. When I was in elementary school (1998-2004), every year my school hosted a Scholastic Book Fair. The book fair would come and set up in our cafeteria for a week. The small store area had children’s books, posters, bookmarks, erasers, and other small tchotchkes that were book related or designed to get kids’ attention. Every class got an opportunity to go down to browse the store making a list of what you wanted to buy and the prices to take home to show to your parents. Then later in the week, the class would go back down to shop with the money your parents gave you. Depending on when your shopping time came, you had to hope and pray that all the stuff you wanted was still in stock. The book fair filled the entire cafeteria with that special new book smell. It was truly magical and was tied for my favorite annual event with our Mardi Gras celebration.
Apparently a lot of other Scholastic Book Fair kids felt the same. If you look online there are probably millions of memes about how much adults miss their book fair days.
Gina and Caitlin from Beyond the Page Events, a local event planning firm that specializes in bookish events, rose to the challenge and decided to create a book fair for adults in Charleston, WV. They quickly discovered that there was an audience for this type of event when both VIP and general admission tickets all sold out well before the fair took place on June 9th. As you can see in the photos above, the line to get in stretched around the block for well over an hour after the event started at 2pm.
I, of course, was one of those ticket holders. I ended up getting a general admission ticket for $13 and change. I don’t remember what full price tickets were, but I bought mine during a sale and got a discount. I also don’t remember what VIP tickets were selling for, but I remember thinking the price was reasonable and I was hoping to buy a VIP ticket, but they were sold out by the time I heard about the event. A VIP ticket got you a fancier wristband, entry into the fair an hour early, and a 25% discount at the Beyond the Page merch booth. The event was hosted at the Hale Street Center, a relatively new event venue in downtown Charleston and boasted two floors of vendors selling books, plants, jewelry, and bookish items and two bars selling wine and beer.
Several of my favorite vendors like Plot Twist Books, Taylor Books, The Inner Geek, Echo Lit, and The Hippie’s Daughter were there, but I also got to see a lot of new vendors that I wasn’t familiar with.
I got in line around 1:45 pm. It seems like everyone with a ticket was ready to get in right at 2 pm and it took me about 30 minutes to get into the event once it opened (staff for the venue had to keep track of how many people were inside and restrict access until more people could safely enter). The line moved at a steady pace and the weather was gorgeous, so the wait wasn’t a hardship. The show floors were crowded, but not so much that I couldn’t browse.
The only exception was a jewelry booth on the upper floor. They were doing permanent jewelry (which I love), but the line for that was so long that it blocked the rest of the booth and I couldn’t look at what they were selling, which is a shame, because it looked like they had some cute stuff. I get it though. Permanent jewelry doesn’t take long, but it does take some time. I think there are currently only two places in town to get it done right now and both of those places do it on a limited basis. I had wanted to get a permanent bracelet for almost a year before I finally got mine done and I ended up getting it done out of state, because it was easier and more convenient. So, I definitely see the draw and get why that would be in high demand. It might have been better if the permanent jewelry could have been done in a separate location or with pre-registered appointments, but since this was the first adult book fair, the vendor definitely couldn’t have anticipated the traffic jam. I also think she might have been the only one running the booth so running the booth and zapping the jewelry in a separate location wouldn’t have worked.
In addition to the vendors, there were some silent auction items. The event planners, Gina and Caitlin (and just about everyone on BookTok) are really into romantasy, so it seemed like the auction items were mostly romantasy based. As I’ve said before, I don’t really like fantasy, so romantasy isn’t a genre I read too often (unless it involves Mothman) so I kind of recognized the books, but wasn’t familiar enough with them to want to bid.
I somehow ended up not buying any books, but I did get plenty of other goodies (much like at the Scholastic Book Fairs of old, I could have ended up spending all of my money).
I ended up getting a Pride shirt from Plot Twist (they were selling them at Pride and despite being there, I missed them and was afraid I missed my chance to get one) and some book earrings from Mommas Clay Time & Crafts (also purchased from Plot Twist). I got three patches for my jean jacket and a sticker from The Hippie’s Daughter, a Mothman print from Echo Lit, a “Read” sweatshirt from Shore Comfort, and some cinnamon infused maple syrup from Ronk Family Maple Farm (I haven’t tried this yet, but their cotton candy made from maple sugar was delicious).
The event was wonderful, but since it was the first time, I think the event planners learned some lessons from it. Like I think they assumed that general admission ticket holders would show up throughout the three hour event, however, to me, it looked like everyone showed up right at the beginning which created a lot of queueing and crowding. Also, I didn’t get the full accessibility outlook, but it looked like the building would be difficult to navigate for someone with a stroller or limited mobility. The amount of people shopping and moving around made it a little toasty inside and I’m glad it was a relatively cool day, because it would have been miserable on a hot day. I did hear from one of the vendors that because the event was so successful, Beyond the Page is already planning to host the event next year at an even bigger venue, which I think will help with a lot of the less ideal parts of the event from my perspective. I also would love to see the booze part of the event extended to mixed drinks and cocktails (possibly with literary references?). They had a good selection of wine and beer at the event this year, but I don’t really like wine or beer. I know mixed drinks and cocktails require a different kind of liquor license, so that might be logistically difficult, but if I can browse while sipping some kind of rum cocktail, I will be a happy, happy girl.
I was really pleased with this event and I love my purchases. I hope this event becomes an annual occurrence in the Charleston social calendar!