The Canal Town Book Festival is an author fair in Dover, Ohio. I started as committee chair in 2021 during our first virtual event because of my tech experience. I continued as committee chair in 2022 and 2023 when we returned to in person events.​

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My role on the committee

I lead a committee including the library director, 2 local authors, a local bookstore owner, and a library staff member. I make sure all of our plans are on track and tasks are divided among the members. I work with the authors to craft the invitation and acceptance emails, and guides for new authors attending their first book fair. I also acted as touchstone for author questions leading up to the event.

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I work on the graphic design for print and social media; including the author passport and map showing the location of each author's tent. The posters were hand drawn in Procreate and the text was added in Canva.

 

I also created the website for the festival including visitor information and a database of authors. 

https://www.canaltownbookfest.org/ 

 

For the 2021 virtual I acted as moderator for the author panel "Increasing Inclusion in Literature".

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About the 2021 event

Due to restrictions on in person events we held a virtual event via Facebook and Zoom. Authors were promoted online, and ran giveaways to promote their work to virtual attendees. We had 4 zoom panels featuring several authors.

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About the 2022 event

This year we were able to meet hold the festival in person. On Friday evening we had live music, food and a presentation by our guest author Julie Anne Lindsey. The author fair was held on Saturday in conjunction with the Exchange Club's Canal Dover Festival on labor day weekend. This is an outdoor festival and we used the square, which is 4 quadrants of green space near the main stage. We had 40 authors participate. Early on Saturday morning we set up tables and chairs with signs for each authors space. Authors brought their own tents. We also set up a hospitality table for the authors and a raffle table for attendees. 

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To encourage attendees to purchase books from authors, they received a raffle ticket for every $5 spent. I also made a passport that could be turned in for a grand prize ticket if attendees visited every author.