The Miami Book Fair will not visit Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus this fall. But that doesn’t mean there probably isn’t an e-book fair.
MIAMI (AP) – This year, colorful tents may not appear overnight on the streets of the college campus. Swarms of authors, readers and academics will not go to downtown Miami for the lively street fair weekend, queuing up to sign and carrying bags of books.
The Miami Book Fair will not visit Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus this fall. But that doesn’t mean there probably isn’t an e-book fair.
The COVID-19 pandemic did what 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew couldn’t do: it forced the fair, which began in 1984, to cancel its annual week-old e-book frenzy at school for the first time in 37 years. But the display will continue almost, and continue for free.
The transition from the fair to the virtual fair, which will have systems in English and Spanish, has been a difficult process, said the director of the program Lissette Méndez.
“I feel like I’m building the bridge over the Grand Canyon as I walk,” he says. “It’s like: leave the board, take a step, leave the next board, take a step. Fix… it’s a picture in progress.”
So what will an online e-book fair look like? Mendez says she and her team benefited from learning from fairs that had to cancel previous occasions this year. This means a combination of pre-recorded occasions and live streams, in all likelihood recorded interviews with authors and live Q&A sessions. Sometimes they will be available on the online page only for one night; others would possibly stay online longer.
All the same ancient genres will be represented: fiction, politics, history, memoirs, comics, poetry, Caribbean works aimed at Haiti, as well as physically powerful children’s programming.
Mendez views it as “Netflix for books” available through a new and advanced website. You’ll attach it with your email and create a password, and the site will take you to a list of shows, symptoms, and conversations that see how you view your Netflix catalog. Click on what you need to see and the link will take you to a YouTube-like page where you can watch the event.
The fair, which runs from November 15 to 22, begins with Margaret Atwood (“The Maid’s Tale,” “The Wills”). More than 171 Authors in English have registered to date and 80 authors in Spanish have registered, and more will be added in the coming weeks. It is expected to be published online someday in September, when you can create a follow-up list of the occasions you expect to see and receive emails informing you of the addition of new authors.
In addition to a fundraising discussion between novelists Ann Patchett and Emma Straub, who also own independent e-bookshops, the occasions will be free. It is wonderful for lovers of e-books, but economically complicated for the program. Not having to send authors to Miami from all over the country saves just the right money. But the loss of price in the sale of tickets for the occasions “Afternoons with …” and the street fair and the loss of sponsors due to the COVID-19 pandemic are expensive.
“One of our biggest sponsors is Royal Caribbean,” says Mendez. “Other sponsors have not been able to dedicate or can only devote part of the amount they usually do. The history of monetary good fortune is not yet over. There are still notable grants and proposals that can help us. But we’ve dropped 50% of what we’d need. At the same time, we make sure that the generation is where it wants to be, and not at no cost. It’s expensive, as anyone who’s already created an online page knows».
Despite the complications, Mendez says that the advanced online page will be useful for the next in-person exhibition, which will go back to November 2021.
“We can use it in the long run to show authors to a much wider audience, others who shouldn’t travel, come to Miami or leave their homes,” he says. “Getting the generation of this page online will help us expand our long-term success.”
Mitchell Kaplan, president of the fair and co-founder, says he’ll miss the fair, especially seeing so many kids there. But look forward to the opportunities of a virtual fair, such as the opportunity to pair writers from other time zones and countries.
“We are going on to make it as productive as possible under the circumstances,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot. Most literary occasions have become virtual since the pandemic. But I sincerely hope this will be the last year we’re virtual. I need to go back to the physical world of the fair so we can bring other people in combination in a tent.