2025 LA Times Book Festival

The 2025 LA Times Festival of Books at USC is this weekend. I had a booth there when my last book came out in 2023. I also had a a booth at UCLA right before the publication of my second book. And since I have been to both locations, I can say with confidence that as a participant, I prefer UCLA, but unfortunately, it found a permanent home at USC.

Below are some advantages and disadvantages of having a booth at USC.

On the positive:

1. Your Books get some exposure

2. You get to meet your readers in person. This was the best part of the event for me.

3. Some of the visitors are friendly and love books, and even if they don't buy your book on site, sometimes they purchase it later on.

4. You may connect with other writers who want to keep in touch and share ideas.

5. If you can do this every year, people will begin to recognize you. I didn't do this every year, but there were a few people who knew me from when I had a booth at UCLA.

On the negative:

1. The money you invest in renting a booth, if measured monetarily, has a low rate of return

2. Getting ready for the event is super time consuming 

3. Once there, the set up is a lot of work even when you get help from friends and family. It's as though you're setting up an entire retail store, but it's only good for two days

4. You get strange people walking in who are there to see what they can get for free or to escape the hot sun for a few minutes. Some are borderline schizophrenic. I never had this problem at UCLA.

5. Although the staff promises to come by to see if you need anything, they never do. Again, I found UCLA to be much more organized, and helpful.

6. At UCLA, I had journalists and reporters visiting my booth, and I got some media coverage. None of that exists at USC unless you're a writer published by a large publishing house.

Should you decide to get a booth, here are some of the things you will need:

1. Sales Tax License

2. Credit card gadget the connects to your phone like square credit card reader

3. Some people will want to pay with a check. Let them. No one ever gave me a bad check for a book. Just check their ID.

4. Extra chairs, table cloth, decorations, stands that display your books, sales slip, guest book. free giveaways like pens and bookmarks, candy, and etc.

5. Extension cord and a folding dolly to carry your things.

6. Food and water because the lines to purchase can get long, and when you have a booth, you don't want to take too long to be away.

7. Someone to help you out, especially when you need a bathroom break.

8. Extra books. At least 20 copies of each of your books. It's better to have more than less. You can always keep some in the trunk of your car.

Would I ever do this again? I'm not sure. My experience at USC was disappointing. But if you are a writer, and are thinking about doing this next year, try to share your booth with 2-3 other writers. That way, you can help each other out. Plus paying for the booth will be more cost effective.

As for me, I'm not participating this year. I may just go, have a look at some of the booths, and buy Indie books. If you want to have a booth there, check out one of their events to see how others are set up, and chat with Indie authors and sellers to get pointers. 

Bestsellers and Worst-sellers

What is it about writers, awards, reviews and ratings? If you win an award, you’re so ecstatic that you can’t focus on your writing. A good review leaves you hungry for more. Ratings are never enough. If your book ranks #20 on New York Times bestseller list, you want to be #15 and when #15, you want to be #10 and so on. Why do writers need the outside validation of their existence? We should be enough but we’re not.

In our desperate search for approval, we throw our talents to the wind and worry our hearts out to make it to the top. But what’s on the bestseller list is not necessarily better than the books that never made it to the list. To make it all the way up, you need either money or luck. If you have it, you flaunt it while pushing everyone else’s ratings down in order to get yours up and if you don’t, tough luck.

As a result, books get commercialized to death and many talented writers fall to the bottom of the slush pile and some even give up on their art. Perhaps the best thing to do is not worry so much about reviews, awards and ratings and instead keep our eyes on the ball – hard to do in a world where success is measured by our popularity and the amount of money we make. But perhaps if we stopped being concerned about the outside acceptance, we would free up our minds and could actually write something meaningful.

I don’t know and don’t have the answers. I’m just someone ranting away to no one in particular. But there is one thing I know and that is – in order for there to be winners, there must be losers, for there to be great books, there must be terrible books and for there to be bestsellers, there must be worst- sellers and so the entire winning and losing, great and terrible, best seller and worst-sellers at some point becomes nothing but a poignant agony.