You probably are wondering at the moment why I made this blogpost with this pretty harsh title. Well you're going to find out now!
Yesterday was YalFest 2016 in Utrecht (The Netherlands). This was a young adult literature festival organised by the Best of YA team. Of course I went there with pretty high expectations because the publisher who publishes like most of the young adult novels in our country organised this! 400 tickets were sold and oh yea.... those 400 people didn't go unnoticed.
When I arrived in Utrecht we walked to the Winkel van Sinkel, where the event would be held. Literally all 400 people showed up and waited outside. It was really lovely to talk to so many people with the same interests while standing in the line.
11:00 a.m, the doors opened and everyone rushed in! The first thing I noticed.. 400 people were going to this event and there barely were 200 chairs for the 1st activity. Conclusion: half of the people had to stand for 2 hours, during the author discussion talk. I however was very lucky to have a chair. The author talk started at 11:30. Everyone was so excited because the authors who came to this event were pretty big. All authors were seated on couches in front of the audience, and they had to answer questions about themselves and about the other authors. The questions however didn't came from the fans in the audience but were made by the Best of YA team.. The authors who were at the festival were: Ransom Riggs, Tahereh Mafi, Stephanie Perkins, Arwen Elys Dayton, Becky Albertalli, Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison.
Then at 13:00 there was lunch which we could pick up upstairs. The lunch was okayish, however we only got milk to drink in the bag and actually many people don't like milk.. so they had nothing to drink. Also there were 2 sandwiches and an apple in the bag. They were okay.
At 14:00 group 1 had their workshop and group 2 (Me!) had the photo moment with the authors. When I came back down the row was immense long but went really quickly. However, I kinda was sad to see you couldn't go on a picture with all authors seperately.. noooooo, all others were seated on the same couches and you had to sit in between them.. We weren't allowed to talk to the authors and also we weren't allowed to let a book signed. AKA there were no signings and also no contact with any of them... By the end of the photo moment there was half an hour of time left before the other group would come, so yay small talk to authors! but no.... the authors had quickly to go away to a special area and weren't allowed to have any interaction with fans.. like 0! I really really was sad because for this event I paid huge money and we couldn't even have our 'moment' with the authors...
At 15:30 groups were being switched, group 2 would get their workshop (me!) and group 1 had the photo moment.. I had workshop C, vlogging. Sanne from the youtube channel BooksAndQuills would do the workshop. We came into the room and guess what, after 10 mins of trying they came to the conclusion the wifi connection wasn't working and our workshop got cancelled... So yep, no vlogging workshop. Suddenly they sent in a Dutch authors who no one knew and he had to answer questions from us about himself or his book. This really was annoying because everyone came to listen to Sanne and not to this author. He was nice though and I did listen to the things he had to say, unlike many others I thought it to be interesting but not anything I had learned from him.
16:30, YalFest was over... You had a chance to stay till 17:00 to buy some stuff and talk to others they said but they already started cleaning everything at 16:30. They also placed everything back and all 'stands' who were there selling stuff closed and started packing. I thought to would have had a chance to buy some books or so but no that wasn't possible.
Conclusion to this all, I really really am disappointed on the way they handled this event. Every author was in Utrecht for 3 days, having spent time with the Best of YA team and publisher. Signed tons of books for them, had hours and hours of talking with everyone selected to be part of that team (like 20 people). But the team made sure none of the authors had time on the day itself to talk to fans or sign books. This really makes me angry because 400 people paid 40 euros (55 dollars) for almost nothing. We had to create the fun time ourselves with everyone around us because it certainly wasn't possible during the workshop or the author photo moment.
Next year they will organise the event again, but after having had this experience I will not go again and also will tell about this bad experience.
I did however buy some goodies this day because I didn't want to go home empty handed! :)
As you can see I bought 6 pins related to books etc and also I bought a book related mug! :)
At the festival we also got a goodiebag with goodies and stickers in, on these stickers all authors wrote their autograph. I still am happy to have these, but an autograph in a book would have been a dream!
Hope you enjoyed the article! also, Did any of you go to YalFest and what's you opinion on it? :) I'd love to know!
