Festival of Books tallies 140,000 attendees
On April 30 and May 1, 140,000 people turned out to celebrate reading at the 16th Annual L.A. Times Festival of Books, held for the first time on the campus of the University of Southern California.
"We are thrilled to see our vision for moving the festival to our new home downtown come together in a more robust way than we even imagined when we first started discussing the idea with USC,” said Times Publisher Eddy Hartenstein in a statement. “We were honored to welcome new and old friends and are very pleased that everyone had a great Festival of Books experience.”
Other facts and figures about the 16th annual Festival of Books: The festival app was downloaded by almost 10% of those who attended. Four thousand books were donated at the donation station set up by Target, a festival sponsor, to benefit classrooms and libraries. And shuttles brought nearly 1,000 people per hour to USC's campus, for a total of close to 17,000.
The event hosted a record number of exhibitors, sponsors and authors. And then there was the ice cream -- more than 30,000 free samples of Ben & Jerry's ice cream were handed out to attendees.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Saturday crowds at the 16th annual Festival of Books. Credit: Anne Cusack /Los Angeles Times
So how does this year's number of attendees compare with the numbers from prior years, when the event was held at the UCLA campus in Westwood?
Posted by: jamesincalifornia | May 17, 2011 at 07:55 AM
Very inspiring for the future of LA,a world famous book mart annually bringing dreamers and doers to communicate visions of worlds of words.I like it.
Posted by: Leilani Hagberg | May 17, 2011 at 10:32 AM
Sounds like a more "central" location made it more "attendable"!
Posted by: Certified AOD Counselor | May 17, 2011 at 11:26 AM
2008 UCLA had 140,000
2009 UCLA had 130,000 but the weather was cool
Basically USC will get the same attendance, UCLA just can't afford to spend the money now.
Posted by: Pat | May 17, 2011 at 11:49 AM