Kitsap bibliophiles have a big reason to celebrate: The Puget Sound Book Festival returns this coming Sunday.
Held at the Bremerton waterfront, the festival is a celebration of books, featuring a wealth of local booksellers and authors. The festival is the brainchild of Briana Ryan, who operates the online bookstore Wicked Words.
Ryan said she’s always felt there was a strong sense of togetherness amongst indie bookstores even though they’re technically competing with each other. She also noted that people are sometimes unaware of bookstores within their communities.
Read the full Q&A with Puget Sound Book Festival Founder Briana Ryan on Kitsap Scene+
“I wanted to do an event like what I’d already been doing on a small scale with some other bookstores, but on a much bigger scale designed to help people find local bookstores and find the one that feels like home for them, and get to see all the different bookstores we have in our area all in one stop,” she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on brick-and-mortar businesses, but Ryan said she felt the pandemic also was a boon to reading.
“I think the pandemic really brought a lot of people back to reading,” she said. “I don’t think people ever really left; people didn’t stop enjoying books, but I think a lot of people got more into reading than they had been before, when you want that form of escape or comfort, and especially when we were forced to be digital in so many ways.”
Another indication that bookselling is changing is the rise of “novel model” bookstores. According to the Novel Model Association, novel model stores “include, but are not limited to, pop-up stores, niche markets, mobile stores, stores with multiple boutique locations, micro spaces, co-ops, employee-owned, nonprofits, online-only, events-only, traditional brick-and-mortar locations with novel aspects, etc. We are largely owned/operated by and/or intentionally employ people from traditionally underrepresented groups.”
“We’re actually seeing more and more bookstores than ever before, and it speaks a lot to the fact that people are still reading and still loving books,” Ryan said. “And it’s something I’m really excited about. I like seeing unique business models come out for stores. I think that that kind of industry growth and change is what keeps the industry here. We have to keep adapting. It’s what keeps people excited about books and reading because store owners are excited about what we’re doing.”
People are increasingly collecting books with the aim of proudly displaying them on their bookshelves, Ryan said. “We see it a lot — people love having ‘shelf trophies.’ We have lots of people that buy books from us that they may or may not ever read the physical copy they bought, because they order it as an ebook and audiobook, but they want that on their shelf.”
Ryan said this year’s festival is expected to be bigger than last year’s. The inaugural festival was held at Yoked Farmhouse Brewery in Port Orchard, which she said was an awesome venue. But it posed challenges with the level of attendance they saw, particularly with parking, so they sought out a venue that could accommodate more parking and more space for vendors, and that would be more accessible to attendees with mobility challenges. They found that in the waterfront boardwalk in downtown Bremerton.
“It’s a lot more booths, different kinds of food and drink this year, and a different location that can accommodate a lot more people,” Ryan said.
Puget Sound Book Festival
The Puget Sound Book Festival is noon – 4 p.m., Aug. 11, at the Bremerton Boardwalk waterfront. For more info check out the festival on Facebook or Instagram.
All photos courtesy of Briana Ryan