What I’d Like To See At YALC 2019

YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) is the UK’s first young adult book festival. You could say it’s the UK’s equivalent of BookCon and BookExpo which take place in a big city within the US each year. This convention started back in July 2014 with author Malorie Blackman being heavily involved in its creation. Over the years, YALC has managed to bring along best-selling authors such as Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, VE Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Marcus Sedgwick, Patrick Ness and many more, making it one of the most exciting events of the year for book bloggers around the UK. I’ve been travelling down to London for YALC from Scotland every Summer since 2016, so you could say I’ve got a few years of experience attending the event.

YALC is an absolutely wonderful event and you’re always guaranteed to leave with an abundance of new books and friends. However, there are some things that I’d personally like to see in future events that I feel could definitely improve the experience for attendees, and potentially the vendors too.

We finally got the author line up for YALC 2019 this past week (it’s awesome!) so it definitely felt like the perfect time to post this! You can view the schedule here. We really appreciate all the hard work and effort people go into to make this event happen each year, I’m genuinely counting down the days till YALC 2019.

Let’s begin!

More Seating

This is probably the most popular suggestion I see around social media when it comes to these events, and it’s personally something I’d like to see as well. For the past couple of years YALC has provided reading areas for attendees to chill out with their friends and maybe read a book they’ve picked up from one of the publisher booths. But, the number of seats are limited and many attendees end up sitting on the uncomfortable floor, sometimes for hours, as they wait for the next panel or signing.

Last year there was a large area up the back of the hall for some vendors, and I think that space could have been used more effectively. There was a quiet area with bean bags over the far corner at the back of the hall that could have held no more than 10 – 15 people, if the space up the back of the hall was used more effectively, I feel like this Quiet/Reading zone area could have been extended and provided more seating for the attendees. Or, having seats dotted around the hall would be a really great so people who wish to have a rest aren’t secluded from the rest of the hall.

Most of the seating was bean bags too and for people who may suffer from chronic pain or scoliosis, this doesn’t offer comfortable or supportive seating. So it would definitely be worth adding some kind of alternative. (Thank you Beth and Justine for bringing this to my attention!)

Giveaways / Raffle System

It’s no secret that publishers bring some awesome books with them to YALC, some of them are ARCs, and at the event, they will host giveaways, etc. Last year they introduced a raffle system, for arc drops specifically and I actually really enjoyed this. It kept things fair for everyone too which is always a bonus.

But when multiple different booths are hosting multiple different raffles and they each give you a ticket to add to the plethora of tickets you already have, it can become a bit confusing and you can forget easily what ticket is for what raffle. It’s especially confusing when a lot of the raffle tickets are the same colour! I witnessed my friend almost miss out on a prize because she had so many pink tickets and wasn’t sure what one was for what. Thankfully our other friend pointed out that she remembered her seeing getting the winning ticket number at the booth earlier.

It should also be mentioned that when signing queues get to large, they start to get ticketed. The tickets are sometimes raffle tickets and when your number is called you get to join the queue. So there’s a real chance you could miss your chance in the signing queue if you forget what number is yours or misplace your ticket.

Of course, if you’re a super prepared attendee you’ll have a pen on hand to scribble the name of the raffle/book on the back of the ticket. but I think it would be more helpful for a each raffle to have a different coloured ticket at the very least or different types of raffles could be introduced. For example; Gollancz hosted a raffle where you had to pick a red petal out a box of white petals in order to win an ARC. This was very entertaining and didn’t require you holding onto yet another raffle ticket.

YALC Totes

If you’ve attended YALC a few times before then you’ll definitely be familiar with this one. The YALC tote bag. This is a goodie bag available to those who buy a ticket for all 3 days for the event. Many attendees love getting this on the first day, as they ask authors to sign it throughout the weekend so they can keep it as a memento.

Tote bags are also invaluable at YALC because you end up with a lot of books or merchandise and quickly run out of bag space, so it’s always handy to always have spare tote bags on hand. The YALC tote bag was handy for attendees in that case, but unfortunately, last year the YALC totes weren’t given out till the Sunday meaning attendees couldn’t get it signed and all the heavy lifting had really already been done.

The “goodie bag” also consisted of a pamphlet map/schedule, and compared to previous years, this contents was quite underwhelming especially since the map would have been far more useful at the start of the weekend.

Access To Water

YALC takes place at the end of July every year and if you’ve been before then you know that it never fails to be stifling hot in that hall. Especially with the amount of people inside. So, it’s really important that you have some sort of liquid to keep you hydrated throughout the day.

As most attendees come equipped with their own bottles of water, this isn’t as big a suggestion as the previous three, but I still think it’s important to bring up.

In the YALC hall, there is a small Cafe that has some food and beverages, however there was actually times where I was eager for a drink of water (I’d finished my bottle) and sorry, but I wasn’t paying the prices the Cafe was charging for a bottle of water when I already had an empty bottle with me. There was one water cooler in the YALC hall too, and it was refilled, but most of the time when I went back to refill my bottle it was empty. I ended up lingering close by at one point so once it was refilled I could get a drink. If possible, I believe more water coolers would be very much appreciated!

Queuing

Again, this one isn’t as important as the pervious, but worth a mention. Last year was probably the best I’ve seen in terms of signing queues. There were of course some busy moments, but that’s bound to happen at some point. The issue with queuing was around the booths. At times the signing queues were so long, it was keeping attendees from accessing booths when a giveaway was taking place. This can definitely be easily avoided by booths scheduling giveaways when signings aren’t as busy.

Would you guys agree with these suggestions? Is there any you would add?

Let me know if you’re going to YALC 2019, and if you are, what authors are you most excited to meet?

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