Highlights from the Art of Gathering B!3 webinar with Priya Parker

SIBA booksellers recently spent time via a B!3 webinar with Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Ms. Parker is a master facilitator and the founder of Thrive Labs, at which she helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators, and philanthropists create transformative gatherings. 

Describing her craft as group dynamics, Ms. Parker offered many creative ways to change-up bookstore events to put the emphasis back on meaningful purpose, rather than on familiar formats and logistics. She said, “Bookstores are going through a purpose crisis.” She suggested that a “more animating purpose than selling books,” which is something Amazon and so many other places can do as well, is to inspire reading and connect people who might not otherwise not connect through text. If your events are meaningful, people will return in droves.

She recommended bookstores internally develop a set of ethos and values, and come up with five things (formats, setting, promotions, etc.) that created successful events in the past. Then communicate this information to publicists. Once an event is scheduled, booksellers can use this time, what Parker calls “moments of influence,” to help publicists and authors learn how to be part of the store's unique gathering, to "prime" them. When the author arrives for the event, make sure the person greeting the author repeats what was sent in the emails, sharing not only logistics, but a sense of what is great about the bookstore, to give them courage about what works in your store.

She suggested a number of fun variations on the traditional author reading. She said, "Every gathering is a temporary alternative world. You have the opportunity to create a world for participants." She added, "Every book event has the opportunity to embody the principles of the book."  Because people disproportionately remember the first and last five percent of a gathering, she advised staying away from opening with logistics about cell phones and parking. Instead, communicate that information differently, perhaps giving people as they enter a card with logistics and a prompt that connects people to each other. You could even make one side a name tag. Or begin the event with a “cold open” in which you meaningfully connect the audience to your store, the sense of purpose you’ve created around this event, and to each other before you get into event logistics. Some of her format variations:

• Rather than have the author read their book, have ten guests read a paragraph or page from the author’s work.
• Set out chairs in concentric circles rather than rows.
• Begin and end the event with a ritual.
• Invite audience members to speak to each other for the first few minutes of the gathering (perhaps primed with questions about the book, your community, etc.).
• Host events in different neighborhoods.
• Use mysterious language in promotions to build intrigue. For example,"Someone's going to wind up in a bathtub."

When asked by a bookseller, “How do you keep from burning yourself out?” when trying to make every event meaningful, Ms. Parker responded that the process of creating meaningful gatherings will be energizing rather than being on autopilot, which can be exhausting. She said, “When you create organic meaningful gatherings . . . you get fuel back from feedback. It creates its own virtuous cycle.” She also emphasized that "meaningful gatherings don’t have to be expensive; part of the freedom of moving away from traditional formats is that we can take five to ten minutes to think up a simple human hack that changes the dynamics of things."

Ms. Parker was also asked how to prime “guests” for an event when you don’t know who they are in advance. She recommended thinking very deeply about the language, image, and content of the invitation or promotional materials. Instead of calling author events “events,” choose subcategories like hootenanny, salon, saloon, even funeral, if it works for the book; throw people off scripts to build intrigue. She advised, “Don’t be afraid to play around with rules. Passionate communities are built when people create purposeful, specific, disputable gatherings and enforce the norms around them.”

 To hear the many ways Ms. Parker suggests reformatting author events, including book festivals, listen to the webinar and prepare to be hugely inspired to shake things up!