PBS Offers Stores Livestreaming From National Book Festival

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Livestream coverage of author events from the 15th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival will be available from noon until 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, September 5; with a simple-to-embed video player provided by Detroit Public TV, booksellers can feature the coverage on their store websites.

The festival, to be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to include interviews with authors Kate DiCamillo, Jon Sciezcka, David McCullough, Tom Brokaw, Louise Erdrich, Kwame Alexander, Marilynne Robinson, Jane Smiley, and others. Additional segments will showcase the energy of the Book Festival floor.

Livesteam coverage will be available at BookViewNow.org and at select PBS station websites and the WORLDChannel.org. But booksellers, bloggers, and others are invited to share the live-streaming on their own websites by adding the video player available here. (The page also allows stores to sign up to be notified when the event goes live.)

Select segments from the National Book Festival will also be archived and available for on-demand viewing on PBS.org, PBS station websites, and via all PBS video apps, including iPhone, iPad, Xbox, Roku, and Apple TV, as well as on YouTube.

The festival brings together bestselling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings, and other activities. Independent booksellers will be represented at this year’s event by Politics & Prose, which for the second consecutive year has been chosen as the festival’s official bookseller.

P&P bookstore staff and volunteers will be setting up and manning a sales area in the convention center, where festival goers will be able to buy titles from all 150 authors appearing at the event; they can then have their purchases autographed in a nearby area. The American Booksellers Association is again providing a special wallpaper to decorate the 80' x 200' book sales area. The panels will list all ABA member bookstores and their respective cities and states.