The overarching theme announced in June was All Together Now, and so it proved to be.
The 2022 Edinburgh International Book Festival saw families, adults and school pupils flock to the Book Festival’s new site at Edinburgh College of Art to enjoy a range of activities and events, browse the Festival’s independent Bookshop and relax in the grassy courtyard. What a Festival it was!
The Book Festival’s 2022 programme featured over 600 events, including 150 in the Baillie Gifford Children’s Programme and 18 created especially for schools. 200 of the events were livestreamed on the Book Festival website and many are still there to watch on-demand and will remain available until later in the year.
Book Festival audiences are well-known for snapping up tickets weeks in advance of August, however this year we saw a significant shift in booking behaviour. Whilst sales were steady throughout, it became clear that many people were choosing to book much later than they had done in the past – with the number of on-the-day bookers exceeding anything we’ve seen before.
Overall, 100,000 tickets were sold across the live and livestreamed events, with people watching from 65 countries.
With our new location at Edinburgh College of Art, the popular Pay What You Can ticket prices for all livestreams alongside 31 in-real-life events, plus an eclectic range of daily free author events across the 17 days, the 2022 Book Festival attracted a more diverse audience, with a greater proportion of new attenders alongside thousands of established festival-goers who were keen to return.
Another innovation, introduced in 2021, was a big outdoor screen in the grassy courtyard of the Festival village: we showed 45 events and anyone could drop in and watch for free.
Edinburgh International Book Festival director Nick Barley said: “My heartfelt thanks go to all the many individuals and organisations who have championed and supported the Edinburgh International Book Festival and given us the opportunity to innovative and create an ambitious new hybrid Festival which we can build upon in future years.
“This year was always going to be a bit of an unknown, but the overwhelmingly positive response we have received from audiences old and new, local residents, festival goers and authors and individuals from every corner of the world, has made it an absolute joy to deliver.
“We are under no illusions that this is only the beginning of our build-back journey, and our focus now is to consolidate and respond to what we’ve learned from this year as we plan our return to the Edinburgh College of Art and Central Hall sites in 2023.”
Whilst this year’s Festival may be over, you can relive the magic by watching a wealth of events online.
Many are available to watch until the end of the month and some for longer. You’ll find the video expiration date on the individual event listing – if there is no date listed, the video will be available to watch until the end of the year.
Catch up with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Philippe Sands, Diana Gabaldon, Alan Cumming, Douglas Stuart, Ottessa Moshfegh, Maria Ressa, Armando Iannucci, Anthony Beevor, Torrey Peters, Val McDermid, Janey Godley, Jessie Burton and many, many more …
See the list of events you can watch on catch-up
And look out for a very special event with the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.
He comes to Edinburgh to talk about his new book on Friday 23 September. You can book tickets (and a copy of the book if you’d like one) for that event now on the website.
