May 2-3, 2025 was meant to be “the perfect event to make more bookish friends!” While friends were made, it was through trauma bonding as readers, authors, and vendors experienced the worst book event of the year, if ever.
Immediately over the weekend, BookTok community started seeing posts from readers and authors letting everyone know just how bad this event was. Complaints from lack of rooms (and moving promised rooms from a Hilton to a Days Inn), lack of decorations/signage/volunteers, and more came rolling in on the 2nd. This all ramped up with videos of the laughable “Lavender Romance Ball” which not only did not have decor, it also didn’t have music other than the donated blue tooth speaker brought in by a security guard that took pity on the attendees.
Authors Percy Jay, Kalista Neith and Molly Likovich created TikTok videos that succinctly laid out the many problems at this event and we highly recommend you check them out for the details. It is quite the journey.
Our Response
While none of us attended A Million Lives, our thoughts go out to those who did. We cannot imagine how awful the situation was and know that many indie authors were hurt by this event financially and emotionally.
This whole situation blew us away. Dex and their partner, Damon, have both been on committees and worked at several events over the years and thought they’d seen the worst of it until now. Ashley, too, has put on events large and small for groups and companies and was appalled by all the updates coming in about A Million Lives.
Here’s the thing, events are difficult to put on and even harder to pull off successfully. At the very minimum, Grace should have had Archer Management under an LLC and with all their ducks in a row 12-18 months before the event date. Now she is facing backlash and litigation that will come down on her personally without any sort of legal protections an LLC could have given her. Beyond that, events like this, handling money and expectations, demands a certain amount of transparency about where the money is going. Without that, it is far too easy for people, like Grace, to pocket everything and run…which she did and is failing to get away with. Lastly, events are too hard for one person. Having a committee or partners as well as volunteers or employees to delegate tasks to not only keeps everyone somewhat honest but makes the situation so much easier to handle. Just those things alone could have salvaged this event.
We don’t agree with calling A Million Lives the “Fyre Festival of Books” since at least the Fyre Festival targeted people with expendable income. A Million Lives targeted indie authors, many of them new to bookish events and who have admitted that this failed event has hurt them financially to the point that they are not sure they will ever recover from it.
The Community
The only good thing to come out of all of this is the community. Not only did authors, readers, and vendors trauma bond and make lasting friendships over this event, it also built up the community online. Nothing makes people band together like a shared enemy.
One cool thing that has come out of this is the support for the indie authors who attended. Author Percy Jay was kind enough to collate a list of the authors, narrators, and vendors who attended, encouraging viewers to go check them out, give them follows and support, and buy their books/wares if able.
