Romantasy festival A Million Lives slammed by authors and attendees: 'Fyre Fest of books'

Yahoo

09-05-2025

Authors and attendees say they were duped over the weekend after promised romantasy book event A Million Lives broke their hearts.
"It felt like Fyre Fest of book festivals," Kait Disney-Leugers, who's written several books including Love Across the Tabletop, said on TikTok. "We were told there's been over 600 tickets sold. I did not see those people. There were more authors at their booths than there were attendees, and I'm not exaggerating. It was that bad."
She noted that "at every point of the last two days, everything was f---ed up, not delivered on, or just half-assed. There was no water there, even in the vending machine at the top of the stairs. Because, by the way, we were in the basement exhibit hall. Had no water. There was no swag bags for people who paid to go to this. No badges, wristbands."
Her reference to the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival, where what was touted as a luxe experience ended up being full of cheese sandwiches, FEMA tents, and, yep, no water, was not a compliment.
And Disney-Leugers was far from the only one with a complaint.
The official description of the May 2-3 event in Baltimore from company Archer Management was hyped as "the perfect event to make more bookish friends! This event will include a vendor hall, panels, a content creation room, fandom cosplay meet ups, a cosplay competition and a ball." Tickets cost from $50 to $250 for one that included a Lavender Romance Ball.
Author Stephanie Combs shared footage of her and friends dressed up and excitedly heading to the fancy fete, only to be disappointed at what looked like a minuscule number of people there.
"When you gotta laugh so you don't cry," Combs captioned her post. "A million lives or a million lies? I was an attending author...at least we looked fantastic."
TikToker Azthia Bookwyrm told PEOPLE she accepted an invitation to cover the event as an influencer. But when she arrived, she found she'd been moved from the Hilton Inn near the venue to a Days Inn. She said more authors were there than readers and that the whole thing was a "huge financial loss."
In fact, there were so many people upset with what they got for their money, that the company publicly apologized for the ball, the day after it took place. Over the next few days, Archer's Instagram offered additional words of regret. In one, the post read, "I wholeheartedly apologize for how the event turned out this weekend. We are currently processing refunds as fast as we can." The company projected that all refunds would be made by May 31.
"We take full responsibility for the way that AML was handled," another noted. "We are doing refunds for every attendee, author, and vendor. We are also canceling all of our future events and will be processing refunds for those as well."Finally, the company listed some of the authors and vendors who participated and asked people to support them "after our mistakes this past weekend."
Many of the commenters were supportive, crediting Archer Management with owning up to their error, although some still had questions.
"I thought it was a good first go. The question is, what really went wrong?" Instagram's jzimansky asked. "Can we get an actual explanation? I don't necessarily care about a refund. I just want to know what really went wrong."
Others commented, "Thank you for making this right for all of us" and "We all make mistakes, and it sounds like you're really trying to do the right thing. That's all we can do when we mess up!"
But that didn't cut it for Rocky Road Publishing LLC: "Events like this that are not organized correctly make us rethink about wanting to attend as an author, publishing company, or just an attendee. I'm glad you are making it right, but it's still unacceptable it happened in the first place."
In addition to Fyre Fest, the A Million Lives event's implosion is reminiscent of several other spectacular failures, including the September 2024 unauthorized "Bridgerton ball," which saw fans of the Netflix show outraged by the quality of a Detroit experience for which they paid $150 to $1,000, depending on the package purchased. The similarly unofficial Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow, Scotland, made headlines in March 2024.
Despite the original debacle, Fyre Festival 2 was scheduled this year for May 30 to June 2 on Isla Mujeres in Mexico and eventually relocated to Playa del Carmen. Then, in April, the festival was postponed indefinitely, and founder Billy McFarland, the subject of two documentaries, put the Fyre Festival brand up for sale.
"This brand is bigger than any one person and bigger than what I'm able to lead on my own. It's a movement. And it deserves a team with the scale, experience, and infrastructure to realize its potential," the convicted felon said in a statement posted on the "Own Fyre" website.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly