The San Antonio Book Festival opens its selection process about this time every year. They also talk about how they choose the books that will earn attention from attendees each year.
The annual show unfolds every April, held across a handful of venues near the city’s Main Library and the UT San Antonio campus. Hundreds of people attended last year, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Last year 100 books were promoted in talks, panels, and signings. Application for the 2026 Festival opened up this week. Books from publishers will make the cut, with few exceptions for self-publishers. “We typically do not accept books published through self-publishing platforms and services,” say the SABF guidelines. “However, exceptions have been made.”
Any book has a chance of being considered if it’s got an ISBN number, a Library of Congress number, and a barcode. Your book must be sold via an established wholesaler or distributor, so the Festival’s partner bookstore can sell it. Publishing a book through IngramSpark would satisfy this requirement.
A professional edit, an author website, and a marketing plan are also a part of the final requirements. To be frank, nearly all books at Festivals like this one, or the Texas Book Festival, are published traditionally. But exceptions have been made, and you or your publisher wil miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.
The marketing plan is the biggest leap for an author-publisher to demonstrate, but it can be proven. The Festival’s literary director Anna Dobben considers submissions. The books are chosen by a Programming Committee of authors and writing professionals. Fitting together a wide scope of books is important. “We consider not only a book’s literary merit,” say the guidelines, “but where it might fit in with rest of the lineup.”
The timing is interesting for the books chosen. The cutoff for submissions is December and must include some reviews, but the Festival says that authors will have published books through April of next year. A strong pre-publication response would probably get a book considered that was published during the months after the cutoff. It’s another reason to be turning in a book for reviews months before it is published.
If you or your publisher wants an audience of hundreds to hear you on a panel, application to event like the Festival is the only way in. Well, you could win a Pulitzer, like featured authors have for San Antonio Festivals in the past.
