A Newcastle author who hosted a recent book launch at Fort Scratchley said it was a "stressful" experience hiring the venue, after facing a $2,000 minimum spend on food and drink.
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Amy Lovat launched her book Mistakes and Other Lovers in Newcastle on July 14. She booked her Newcastle launch at Hudson Street Hum but it quickly filled up at 100 registrations in 24 hours, meaning friends and family would miss out. Only council venues were big enough to hold that kind of capacity.
"It was either going to have to be Fort Scratchley or City Hall or the Newcastle Museum. I ended up going with Fort Scratchley just because it's featured in the book."
But the venue doesn't allow outside food or drink, and refreshments required a minimum spend of $1000 each on food and drinks on top of the venue hire.
"So if people hadn't bought $1000 worth of drinks, I would have had to then top it up," Lovat said. "I tried to negotiate. I tried to say look it is a book launch, it's a free event. Is there any kind of option to lower the minimum spend for food, but there was no negotiation. It was just 'this is the price and this is how it is'."
Lovat, who also co-runs Secret Book Stuff, said the guests spent more than the minimum requirement at the bar, but not knowing beforehand if this would happen was a stressful experience.
"I had already put down the minimum spend on food, and I knew it was going to be too much food because people are not going to this kind of event to be fed," she said. "It's nice to have some little nibbles and things available for them and they obviously have to do that for RSA reasons, which is fine but $1,000 was just ridiculous and there was so much food.
"There was a big grazing table. There was so much food left over and it just felt so wasteful."
City of Newcastle said Fort Scratchley, like Civic Theatre, was a commercial operation "which cost many millions of dollars annually to operate and maintain".
"We deliberately do not seek to make a profit in our venue hire rates," a council spokesperson said. "Instead we set our prices at a rate that only offsets our costs."
"CN also operates a range of non-commercial venues such as community halls and library spaces available for hire at a significantly lower cost given the upkeep on these buildings is a fraction of what is required to maintain the Civic Theatre."
The council spokesperson said the minimum food spend was "in line with industry standards".
"This ensures that ratepayers' money is not used to cover the shortfall of any costs," the spokesperson said.
"If a bar is in operation at any event, a food spend will also apply in line with Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) obligations. Hirers can opt not to have their event catered and just pay the venue hire fee to reduce costs."
Lovat ended up about $1500 out of pocket for the launch. She said she would like to see the council introduce more tiers of pricing.
"Because it was a great venue and it was easy to organise in terms of their administration," she said.
"Who I was dealing with was really lovely, but I can't afford to do that again and most people can't afford to do that."
Lovat said part of the issue was a lack of larger venues in Newcastle.
"I contacted so many pubs and bars and a lot of them didn't have the capacity," she said. "They were like 100 people max and and it's just such a shame that we don't have that in Newcastle.
"A lot of people report the same thing. A lot of authors want to come to Newcastle for a book launch, but there's nowhere to launch their book because they either don't hear back from the libraries, and a lot of the time there's no bookshops that will host a launch for them.
"It's such a shame that the Newcastle community misses out on these visits from authors."