A romantasy book con descended into Fyre Festival-like chaos so bad the organizer says it's refunding "every attendee, author, and vendor"

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It takes a village to raise a child, and it also takes a village to put on a successful convention. But sadly, this wasn't the case for a Baltimore romantasy book convention called A Million Lives Book Festival. Since the event crashed and burned earlier this month, authors who tabled at the convention have taken to social media to share details about what they believe to have been a "scam." Since then, the organizer has promised to issue refunds not just to the writers, but also to "every attendee, author, and vendor."

As reported by The Cut, A Million Lives Book Festival was organized by Archer Management, a company that aims to put on "events that help build the bookish community." The event advertised "a vendor hall, panels, a content creation room, fandom cosplay meet-ups, a cosplay competition, and a ball," which to my eyes, is more in line with big comic con shows like C2E2 rather than literary festivals like the LA Times' Festival of Books. While events like Festival of Books are chock-full of panels and vendors, there is no fandom element to the event itself. No one shows up in cosplay, etcetera. All of this is to say that A Million Lives was advertising itself as an event that not only could, but would bring in high levels of fan attendance and participation - somewhere in the neighborhood of "500 to 1,000 attendees." And this is where things start to go awry. 

As authors and attendees alike soon found out, the event didn't pull in numbers anywhere near "500 to 1,000 attendees" as promised. Writer Kait Disney-Leugers took to TikTok to share how she lost money participating in A Million Lives. She didn't even break even with her book sales to cover the cost of her table in the event's vendor hall - where tables cost authors anywhere between $50 to $250. This is because hardly anyone showed up to the event, leaving Disney-Leugers and roughly 100 other authors in the lurch. Newsweek reported that on Friday, "there were maybe 40 attendees," while on Saturday, that number went up to "about 125 people." That's brutal. 

The "ball" that A Million Lives advertised consisted of a bare concrete floor in an exhibit hall with cheap plastic chairs set at long, rectangular tables without a single tablecloth or other decoration in sight. No speaker system, no special lighting whatsoever, just the miserable exhibit hall lighting laying bare the apparent lack of effort put into the event. Author Perci Jay shared on TikTok the depressing sight of attendees dressed to the nines, only to walk into a space that made middle school dances look lavish. 

Grace Marceau, who Newsweek specifies as the event's organizer, posted a video to TikTok with a brief apology to attendees for the underwhelming ball set up, promising to give refunds to those who ask. On the Archer Fantasy Events TikTok page, Marceau posted a statement saying, "I wholeheartedly apologize for how the event turned out this weekend. We are currently processing refunds as fast as we can. All refunds will be processed by May 31st. We thank and appreciate your patience!" The post was set to incredibly loud electronic music that made me jump back in my office chair, but I suppose this is TikTok after all. Comments for the posts have been turned off. 

But that's not all. Another statement was issued on TikTok, this time hilariously set to a terrible remix of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit (Why? How is any of this appropriate?), that read "We take full responsibility for the way that AML was handled. 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." Archer Fantasy Events' TikTok page still lists "The Elegant Nocturnal Social OCT 2025" in its bio, however. 

While there was a certain level of schadenfreude that could be extracted from the infamous Fyre Festival scandal, where hundreds of people who could afford to spend between $500 to $12,000 on a music festival were left stranded on an island in the Bahamas, A Million Lives is a completely different matter. Authors who tabled at A Million Lives, who likely work day jobs to support themselves, invested their time and money into this event. Since it isn't exactly easy to make a living simply by writing and publishing books these days, indie authors rely on in-person events like book festivals to supplement their income and connect with fans. At the very least, they deserve a properly run event. 

Let's hope the writers, attendees, and vendors from A Million Lives Book Festival get their refunds soon, because all of this is a huge bummer. 

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