When Vanessa Badroodien, director of the Cape Town Book Fair, was told she could realistically expect about 10 000 people to attend the event, she planned accordingly.
By late Saturday, the first day of the fair, 9 500 people had attended and an urgent order was sent to the printers for more tickets.
At last count on Tuesday, after four days, about 20 000 people had passed through the doors, and organisers were smiling.
The biggest book fair on the African continent hosted 418 exhibitors from South Africa, Africa and abroad, including representatives from Swaziland, Nigeria, Kenya, China, India, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France and Germany.
"It's an indication that Cape Town was the right city for it and the time was right," says Badroodien.
"It took a leap of faith to do a book fair in a supposedly non-reading culture. But we had kids bunking school to attend the fair," she says.
The fair was held in partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is aimed only at the trade. "They're over the moon at the success of this."
About 204 authors attended the Book Fair, and the lecture and author talks programme had wide appeal, she said. Many talks were oversubscribed, with only a few poorly attended.
"Alexander McCall Smith (of the Ladies Detective series fame) was a favourite," says Badroodien, as was John van der Ruit (author of Spud).
Although billed as a trade and consumer fair, many stall holders say this wasn't clear to them, and many didn't bring books to sell.
Book sales exceeded expectations, said Badroodien, with a rough estimate of R1,5-million worth of books being sold. Natalie Zehrt of Booksite distributors, who were selling books at the fair, said book sales were fantastic, with almost three times as many books being sold as expected.
Nadeem Ansari, from Australia, said he had come to look for publishing partnerships for Blake Education's books. "I'm very excited by the fair, but I'd like to see more African publishers and buyers."