After 12 years on the National Mall, the National Book Festival moved indoors to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in 2014. More than 200,000 people attended the 2013 National Book Festival and following that event, the National Park Service implemented new protocols and requirements to avoid damage to the grass on the National Mall. Stephen Lorenzetti, the Park Service’s deputy superintendent for planning at the National Mall and Memorial Parks, said “There are new procedures to make sure that the grass survives. This can make it more expensive for events to take place... We worked closely with the library to allow the festival to continue at a reasonable cost. We showed them how they might use the walkways and the roadways. But in the end, the library decided that it was more affordable to move to a different venue. We respect their decision.” Jennifer Gavin, project manager of the Library of Congress National Book Festival, confirmed the reason for the change of venue, saying “We spent months working with the Park Service to see if we could make this work... But when we looked at the costs — and they were considerable — we decided that the festival-goers would be better served by moving it into the convention center.” The move indoors allowed the Festival to expand into nighttime events, cookbook demonstrations, and screenings of film adaptions of books.