Stephen McGinty: Festivals offer bookworms a unique literary experience. No wonder they're thriving in Scotland

Daphne Du Maurier's heroine may have been haunted by a house, Manderley, and the spectre of Rebecca, the dead wife in whose footsteps she now trudged, but for me the nocturnal disturbance was the ghost of public speaking, which, I'm afraid, will spook me until approximately 8:45 pm this evening when my authorial duties towards the Borders Book Festival will be discharged. In my dream, I stepped towards the podium, smiled at the audience, positioned my glasses on the tip of my nose (so as best to look over them and so enhance my bookish appearance) and proceeded to riffle through the pages of my new book (Camp Z: The Secret Life of Rudolf Hess, Quercus, 17.99, thanks for asking) only to fail to find my place. Minutes ticked by, then a quarter of an hour, then half an hour, until people began to drift away. Only after 55 minutes did I find the appropriate passage which I then gratefully announced to a now empty room. I hope this will not be a harbinger of things to come.

This will be my third appearance as an author at a Scottish book festival, and despite the night terrors, sweat-soaked sheets and crippling anxiety, I'm rather looking forward to it. There is the promise of supper at Harmony House, a champagne reception and what I'm told is a legendary breakfast at The Maplehurst, a delectable B&B in Galashiels, followed by brunch with the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. People may even buy my book and ask interesting questions which I may, or may not, be able to answer. My authorial ego will, I hope, be stroked for a few hours before being brutally shoved back into a hessian sack and heaved back into the solitude of the garden shed.

Yet the reality is that, for most authors, the ego with which you walk in, will be deflated at some point during the course of the day, usually by a member of your immediate family. When I first attended the Edinburgh Book Festival with Churchill's Cigar, I informed my father that (due to the egalitarian and socialist principles of the organisers who insist each author, regardless of status or sales, receives the same recompense) that I was being paid the same fee as Norman Mailer. My father then asked who Norman Mailer was. Then there is the vexed subject of the relative queue size for the post-discussion signings. On my first visit, I was teamed up with Professor Ian Kershaw, author of a monumental, two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler. He's the Bono among chroniclers of the Third Reich. Then there was David Stafford whose Endgame 1945 had just received tremendous reviews and then there was me. Kershaw almost had to stop with wrist sprain. Stafford was kept briskly signing while after a few friends popped by to say hello, I was left with three buyers, although, it must be said, one was purchasing the book for her husband who had escorted Churchill's coffin. Quality, I thought to myself, not quantity, as I covetously eyed up Kershaw's fans, snaking off into the distance.

Still, at least I did actually make it on to the stage at Edinburgh. I was, according to my publicist, then invited to speak, alongside David Stafford, at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow the following February. When the official programme came out, I flicked through looking for my event only to discover that I had been dumped in favour of Paddy Ashdown who would now be taking the stage with Stafford. Edinburgh may be accused of assuming: "You'll have had yir tea", Glasgow, however, would appear to suggest: "You'll have had yir talk". However, as a result I, for one, was better prepared than the voters in the 2010 General Election for the duplicity of the Liberal Democrats.

I love book festivals, whichever side of the author's tent, yurt or green room, I may find myself on and, clearly, I am not alone. According to the latest count, there are now 41 different festivals in Scotland, almost 20 per cent of the national total, which is estimated at roughly 250 for the whole of Great Britain. Alastair Moffat, founder of the Borders Book Festival, says there are now more book festivals in Scotland, per head of population, than anywhere else on the planet. This remarkable literary phenomenon began just 30 years ago, when, in 1981, the late John Drummond set up a writers' conference at the Assembly Rooms in George Street, and so begat the Edinburgh International Book Festival, whose programme, announced this week, has already triggered a mass rush for tickets. But what is it about book festivals that we so clearly love? Why do I want to buy tickets to listen to Tobias Wolf, the author of This Boy's Life, the memoir In Pharaoh's Army and one of the great collections of short stories in publication? I would say the reason is two fold: first, I want to get close to greatness. I think many people do. It's that sense of immediacy, of personal contact, of being, however briefly, a participant in their passage through life. Second, I want to listen to what he has to say. With authors, there is the sense that you are listening to a rough first draft of future works. It's a personal preview, a peak into their study.

It is understandable that in this electronic age where we can access books on Kindle, and e-mail authors through their websites, keep up with their every blog and tweet, that there is a greater appetite to see and meet them in person. Authors are no longer distant, remote figures as they were a generation ago and it makes sense that we should wish to listen to them. There is an intimacy in the relationship between an author and a reader which I think is unique in the arts. We may admire an actor's performance, or a musician's playing, a painter's picture or a director's film, but we do not spend as long in their world as we do in that of an author, with whom we sit, night after night, until our mutual journey is complete. It is also a one-to-one relationship. Then there is the educational value of attending a book festival. If you pop along to Charlotte Square in August, you'll be able to listen to authors from the Middle East place the Arab Spring in context, witness China dissected by the nation's first Nobel Laureate, Geo Xingjian, and emerge with a deeper understanding of the United Nations, courtesy of the former deputy-secretary-general Mark Malloch-Brown.

Book festivals are truly champagne for the mind, they leave you fizzing with ideas and insights and an overwhelming desire to discuss these with your near neighbours, making them inherently sociable. So if you are coming along to the Borders Book Festival today do, please, say hello, and if you're looking for a good read there is this fine book about a Nazi I would heartily recommend.