Read Part 1 of this article here.
Your Launch Event
Invites traditionally go out 6 weeks before an event – use everything you have, email as well as social media. Not everyone responds to or even sees invites to events via Facebook for instance, so don’t rely on that, make it part of a strategy.
Make it easy for people to accept your invitation – Eventbrite is free to use for a free event and very usefully you can set up reminder emails to be sent a few days and a few hours before the event. Book launches tend to be things people can forget about! Your publisher might have a PR team who will organise the RSVPs but using something like Eventbrite will help if you don’t have a publicist. People generally are very bad at replying to RSVPs so they may need encouraging.
You might like to ask someone to launch the book for you – it doesn’t have to be someone famous, it can be your best friend who’s watched you slave over it, or someone who knows you well. You want to ask as many people as you can to come and celebrate with you, and it’s normal to give them a glass of wine. People tend not to expect food, but you can do cupcakes or a fancy cake if you’d like to (but no-one expects it!)
Usually book launches in a book shop are at 6/6.30pm to try and catch as many people on their way home from work as well as your own guests. If you’re not doing it in a city centre bookshop MAKE SURE there is parking nearby. You don’t want people to be put off by not being able to get there easily.
If you’re organising it in a bookshop, it’s nice to bring close friends/family to a pub or bar afterwards for a few drinks and some nibble, but this can be expensive, and it’s hard to know numbers as you might not want everyone who is at the launch to come afterwards.
If you feel you’re going to get a lot of people at your launch, make sure you’ve someone minding you who will sit you down at a table to sign after you’ve said a few words to your guests (you can do a reading if you’d like to), and also make sure that you’ve got water near you.
Have a piece of paper handy so you can get people’s names spelled correctly – write them down before you write them in the book. When we do big signings we have someone whose job it is to go down the queue and write the names on a post-it, so the author knows how to spell the purchaser’s name (when you’re signing, trying to talk and get through a queue smartly so people aren’t waiting, means you completely lose the ability to spell and even if someone spells their name out to you out loud, it’s hard to assimilate the letters in the right order. I know this sounds ridiculous, but you’ll have a lot on your mind!)
Have a good pen ready – I always use gel pens but a lot of authors use sharpies. Biro doesn’t look great and a fountain pen will be a lot more trouble than it’s worth.
If you have any famous friends, do invite them, but whoever is coming on the night, make sure you have a designated photographer there to get good shots. I always get a banner printed for each of my books that will be in the back of the photos and then I can use them for events.
Here’s a link to writing a book launch press release that will be handy.
https://www.writing.ie/resources/how-to-write-a-book-launch-press-release-by-jack-murray/
Think publicity at all times – where can you get prepublicity/ are there any angles you can tie into etc to make the launch into a story. Use your launch photos on social to keep the story going – save that quirky photo for a few days so that you can keep the story fresh a few days/week later.
If you’re self-publishing, and you’re selling books on the night to make back some of your investment, you need to think about stock quantities, and how people will pay – not everyone carries cash. You can think about quirky twists like numbering the editions that are sold at the launch so they feel more exclusive.
Be warned, on the day of the launch loads of people will email to say they can’t come, this is a *thing* and turns you into a quivering mess as you’ll be convinced no-one is coming. As a rule authors avoid doing this to each other as you’re not going to notice if someone doesn’t come and they can say the next day – the important thing is that they buy the book!
Often you can organise with a local bookshop to offer signed/dedicated copies via their online ordering system and you might pick up more sales online that way, and can push supporting an independent.
Most importantly ENJOY the night!! A book launch is a lot like a wedding reception and can be quite exhausting, so give yourself some time to enjoy the moment!
(c) Sam Blake
Read Part 1 of this article here.
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Something’s About to Blow Up by Sam Blake
When an explosion rips through the chemistry lab at Dublin’s Raven’s Hill School and six girls are injured, the first thought is that it’s an experiment gone wrong. Then the Gardaí start investigating and declare it a potential bomb attack. But – if so – who was it targeting, and why?
Ella, Becky, Maeve and Mackenzie are rushed to hospital, along with the injured Frankie and Sorcha, who team up with Jess to figure out what actually happened. But what they discover is something more sinister than even they could have imagined …
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