Scott R. Welvaert

Wow, I just had my first ever book launch event/party for my latest book—The Ghost of the Wicked Crow — and it was a lot of fun! But before I share photos and some of the awesome engagement with it, I thought I would at least give you some tips and tricks to think about in planning your event. So, suffer through some important info, and then we’ll get to the good stuff.

Choose the right venue
This may depend on your genre and audience group, but make sure you find a venue that leans into your potential audience. For example, if you are a children’s author, selecting your local dive bar or brewery might not be a good fit. Maybe your local library or a park (weather permitting). If you write seedy thrillers, then YES, dive bar with an event room all the way. If your audience is older and brewery or bar won’t work, check local coffee houses or bistros to see if they have party rooms. But definitely choose a venue that matches your audience.

Schedule your venue early
Do not wait until a week or a month before your event. Start looking early so you have enough time to look at a variety of options, costs, and amenities. Don’t paint yourself into a corner b procrastinating. Get started early. You also need time to order and get books delivered from your distributor—and sometimes that may take 2-4 weeks alone. Do not procrastinate.

Be a good Little Red Riding Hood
When you look, you’ll find all kinds of spaces. Some will be expensive and large. Others are cheap and tiny. In my search, I found a local brewery with a 150-person event space for $500. The cost alone was a huge negative, but I also knew I wouldn’t pull in 75 people, let alone 150. So, avoid overpaying for a vast space and then not fill it. I chose a cheaper and smaller venue—a back room at our local tavern for $50 for a space for 50 people. My book sales more than covered the cost of the venue, and my space didn’t look horribly empty and under-attended. So be thoughtful and choosy about the venue.

Order your books early
Like the venue, you’ll want to estimate how many books you’ll need for your event and get that order in early. Nothing kills a book launch event like not having your books in time. The key is to have enough, so if you get too many, that’s not a real problem. You can sell them out of your trunk—hey you gotta ABC (always be closing). But you definitely don’t want to underestimate the amount of books. Having extras on hand just makes you eager to sell more.

Give your guests something for the trouble
Don’t go crazy and cater to the event, unless you have the cash and want to, of course. Keep in mind the goal here is to have fun, but also come out cash positive—you’re there to sell books and engage. So, think about cost efficient things. We had bookmarks and a celebratory cake to share with the crowd. The bookmarks are great cost-efficient giveaways that, frankly, you can order them in bulk and slip one into each book. Obviously, have all your author marketing info on the bookmark of course. Bottom line. Give them something to attend.

Have your payment methods covered for sale
This is probably the most important thing to factor in for your event. You need to sell books. So, you better have cash and change on hand, a square or some POS system to accept cards, and a Venmo or PayPal account ready to go. It would suck terribly to host your event and 50% of your guests just brought cash and you can’t make a change, or the other 50% only brought their phones and need to Venmo. As Scar says in The Lion King—be prepared!!!

Get help!
Don’t do this alone. I planned mine and did all the behind the scenes, but my wife really came in to support me the day of helping setup, get things organized. I would have been way too stressed doing it all myself. Plus, mingle. So, you’ll need helpers to transact sales, hand out giveaways, etc. Don’t feel you have to do it all on your own. Get help!

Last but not least—ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE!
I’m a deep introvert. Hell, I’m a wannabe writer—it comes with the territory. But when you’re at YOUR launch party, celebrating YOUR book, talking to YOUR audience, don’t be a wallflower. Get out and talk to everyone, learn their names, thank them for coming, laugh, tell jokes, shake hands, give hugs. Do the work, man. If you want people to read your books, show interest in them as well, because without them, you don’t have a job as a writer.

Okay, now that the self-help article is done, here are some photos of my book launch event. And now, seeing some shots, I should recommend not having a belly like mine–ha-ha!

The Setup

We also had a table of books, Amazon review table toppers, my pubisher’s banner and boxes of books ready to sell!

My helpers

The overhead lighting adds 1000 pounds!!

My Guests

The cutting of the cake and (What the heck? Author’s get gifts at these things?)

Thank you all for those who attended! And for those that couldn’t make it, we’ll run into each other eventually. In the mean time, go get my first book and give it a whirl!