It’s time to talk about book launches. It’s super exciting to have a book coming out, but it can also be really stressful to arrange a book launch, especially as a debut author when you aren’t always sure what you’re doing. For today’s blog post I’m breaking it all down for you. Find out how to host a successful, and easy, book signing. You’ll learn where to host your signing, who to invite and how to promote it online!

Location

The first step to planning your book launch is to figure out where you would like to have it. There are two options: a retail space like a bookstore or a private space like your house or a rental hall. A retails space is great because you can work with the store to help promote the book launch and hopefully get more people to come. The downside is that sometimes retail stores don’t always like to work with self-published authors and they also will get a cut of the money that you make off your books. For debut authors, I like to recommend getting a private space for a book launch, especially if you know 99% of the people who will come are close family and friends. For my first book Essence, I hosted my book launch in my house and ended up selling 80 books in just 3 hours.

Who to Invite

Invite everyone. The reason the book launch for Essence was such a success was that my parents and I went a little overboard when it came to inviting people. My mom invited everyone she knew, my dad told everyone at work. And I told all my friends and teachers. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. When friends and family hear you’ve written a book, you’re going to want to come out and support you.

Tell People About It

Inviting people to come to your book launch is one thing, but getting them to come is another thing. To make sure everyone knows about your book signing, post about it everywhere on your social media accounts. Now you don’t want to go overboard to the point that it seems like you’re sending a lot of spam, but post enough that it will be hard for people not to know about your book signing. Create a Facebook event for your book signing, make sure you have all the information about the event there, and invite everyone you know. Post how excited you are about your book signing online as a little hint to everyone that they should be excited as well! This is especially important the week leading up to the book signing, when you really want to make sure people don’t forget about you.

What to Bring

Make sure you have your copies of your book on hand at least two or three weeks before the book launch to avoid any issues with shipping. To know how many books to order, keep in mind how many people you’ve invited, as well as how many people on the Facebook event you’ve created say they’re going. Don’t be afraid to order more books than you need, because if you don’t sell them at the first book launch, you can always sell them at other book signings. Besides your books, you’ll also want to bring a pen/Sharpie, business cards, bookmarks with your books cover on it and my personal favorite, a guestbook! Every book launch I’ve had I bring my guestbook and have friends and family write little notes that I can read when I’m feeling down.

Next time…

Besides doing a book signing for your book launch, you can also do a virtual book launch and a blog tour! Let me know in the comments down below if these are topics you’d like me to cover in the future!