A Guide to Planning the Perfect Book Launch Event

At my launch event for *How To Begin Writing Your Life Stories: Putting Memories on the Page*

(Scroll to the end of this post for relevant links.)

An author working with a traditional publishing house, especially a Big Five or other large publisher, can expect to receive some support for their book’s launch and early publicity. I’ve observed over the years, however, that authors overestimate the extent to which a publisher will/should invest in book launch efforts. Complaining about a publisher’s minimal or disorganized publicity is something of a sport among authors, and no wonder: Publisher-supported publicity tends to be a flurry of activity right around the publication date that dies abruptly a month or two later—certainly within one year for all but the most successful books.

Still, any self-published author (or author aligned with a very small press) will tell you to count your blessings for any help from a publisher at all. Self-published authors, who benefit from other aspects of independent publishing’s DIY nature, must do it all themselves:

set a publication date
hire help with editing and publishing
execute a publication plan
organize a launch
market themselves and their books to media

And so on. And while indie authors may get themselves through the publishing process just fine, many of us lose steam and confidence as soon as our books are published. We’re no longer working with the writing groups, editors, designers, and publishing assistants whose help and encouragement kept us motivated and on task. Now, it’s just us, our books, and the launch we were too busy with book creation to have planned or even considered.

This post is for authors on all publication pathways. We could all use the help in planning the perfect launch for our books.

In the summer of 2024, my friend Carolyn Chilton Casas published her second book of poetry, Under the Same Sky. Her publisher, Golden Dragonfly Press, threw a nicely orchestrated virtual launch on Facebook that generated warmth and enthusiasm among attendees. It was my first time attending a Facebook launch, and my own level of engagement surprised me. Carolyn was content with that virtual launch as the extent of her publication events, but despite its success, to me it didn’t feel like enough for a book that had been several years in the making. Carolyn has many friends, fans, and loved ones, including fellow writers in California where we both live. Not all of them are on Facebook. I knew some of them would enjoy celebrating her and her book in person. I kept nudging her to have a proper IRL launch party. “I don’t even know how to throw a launch party,” she kept saying.

Well, I fixed that. I also had a book released in the summer of 2024, a self-published beginner’s guide to life story writing. True to the pattern I mentioned earlier in this post, I’d been so consumed with getting my book into print that I hadn’t thought to plan any launch activities. So, when I heard myself proselytizing to Carolyn (“Books are like babies, we need to celebrate their births”), I followed my own advice and proposed a joint launch party.

Keep reading for more details about our launch event and ideas for how to plan your own.

Why Have a Book Launch Event?

You put tremendous effort into creating your book. I feel confident saying that to any author. Books are not actual babies, but most of them demand more than nine months of gestation, and all but a lucky few require significant care and feeding to stay alive post-publication and find their way into readers’ hands. A book launch serves several purposes for the author:

A launch event celebrates your accomplishment. Celebrating publicly, beyond popping a bottle of Champagne at home, creates an opportunity to receive kudos from the people who care about you and your work. You might like to think you don’t need that kind of support or adoration, but I’m talking less about need here than about what you and your book deserve.
A launch event generates energy, both around your book and for you internally. You’ll use that energy to propel you forward into your post-production relationship with your book. Books sell over time, and you’ll need to continue selling yours if you want readers to keep finding it.
A launch event sells books.

But book launch events don’t only benefit the author. I take great inspiration from attending literary events and believe in their philanthropic quality. When you offer people a time and place to gather with other readers, to get quiet while an author reads from their book, and to honor the creation of a new work of art—I call that a community service. If you need convincing, attend a couple of book events in your own community and tell me your blood pressure doesn’t drop and your faith in humanity doesn’t improve.

Types of Book Launch Events

The best book launch event is the one you want to throw. The more personalized, the better. The following are a few ideas taken from my launch experiences as both author and attendee.

Traditional Launch

To do it by the book (pun intended) and create an environment that seasoned book event attendees expect, follow these steps:

Reach out to a local bookseller or library about hosting your event.
Allow the venue to use their established means of customer outreach to advertise your launch.
Arrange how your book will be sold at the event. If a bookstore is hosting, they’ll probably order books and handle sales. If the launch is at a library or other public space, you can either manage sales yourself or find a bookseller to set up an offsite “store.”
Budget around two hours for:
- mingling
- introduction (usually a bookstore owner, a library employee, or a friend introduces the author)
- reading from the book
- Q&A session
- book sales/signing

If you anticipate a large crowd, either because you’re a well-known figure or because your topic sells itself, consider booking an auditorium or hall for your reading and signing. Booksellers will frequently take their “stores” to remote locations for large-scale events.

If your book is self-published, some booksellers and libraries might need convincing to support your efforts. They’re likely to be friendlier to hosting a launch if your book is available through Igram, where booksellers and libraries buy books.

Panel or Interview

Authors willing to share the spotlight may organize a panel discussion of other authors and/or experts on a topic that relates to their book. For example, an author launching a book of flower-related haikus might invite another poet who writes on nature themes, a local botanist, and a gardening enthusiast or florist as fellow panelists. Remember to designate a discussion leader or interviewer, perhaps the author or a bookseller or librarian.

On her release of Straitjackets and Lunch Money, Katya Cengal held an interview-style event at the public library in my town. After Katya read from her book, her friend and fellow author Mark Parsons conducted an interview with her. Katya told the audience that the interview dynamic relieved some pressure; it was up to the interviewer, not her, to raise some of the emotionally difficult topics Straightjackets covers.

Both panel discussions and interview-style launches may attract larger audiences than single-speaker events do, a boon to everyone involved.

Customized Offsite Event

When I published Gumbo Tales with W. W. Norton in 2008, my favorite launch event (and perhaps the best-attended) was at Café Carpe, a bar/restaurant/music venue in my hometown of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. I’d felt a kinship with Café Carpe’s warm, world-welcoming vibe all during my teenage years, long before I was old enough to attend the backroom music shows. It’s where my friends and I met for cheddar veggie melt sandwiches when we traveled home for college breaks, it’s where my loved ones held my wedding shower, and it’s where I got the recipe for the dark chocolate cake with white icing I still love to bake when I’m craving a rich taste of home.

It wouldn’t have made sense to hold my hometown book launch anyplace else, and fortunately at the time my hometown had an indie bookstore that managed sales. Gumbo Tales is a food-focused memoir set in New Orleans, and Café Carpe had a long-established weekly jambalaya tradition, so it was a perfect fit for dinner and a reading.

During her Covid-19 lockdown time, Teri Bayus, an author on the Central Coast of California, wrote an autobiographical novel based on her time as a trapeze artist in a traveling circus. She launched The Greatest of Ease at one of her favorite local restaurants, The Spoon Trade, with an event that featured a live performance by circus professionals. Teri sold tickets for $50, and entry included:

passed appetizers based on foods mentioned in the novel
one beverage
a signed copy of the book

Those two examples, mine and Teri’s, are meant to encourage authors to personalize their launch events if doing so sounds fun. What will feel special and appropriate to you and your book? Where would your ideal readers be most likely to show up? Does your book have a theme or an angle that would pair well with a particular location or style of event?

If your book is a paranormal mystery, take guests on a ghost tour and do your reading in a cemetery by moonlight.

If your book teaches readers how to build birdhouses, find someplace to hold a construction demo and include a bag of birdseed with each book sale.

If you wrote a biography of your boss, choose one of the book’s most unexpected reveals, or one of your boss’s favorite pastimes, and build an event around that.

Big Bash or Themed Party

Last year, an author I worked with, Brian Jeansonne, published his memoir Onward. Forward.: My Journey with ALS. While living with ALS is a narrative throughline, the book is about much more than that—Brian is a former pastor and a deep thinker, and the book was a lifetime in the making. Brian and his wife Kristy didn’t need my encouragement to celebrate its publication or to engage with the book’s local audience as the publication date drew near. Knowing just what the occasion asked for and deserved, they held a two-hour event at a craft brewery in New Orleans, Zony Mash Beer Project, with live music, food, and beer on tap, as well as a reading and signing. Judging from the photos and words of support attendees posted on social media, the event did its job well: It generated energy, a sense of community, and book sales.

There’s no shame in going big and bold with your book launch if you have enough potential readers in one geographic place to draw a crowd.

An Evening With

One of the most enriching literary indulgences I’ve experienced in recent years was a three-hour event billed as a “lecture” with Adam McHugh, author of Blood From a Stone: A Memoir of How Wine Brought Me Back from the Dead. A nonprofit organization and community event space called The Lavra hosted the event, which started with a BYOB cocktail hour and book signing just before sunset on an outdoor deck huddled amongst coast live oaks. We then moved inside to a dimly lit, cabin-like space filled with just enough chairs to accommodate the couple dozen of us. Weaving short readings from the book with exposition and off-the-cuff storytelling, McHugh led us through a portion of his life story that began, like his book, during his years as a hospice minister, and concluded where the book concludes (no spoilers here). We wrapped up the evening with Q&A.

I left with the desire to hold a similar event at The Lavra when my next book comes out. Hashtag manifesting.

If you’re a comfortable public speaker, and if you can tap into the right crowd—in this case, it was book nerds and wine drinkers—an “evening with” event is a wonderful way to connect with readers and likeminded folks.

Social Media Launch

When they released Carolyn Chilton Casas’s poetry book Under the Same Sky, Golden Dragonfly Press held “an afternoon of poetry, short videos, etc.” on its business Facebook page. They announced the happening on an event page where attendees could mark themselves as “going” and check in for details. Over the span of four hours on the day of the event, thirteen posts invited readers to engage with the book and the poet through various means:

the poems themselves—both in written form and read aloud
biographical information about Carolyn
an audio clip of Carolyn describing the story behind the book’s cover art, and another one with Carolyn talking about her writing journey
endorsements
a video made by someone inspired by one of the book’s poems

Golden Dragonfly Press promised to mail bookmarks to the first twenty people who posted comments during the virtual event, and then additionally promised to plant one tree for each bookmark sent (a nice touch, although where and how the trees would be planted wasn’t clear).

This isn’t a blog post about how to most successfully launch a book on social media, but I mention the Facebook launch for Under the Same Sky because while it may not have reached thousands of people, it felt to me like a quality-over-quantity success. Engaging with it was an entirely pleasant experience. Rather than being pelted with generic or awkward posts by the author for months prior to, during, and after the publication date—posts begging for presales, then sales, then event attendance, then reviews—attendees opted into the event, consumed fortifying content at their own pace, and then left the event at their own will. The event didn’t clog up my Facebook feed. It stayed on the press’s page, and it’s still there for future readers to find.

Facebook is just one social media platform. Some authors find their publicity voice on Instagram Live, YouTube, or BookTok instead.

I’m curious how others have conducted social media book launch events. Let us know in the comments if you’ve hosted or attended one you liked.

Joint Launch

As I mentioned earlier, Carolyn and I held a joint in-person launch after her virtual launch. It worked well for both of us for so many reasons. Here are a few of them:

We had a respectable crowd for a Saturday, maybe twenty-five. Just one of us would have drawn half that number.
We split the cost of refreshments. I brought the baked goods, and Carolyn paid for delicious coffee delivered by local mobile vendor Tiny Café.
Neither of us had to entertain the crowd for too long, and attendees got to experience a variety of readings.
It wasn’t easy to find a venue available on our preferred timeline, so it helped to have two brains on that element of the event.

In the end, Carolyn fielded an offer to hold the event at a local Catholic church where a friend works. Neither of our books is religious in nature, but that didn’t matter to the church’s priest, Father Matt Pennington, who is himself a writer and even indulged us with a reading from his book, Journal of a Country Priest. Father Matt had recently overseen the building of a new narthex for the church, with a fountain at the center and floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, a perfect place for an afternoon party and reading. Father Matt welcomes community engagement, whether by parishioners or poets.

My biggest takeaway from the joint launch: It was overall less stressful and more enjoyable to share the experience with another author. Five stars, highly recommend.

Workshop

Some books, especially prescriptive nonfiction books, lend themselves to workshop models, and if that’s true of your book, you could make your launch event a workshop. My How to Begin Writing Your Life Stories: Putting Memories on the Page is that kind of book, and a few months after its release a friend who has a large home with ample comfy seating hosted a six-hour life story writing workshop based on its contents.

Here’s how we spent our workshop time:

Using research and anecdotal evidence, I made my case for why life story writing is good for our health and mental health.
Attendees did some writing exercises in notebooks I gifted them.
We engaged in discussion about the stories they wrote, as well as about what it means to document our own lives.
I served a lunch of gumbo, potato salad, and wine. The host and I chose that menu because gumbo has been a big source of my own life story writing, and because we live in wine country.

Guests left with signed copies of the book, a bookmark, and a pen branded with the host’s business name. I had a blast, and my book found new readers.

Here I am extolling the virtues of life story writing during a Saturday workshop.

At-Home Launch

If you or a friend has space to accommodate a crowd, an at-home launch can set an inviting tone. A friend of hers with a gorgeous home hosted the launch for my mother-in-law’s book of poems These Many Rooms. While the home’s ocean view may have been the intended draw, the true centerpiece of the event was the kitchen, where attendees deposited the charcuterie plates, finger sandwiches, and cookies they brought to share.

If you’ve held a book launch event that doesn’t fit into any of the categories I’ve listed here, please tell us about it in the comments!

Book Launch Pointers

Here are some final thoughts to keep in mind as you plan your launch event, in no particular order.

You don’t need to hold your launch event on your book’s publication date. Most publication dates are arbitrary. Go ahead and make a fuss online on your book’s official publication date, but prioritize other factors when scheduling your launch event, like venue availability, your own calendar, and when readers are most likely to attend.
You may hold more than one launch event. If you have pockets of eager readers in different geographic places, and if you have the resources, throw more than one party. Colleen Snyder’s book, In Search of Giants: The Quest to Find the Genetic Giants of Northern Ireland, has a target audience in two very different places: the United States, where Colleen lives, and Ireland, home of her coauthor and much of the book’s story. When the book came out last year, Colleen focused on her UK launch, taking advantage of existing events that aligned with her topic. She waited several months to hold her US launch because she needed the time to regroup and reenergize. I guarantee no one in her American audience took her to task for launching her book in this country “late.”
Advertise widely and creatively.
- Use social media and your private email list.
- Tell your friends.
- Mention it to your Saturday Zumba class or wherever else you gather with likeminded people.
- Get it listed in local media, perhaps in an alternative newsweekly or the daily paper.
- Post it on Nextdoor.com.
- Hang flyers at the YMCA, the community center, the library, the co-op, etc.
- Partner with local organizations or businesses if any make a natural pairing.
Give people a reason to come. Maybe it’s my own butter bias, but I would never hold a book event without cookies. Maybe your preference is kombucha or fruit salad. Those would get me there, too. Nonedible giveaway ideas: bookmarks, pens, notebooks, deleted scenes, flair like customized buttons or pins, your other books, t-shirts, your time.
If you’re selling your books yourself, accept multiple forms of payment. At my last launch, I accepted cash (remember to supply change), personal check, and Venmo (I displayed a QR code). People availed themselves of all three.
Don’t forget to bring a good pen for all the books you’ll be signing!

My book launch bribes: confetti cookies and apple bundt cake.

After your launch event, post about it on social media to show your friends what they missed and to remind them why they want your book. (Kind of like I’m doing here.)

If you’d like to talk more about planning your own book launch event, join me one Saturday during my Office Hours for Authors.