I held the book launch for Shadows on the Heart last weekend: a great success!

Now that it’s done, I confess to a lot of stress, weeks of agonizing over the date, the activities, the number of people who would attend…. Finally, early last week, I googled “How to hold a successful book launch” so that I could see what I might be forgetting, or what I should know going into it.

Do you know what I was forgetting?

To celebrate!

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Yep, I’d become stressed over throwing the perfect party when all I really wanted was to celebrate my second novel, a novel that took four years to write and finish. Once I shifted into that frame of mind, I relaxed. Though I still felt a bit stressed about the particulars - after all, if I’m going to throw a party, I want it to be a good one - adopting a celebratory mood shifted things for me.

And though I worried that only my three closest friends would attend, it wasn’t the case. A dozen people attended, probably the best crowd with which to test the waters.

Despite the launch’s success, there are still lessons to be learned - some of them big ones!

Figure out Photos!

I asked the hub to take a video of the event, and he assured me that he’d keep the camera rolling the entire time. And he did! He set up my phone on a stool and filmed the whole thing from start to end.

The problem? I’ve got great video of Q & A, the readings, and the MMA demonstration, but I have no photos. No crowd shots, no shots of the room, no book display, no food. And, because the videos were taken from the same location, all of the screenshots look very similar: me sitting on a stool with a book in my hand.

And a quick public announcement about using personal phones for filming events: TURN OFF THE TIMER REMINDING YOU TO FEED THE DOG AT 6:30!

Publicize early!

Since I’d decided to hold the event at Pride Gym, located in a neighboring town different from the city I live in, I knew I’d have to spread the word. Three weeks in advance, I whipped up a flyer and distributed it to a few to friends and fellow board members who work in offices and who offered to hang it up in their lunch rooms. I also put it on social media. But social media is a worldwide population, and I wasn’t sure I’d recruit many locals that way.

I also work at home and live like a recluse. I don’t frequent any easy, naturally busy places where I could hang up my flyers. So I kept them in my car but literally didn’t distribute or hang a single one until the week of the event.

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And what happens when you distribute flyers to libraries and book shops just three days before the event?

“Oh, we need to approve these. I’ll send them to my supervisor, and she should have them up in 1-2 days….”

Likewise, the press release: send it out 2-3 weeks in advance! Of course I waited until the weekend before to email it to several local newspapers and radio stations. I thought I was ahead of schedule with this one until I learned it might take a few weeks for local media to pick up. I never heard back and realized, the night before the event, that I needed to start this much earlier.

Call your friends!

Given that I barely publicized my book launch and was afraid I would only have the hub and three friends in attendance, what did I do next? Called my people!

My beloved support system heard me asking for… support. They rallied! I texted a friend of mine who hadn’t seen the social media posts. Her response?

“I’ll be there!”

I contacted another friend. “I saw it on Facebook. I’m coming!”

Turns out, my friends wanted to celebrate with me. And a crowd of friends is an easy crowd. The room was full of happy, friendly faces - a perfect setting for my first ever launch.

Plan and practice!

I regularly read my work to the Scribblers, so I felt comfortable selecting three passages, one from each narrator, to read. Readings, however, need to be somewhat short. No one wants to go to an event to listen to someone read for an hour. A friend of mine, also an author, shared that for her launch she’d set up a Q&A with a friend of hers, pre-designated questions about the novel and the process of writing it.

I asked a friend if she’d act as the interviewer. When she agreed, I jotted down some questions and printed them out for her and tried to think of coherent responses. Writing for me is a very internal and quiet process. I don’t think too much about intent, and the story kind of shapes itself. Describing the process of writing Shadows, and building its characters along the book’s theme wasn’t something I’d done.

At this point in the planning process, I kinda fell behind. I wrote some key points down and thought, Oh, I’ll review these in the car on the way….

Needless to say, the car ride wasn’t ideal for thinking. Nervous and excited, I didn’t get beyond those touchpoints for my responses. And what happens when I talk in public and don’t have the key points in my head? I ramble and jump from one idea to the next!

Now, I can’t say that I was incoherent. In fact, one attendee told me later that he found my presentation “very engaging and… a lot to think about.” But in real time, I felt as if those key points slipped out of my fingers as I held them up to the audience, and I found myself fumbling over words as images flew through my mind, too quick to catch.

So plan and practice. Next time I will know what I want to say. And — BONUS — I have a full-length book launch video to watch later! Watching it might make me cringe, but if I can pull out my best discussion points and strengthen how I talk about Shadows, I’ll be all set for the next time!

Be ready for book sales!

I thought I was ready for book sales, but I actually didn’t have a plan or mechanism to record them. I’d printed out a sign with the price of both Shadows and Tail, but that was about it.

In Canada, we mostly transfer and send money to friends via email or phone, so I didn’t need to worry about having a point of sale machine. My sales sign listed my email and announced that I’d take cash or e-transfer. So when my readings finished and people lined up to buy Shadows, I started handing out and signing copies left and right. Some friends paid cash and others said they’d transfer money… which I should have written down!

As soon as I got home, I forgot who paid what for what. If I’d simply had a tracking sheet listing the person and the method of payment, then I’d quickly account for all sales. But since I hadn’t planned that part, I have to go back and figure it all out.

Location, location, location!

Choosing a venue was the easiest step for me. Lots of authors hold launches at book stores or libraries, but because I’d collaborated with Pride Gym and had toured their new and very impressive facility, I asked if they’d be open to it. A first for both of us, the owner was super happy to host it there, super accommodating, and super helpful.

“I’ll bring a table out for you,” Glen told me when I visited three days before the event. “I’ve got some plastic cups and plates if you need them.”

I asked about getting a demonstration of an MMA move that’s mentioned in the book.

“Yah, I think we can do that. We’ll have a grappling session going on at that time.”

Plus the building itself is typical of old buildings in a resource town — solid brick with wide wooden stairs going up three flights to the gym. Possibly built by some type of fraternal organization, ashtrays are affixed to the toilet paper holder in each bathroom stall (I’d never seen that before!).

Who wouldn’t want to hold a book launch in this relic of history?

And the MMA demonstration was impressive! I’d watched many YouTube videos demonstrating the moves I described in Shadows. But seeing the moves up close and in-person, watching a fighter take down another with lightning speed made me happy! It might have been one of the highlights of the book launch, and it certainly introduced most of the guests to fighting.

One sad note, given my warning above about turning off the dog timer, is that once the alarm interrupts the video, it needs to be restarted. As dedicated as the hub is, he missed that fact, so we didn’t capture video of the two MMA moves that I’d requested they demonstrate. We did get a couple of others, however, like the sacrifice arm throw below.

Other considerations

While not necessary to provide food or snacks, I wanted to have something for guests to snack on and had the perfect Chocolate Cherry Bread recipe by

Yep, that’s right. I burned my baked goods and had to run to the store and buy cookies. No harm, no foul! Who wanted fresh chocolate cherry bread anyways?

Have fun!

The launch taught me that what’s most important is to create a fun and celebratory event. And it gave me some lessons for future readings and presentations.

Prepare, plan, and play.

And celebrate!

This won’t be my last book reading. I plan on traveling around our region, where I’ve lived in several different communities, and holding book events to celebrate with my friends throughout the Kootenays. I’ll let you know how they go.