Jessica Russell's Blog - Posts Tagged "planning"
A Word About Planning Events
Book signings and other author events require a very strategic approach. Something brought this to my attention recently and I thought it would make a good topic for my next blog post. If you’re planning an event with other authors, you need a strategy. For example, I live in a small town about an hour from Myrtle Beach. Well, that sun and fun is stiff competition for anything that’s planned in the smaller communities. Therefore, I wouldn’t expect to draw a crowd from Myrtle Beach to come to a book signing here in town. Instead, I would work on advertising the event locally.
However, it’s not enough just to put it on a website. You also need to do flyers, sponsored Facebook ads and if possible, an ad in a local newspaper. Getting sponsors to draw people to the event is also a powerful tool when you’re trying to get a good turnout in a small town.
In addition to advertising properly, it’s also important to give considerable thought to the date and time you hold the event. Obviously, you want to avoid holidays, particularly summer holidays during which people are usually headed to the beach, the state park or the barbecue pit.
You also have to plan an appropriate size event for the area in which it will be held. Multiple author events can work, but you must be sure that the crowd you draw will be hefty enough to sustain the number of authors on the agenda. I enjoyed the multi-author book signing event at San Marco Books and More in Jacksonville Florida recently. It’s an established event that’s held every year and it has a significant following. However, if you were to pluck an event like that out of a large city like Jacksonville and thrust it into a tiny community, you would probably end up with more authors than customers. That’s the kiss of death.
Additionally, multiple author book signings need writers from various genres or they will fall flat. For example, if nine out of ten authors are sci-fi writers, that’s kind of like going to a fair where nine out of ten stands are selling funnel cake, but nobody’s selling hotdogs or pizza. How much funnel cake can you eat?
It seems simple at first glance, but book signing events require excellent planning in order to be successful. Every once in a while, you do everything right and an event still has a lackluster turnout, but when you dot every I and cross every T, your chances of having an occasion you can be proud of multiply substantially. Write on!
However, it’s not enough just to put it on a website. You also need to do flyers, sponsored Facebook ads and if possible, an ad in a local newspaper. Getting sponsors to draw people to the event is also a powerful tool when you’re trying to get a good turnout in a small town.
In addition to advertising properly, it’s also important to give considerable thought to the date and time you hold the event. Obviously, you want to avoid holidays, particularly summer holidays during which people are usually headed to the beach, the state park or the barbecue pit.
You also have to plan an appropriate size event for the area in which it will be held. Multiple author events can work, but you must be sure that the crowd you draw will be hefty enough to sustain the number of authors on the agenda. I enjoyed the multi-author book signing event at San Marco Books and More in Jacksonville Florida recently. It’s an established event that’s held every year and it has a significant following. However, if you were to pluck an event like that out of a large city like Jacksonville and thrust it into a tiny community, you would probably end up with more authors than customers. That’s the kiss of death.
Additionally, multiple author book signings need writers from various genres or they will fall flat. For example, if nine out of ten authors are sci-fi writers, that’s kind of like going to a fair where nine out of ten stands are selling funnel cake, but nobody’s selling hotdogs or pizza. How much funnel cake can you eat?
It seems simple at first glance, but book signing events require excellent planning in order to be successful. Every once in a while, you do everything right and an event still has a lackluster turnout, but when you dot every I and cross every T, your chances of having an occasion you can be proud of multiply substantially. Write on!
