My book launch event

Herve the campsite cat launch event 17th December 2016

Meeting commencing 7th December : 5 oclock

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the release of Herve was delayed until the 3rd of December. The book went on sale and began quickly selling steadily, just a couple of copies per day. On the 7th we had agreed to meet to discuss the topic of a launch event for the book. We had to look at what it was we wanted to include on the day, as well as how we would logistically manage its completion. Prior to this we discussed at length the nature of payment for the on hand stock, covering all of the administrative side of the sale. Before this meeting, I met with a colleague to discuss how the stock would be funded and brought into the shop. This was enlightening and confidence building, giving me something to look too in the future for guidance as well as kick off my meeting with Penelope. This situation covered the first half of our meeting, I laid out the plan for payment with Penelope so much to solidify any potential doubts and make sure we set out on the right foot.

Leading into discussion about the actual launch, we began by asserting where exactly our event would be held and at what time. This was put together relatively simply as the shop had recently created an event space for exactly this sort of thing. Discussion was led by a need for clarity and simplicity in comparison to our joint desired outcome. In reality I wanted there to be a reading of the story to then be followed by a drawing session led by myself. To this Penelope replied with the idea that we should host a signing after the reading leading into the drawing session to be held afterward. I felt this was a completely justified way of doing things and it lent itself to a possible layout for the facilities in the event itself. We quickly made a picture of what it was we needed to include, a seating area for the children, an area for the reading to take place and a place to set up the signing table. As all of this was fairly straight forward with it largely coming down to the placement of the tables needed, we moved onto the details of how the event would run.

Straight away Penelope highlighted her husband as a possible reader for the story during the reading, to which I felt would be a lovely touch and allow for a confident reading when it came to the delivery of his wife’s work. Having this in place she also mentioned that it might be a wonderful idea to have a projection alongside the reading, having a presentation comprised of the images from the book, so as to act as an aid to the viewing of the book. This I felt was the cherry on the cake, this meant that everyone would be able to see everything during the reading and it would result in everything moving smoothly with younger viewers. Having this as the basis we then decided to look at how we would then arrange the people in attendance between them listening to the story then to have a book signed to then purchase it. This could potentially result in a lot of confusion and a nightmare financially. Saying this, I feel it quickly fell into place afterwards, we moved quickly to iron out a set up of the events that would take place and decided on the overall delivery. Going on from here we decided to create a poster for the event, a leaflet, a social network presence as well as the placement of books in the shop. We felt that for the week and half that we had in order to advertise would be enough time to create enough exposure to draw enough people in. I told Penelope that I could create the materials for advertising our event and then distribute them myself. Using facilities at university and some of my spare time this would be easily manageable. She seemed delighted with this and we agreed that once id finished making them I would send them to her digitally so that she could print them herself and distribute them in her local area. Finalising this I told Penelope that I would be able to send her an email within the next few days outlining everything that we had said in the meeting and what I had done in the build up to the email, since this meeting. With that the meeting was over and my work just beginning in terms of preparation.