And If You Can Do It In Brooklyn, All the Better

Good morning, authors.

So. Book launch parties. Good times, eh? Let us say that your first book is coming out soon and you would like your blow-out bash to be properly magnificent. As it just so happens, YA author Cynthia Leitich Smith of Tantalize fame has the skinny on How to Throw a Book Launch Party. Lots of helpful hints are there that you might forget otherwise. For example, "If possible, pre-autograph the books. A couple of days before the party, it had taken me about two hours of steady effort to pre-autograph a hundred books." Ow.

Also, and I think this is a mark of true class; "I elected to highlight fellow Austin area novelists of 2007--Helen Hemphill, April Lurie, Jo Whittemore, and Brian Yansky. I did a giveaway of ARCs of their forthcoming titles and offered a handout listing each with their catalog copy and brief bios." SMART move.

Consider this your required reading handout of the day. Unfortunately you cannot comment on Smith's piece, so if you've any additional tips I wonder if you'd be so good as to list them here. She seems to have covered everything, but I'd like to hear about people who opt for new ideas of their own.