Organising an Author Event

Organising an Author Event

Over the last few months I’ve been working behind the scenes to do a task which I have wanted to do for the last five years. And it was everything I had hoped it would be – and so much more. So, being that I’m a blogger, I thought it would be a good idea to blog about it all!

First of all, as it is the first event we’ve hosted at my library for a long time, we had to start off with getting some contacts. So myself and a colleague headed to our local Waterstones and met up with the Event Manager there. And this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship and future collaborations between the library and our local bookshop – it has been wonderful!

Next up, we organised the best date for the author and the library – including staff! With the date settled, we were on to the most important part of the planning – marketing and publicity!

I have to say here that my colleague was absolutely amazing at this. I am in awe of her wonderful skills and she was just incredible at getting the word out about the event. We had flyers in the library, flyers outside of the library, flyers in cafes and shops and supermarkets. Then we were tweeting about the event, Waterstones were also tweeting about the event and it was put out on Facebook too. It was all pretty marvelous.

A few weeks beforehand we also set up the book as our book of the week, and all the books had a little bookmark with details of the event inside too! (As did quite a lot of our other stock!)

While all of that was happening, we were organising the timeline of how the event would pan out. When and where the chairs would come from, how much petty cash we could use on refreshments – what posters would be needed on the day. And organising to get some volunteers in to help for the event.

It was difficult and stressful with a few hurdles along the way but then it was the day of the event and everything that happened previously was forgotten about. Every last thing was put into place and I made sure that all the staff and volunteers who were around on the evening knew what they were doing and when everything would be happening.

And then it started and it went so well. Our author was brilliant and kept all of the audience engaged throughout. He had a presentation and a slideshow to go along with his talk, he had a chocolate spread taste test and a car all decked out like those in his books as well. And it all just went along smoothly.

We also had our local Waterstones on hand to sell his book too – because we made sure to have made that connection.

What I really loved about it was seeing it happen. I loved making sure that everything was set up right, and went smoothly. I felt well and truly in my element on the night and I am certain that I would love to continue organising events from now on. Sometimes you just find the thing that you’re good at and, without sounding my own trumpet too much, I feel that this might just be mine.

So, I cannot wait to do it all over again!