What’s not to love about book launches?
A few months ago, we were coming back from a book-launch party for Shawn Reilly Simmons, and my mom, who'd enjoyed herself immensely at the event, asked me: Does everyone do a book launch party? Like, does Stephen King still celebrate every one of his books?
I don't know if he does, but I'd like to think so.
Book launches are one of those rare events that I always look forward to. Lucky for my husband and me, we have a lot of talented friends and get to go to many of them. We joke that our son is one of the only toddlers we know that thinks book launches are a regular occurrence.
The process of going from idea to publication is long and thankless and frustrating and really freakin' hard. I won't compare writing a book to having a baby. It's been done before, and it's a bad comparison. A book doesn't get you up in the middle of the night insisting you feed it. Well, okay, it might, but if it does, ignoring it doesn't pose the threat of prison time.
However, it still is a feat. An author spends weeks, months, years (sometimes decades) crafting a work of art. You spend a lot of time revising it, cutting, adding, switching it around. Then you spend all the weeks and months sending it out, getting rejected, waiting, more rejections.
Then you finally get it accepted — yay! Brief moment of elation — and then it gets published. And a few lovely folks might say they enjoyed it. If you're lucky, someone you don't know might find you online and send you an email. But for the most part, everyone moves on pretty quickly, and you're left thinking, "What's next?"
I'm a big believer in birthday parties. I love Christmas. I like any gathering, really, where people come together to celebrate a person or something awesome a person did. So a book launch is one of the best events to attend — an acknowledgement that, yes, you did this. Yes, it's awesome. Sure, a launch is also about buying the book, but it's so much more than that. It's about reveling in the weird, messy, wonderful, terrible, confounding creative process and celebrating someone who made it out the other end alive.
Book-launch celebrations, like books themselves, come in many different forms. I've been to casual backyard barbecues, quiet library affairs, full-on catered restaurant luncheons. My friend Alan Orloff does stand-up comedy instead of a reading at his book parties. My former professor Alan Cheuse used to have big, formal, weighty readings at Politics and Prose in DC, followed by laidback food and drinks at a nearby restaurant. Many authors choose to go it solely online with a virtual Facebook event and giveaways and quizzes.
Of course, launch parties aren't for everyone. I recently had a discussion with a good friend whose first novel was published this year. He felt the need to throw a launch party, but he didn't really want to. "I'm anxious about being in the spotlight," he said earnestly.
Many writers prefer the solitary act of creating a work of art. When it's out there, it can feel quite uncomfortable to turn salesperson and marketer — and yet with so many changes in publishing, it's almost essential for writers to get out there and market themselves.
So if you're friends with a writer, be kind. Celebrate their accomplishment. If they do choose to throw a party, go! Or if they don't, or you can't attend, there are so many other ways to help out. Buy the book. Read the book. Review the book. Tell the writer you loved it.
Celebrate, celebrate! I bet Stephen King does.
(Speaking of celebrating, here's my own book launch plug. You're invited to the Spring Launch Party for the Santa Fe Writers Project, which will be celebrating the release of my book, Bystanders, as well as the novel American Fallout by Brandon Wicks, the poetry collection Chaos Theories by Elizabeth Hazen, and part I of the fantasy trilogy The Ordination by Daniel Ford. The fun begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, at the Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda, MD. Hope to see you there!)
Tara Laskowski is the author of Bystanders and Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons. She lives in Virginia and has been the editor of SmokeLong Quarterly since 2010.
