How to Survive a Book Launch

Rebecca Cantrell suggested I post this (mostly) tongue-in-cheek list I made for her, so here you go:


1. Imagine your audience naked. Or, if that fails, at least in underoos.
2. Autograph with a comfortable pen. Bic does not make a comfortable pen.
3. Come up with memorable witticisms to inscribe above your autograph, such as "You Made the Write Choice" or "It's Been a Thrill." Note: memorable is often mistaken for good. This, obviously, is a fallacy.
4. Be prepared for many photographs. Practice by making evil faces in the mirror. The more evil the face, the more likely it will end up on someone's blog. There is no such thing as bad publicity.
5. When you are asked where you get your ideas, tell them it's a secret. And act very, very serious when you say this. They will stop asking. As a bonus, this also reduces the number of photographs taken.
6. Some readers will point out grammatical and/or typographical errors in your novel. Smile at them and kindly ask them how many grammatical and/or typographical errors are in their published novel.
7. Have gifts for your audience, such as food and cash. Bribery can go a long, long way.
8. When giving your public reading, make sure to have a beverage handy, preferably something fermented.
9. People you have not seen in years will come up to you and ask for your signature and will expect you to remember their name. Be prepared to act so overwhelmed by all the excitement that you can't remember anything.
10. Writers are, by nature, loners, and the book launches are, by nature, maelstroms of social interaction. Overcome this obstacle by carrying a notepad with you. When the social interaction proves too cumbersome, retreat to your notepad. This can occur mid-conversation, and people will simply deem you quirky or eccentric.

Buy Indie!

As some of you may know by now, May 1st is International Buy Indie Day. Artists, musicians, and writers are teaming up to support local independent retailers. Numerous authors, from John Scalzi to Jason Pinter, are offering swag in exchange for a May 1st receipt from a local independent bookstore.

As much as I love amazon.com (with the exception of this past weekend), Borders, and Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores remain the premier forum for independent publishers (such as Nuclear Winter Wonderland's publisher Kunati) and need our support, now more than ever given the current economic morass.

My favorite bookstore when I was growing up was a small shop called A Novel Place. The owners had incredible taste and introduced me to authors I would never have found on my own wandering Barnes & Noble. The owners (a father and son) truly loved books, and I owe much of my adolescent reading list to them.

And then they closed.

Don't take your local independent retailer for granted. Buy indie on May 1st. Buy indie as often as you can. And if the book you buy at that independent bookstore happens to be mine...well, there's nothing wrong with that, is there?