Five years ago, Sue Borgersen – a former PATW member – wrote a guest blog for us: Launching Books During Pandemic Lockdowns. Fortunately for me, when I published my memoir a year ago, the pandemic was over, although its impact is of course still apparent: for those of us who lost loved ones, or who have suffered ‘long Covid’, life changed tragically and irrevocably. And yet perhaps COVID-19 left us with some unexpected benefits too: I am thinking of a flexibility, a greater breadth, in how we arrange our working lives as writers.
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
For example, a book launch used to be a single event, organised by the publisher, or by the author if self-published. In the spirit of a more relaxed post-Covid way of approaching events, I decided my book launch was to be a series of smaller celebrations spread over a calendar year.
Book launches nowadays can be a hybrid – of online events as outlined by Sue Borgersen, and in-person meetups. Over the past year, I have hosted a party for friends at a local distillery, been ‘launched’ at a library event, had a table at a Christmas Book Fair, and signed books and given readings at independent bookshops in different cities across the UK. I’ve invited those German citizens who appear in my memoir to the Landshut Museum to receive signed copies, been recognised at a public event at Landshut Rathaus, and was interviewed on German media. I’ve discussed my book with secondary school and college students. And I’ve used online events, my website and social media posts to bring the book to the notice of a wider community.
NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It has become clear to me that at every point, ‘launching’ a book overlaps with ‘marketing’; it’s a continuum, and the balance shifts over time from the first towards the second, and sometimes back again. As I approach the end of Stumbling Stones’ first year of public existence, I am holding both in mind: the library’s book club is discussing it this month, and I have another in-person ‘book launch’ in April, when I will take part in a descendants’ reunion in Augsburg, the birthplace of my grandfather. I’m actively seeking an audiobook producer and a publisher in Germany, thus triggering a fresh round of launches, I hope. I’m also planning how I can make use of social media to find more readers – for example, by posting quotations or brief readings from selected passages at regular intervals.
In conclusion, a book launch can be a series of big and small whooshes, set in the context of a longer-term gentle push. How have you organised your book launches?
Stumbling Stones: The Holocaust, My Family and Me Miriam Landor 2025
‘
Thanks for sharing these insights, Miriam. As with many parts of writing, it seems launching a book often doesn’t look like what we expect. It sounds like you’ve had many meaningful unexpected experiences by staying loose and going with the launch flow. Congrats!