Notes from the Road: Or, How to Make Book Events Fun and Compelling
Greetings and happy full moon! It’s October, the leaves are changing, Halloween is on the horizon, and the air is crisp!
As for me, I have been putting some miles on the old speedometer as I’ve been hoofing it around the northeast promoting my book!
Technically, I’m on maternity leave from teaching, and while I try to keep family and writing separate on the newsletter, that is fairly impossible right now, because my 5-month old son Jonah is my travel companion and the surprise star of every event he attends! His dad David has also done the Herculean work of helping drive us around, haul books, and take care of Jonah during readings.
We have been to bookstores, libraries, college classrooms, lecture halls, and event spaces, and so far, the responses have been great.
So in honor of travel and book promotion, I thought I’d offer a few tips to making your book event a killer good time for all!
How to Create a Great Book Event: 5 Tips
1. Pick a SHORT excerpt to read
One of my very first jobs in life was at a bookstore, where I worked for several summers — peak book event season. So I set up, staffed, and broke down many events — and the really great ones were generally characterized by an excellent and not overly long reading!!!
Nothing kills the vibe like too much reading. No one is interested in following the line of even a very well written story for that long, sitting still, trying to pay attention. These days, the shorter the better!
I also had the privilege of attending many grad student readings when I was doing my MFA at Emerson, and learned a few more don’ts: don’t read a big group scene with more than 2-3 characters, since no one can keep track of that many lines of dialogue and different people all at once. Don’t read something that requires more explanation than the excerpt. Don’t read something so abstract that we don’t know where we are in time and space.
Also: humor is good. Drama is good. Yummy rich sensory details (but not too many) are good.
In short, when read out loud, good writing sounds even better, and clunky writing really rattles.
2. Recruit a conversation partner, buddy, or interlocutor — or establish some fun and brief patter
Folks like to watch conversations more than static author talks!
Two interesting people are better than one interesting person! The Q&A format is more fun than a droning lecture!
I’ve been privileged to have some great friends and fellow writers agree to chat with me, including Kirstin Chen, Jill Gallagher, Jimin Han, and Rachel Stolzman Gullo, who have all been so kind and gracious and thoughtful and penetrating with their questions!
And for events without a conversation partner, I’ve created two versions: 1) the bookstore/library reading and chat about the book, and 2) the academic “book talk” with images and PowerPoint slides and discussions of Taiwanese history and my research process.
At this point, I probably have 4-5 variations on the book event, subbing in different excerpts or a different focus for a particular audience. Like a well-planned class, there should be excitement, tension, narrative, and audience participation. And never long enough for folks to lose interest.
I remember going to a Colson Whitehead reading when he was promoting Sag Harbor, before he was a household name. And he had this hilarious schtick, and I remember laughing, and I don’t remember how it related to the book, but I remember leaving the reading and thinking, it’s good for an author to be a bit of a showman. Be memorable. Be compelling. Overall, entertain people!
3. Be prepared with some fun or spicy anecdotes in response to audience questions — and decide in advance how personal you want to get.
This will differ for all authors because some books are about more or less personal subjects, but my book is about family secrets and my search for the truth and identity, so there are some very personal moments. It’s also about the White Terror Period in Taiwan, so there’s some dark stuff.
At a recent event up at Harvard, a man whose family lived through the White Terror Period and had family members arrested, and he said with some emotion, “You talk about this stuff like it is easy, but it was really hard for everyone,” and my heart broke a bit because I didn’t want him to think I was making light of these truly awful and dark moments in history. I try to strike a balance in light and dark tones, so as not to sink everyone’s spirits with the depressing parts, but it’s true that some of the story is devastating. So I leaned into some of the more personal and emotional moments in that event — almost because someone had given me permission to talk about them.
I’ve also had to summarize some very long and arduous moments — for my family, in my writing process — so it helps to be prepared.
With the audience Q&A, in some ways, you’re interviewing for a job — the job of being the next book they read. You want to sell it, and not give away too many spoilers, but tease out the tension, and add a little suspense!!
4. Think outside the box (when you can)
If there are opportunities for surprise, humor, visual aids, sensory experiences, or audience participation, take them! Everyone loves to shake things up.
One of my reader experiences for this book tour involves large form boards with simplified and traditional Chinese characters on them. Sometimes I ask the audience questions! And for my book launch party at WORD, I shelled out for some takeout Taiwanese dumplings from Win Son Bakery in South Williamsburg (where they go by the provocative name “griddled pork buns”). So worth it!
5. Have a blast, and others will too!
It’s actually been terrific fun to talk about the book, the research process, and how I wrote this originally messy but eventually coherent hybrid memoir over a very long time. I spent so long alone with these words and memories and ideas, it’s actually very satisfying to share the experience with others and have a chat before (or sometimes after) readers plunge in.
Now, I’m eager to hear what folks think when they finish the book!
Just a few more stops this fall and then I’ll hang up my hat for awhile. But also, if you have friends or relatives who might be interested in the book, please feel free to share the title or one of these articles/interviews about it:
Excerpt in Lit Hub: https://lithub.com/dreaming-a-way-into-the-past-on-unearthing-family-secrets-in-taipei/
Interview in Hyphen: https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2024/09/lives-and-afterlives-interview-kim-liao
Interview in Hippocampus: https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2024/10/interview-kim-liao-author-of-where-every-ghost-has-a-name-a-memoir-of-taiwanese-independence/
Reading List in Electric Lit: https://electricliterature.com/11-books-by-taiwanese-and-taiwanese-american-women/
Happy almost Halloween, and hope you are enjoying fall! My drives around the northeast have been gorgeous!
Also wishing you the time to write if you are someone who writes, and many tiny moments of joy throughout your day, regardless of what you’re up to!
I needed this! thank you so much and so excited for you and your book!!
Congratulations, Kim!!!