Event: My Lockdown Book Launch by Jennifer Young

My new novel, The Running Lie, came out late last month. Once upon a time, I would have been having a launch in the beautiful Lighthouse with my colleagues and Falwriting and Faljournalism students. I would have been reading and answering questions with two other authors who also had new novels from Cinnamon Press. They were flying in from abroad, and my publisher, Jan Fortune, was coming in from Wales. Books would have been for sale, and Adnan and I would have been signing copies.

However, none of that has happened! I’m now launching the novel on Zoom on the 13th of May. One of the authors from the original launch dropped out, as she didn’t want to do an online launch. Adnan Mahmutovic, Jan and I have been planning this version of our launch and trying different approaches. I’ll be reading from my study/laundry room, with a screen carefully arranged to hide clutter. I bought a new top, instead of a new dress, as I did last time.

One aspect has remained the same. I planned a blog tour for this launch, which I didn’t do for my last novel. Cinnamon Press is a small press, and they have limited resources for promotion, even before they had to furlough all staff except the head of the press. I wanted to try to raise the profile of my book, so this time I chose a blog tour.

There are two ways to arrange a blog tour, I’ve found. One involves contacting lots of bloggers yourself and the other is paying someone to set a tour up for you. Given my time constraints, I decided to go for the latter. I contacted a few different organisers, and I decided in the end to go with Emma from Damppebbles.com. She’s been brilliant, and she gathered together 14 blogs for either reviews or content. She also tweets about it many more times a day than I would! It’s nice to have someone else pushing the content on social media. I’ve written a couple of pieces of original content, and I did a specific Q&A for the B for Bookreview blog. I’m really looking forward to seeing what it all looks like!  

Details of the launch are below. It would be lovely to see you there! Eventually, we’ll have an in person event in the Lighthouse (and I will probably buy a new dress!). 

You are invited to Two Novels that Travel, a Zoom launch

This takes place on Wednesday May 13 at 7:00 pm (London time). Register in advance for this webinar here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

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by Jennifer Young