Just Wondering - Effective Ways to Host an Author Event

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

In this month's column by Manitowoc (WI) Public Library Youth Librarian Susie Menk , she is thinking about an upcoming large scale event and whether there are other tips on how to make the planning process smooth . And she's wondering....what do you think?

So….we are doing a bigger name author event this summer.  My team and I started planning back in January for this event to make sure we had plenty of time to organize and prepare. 

Ha! Ha! The joke’s on us!  We swiftly learned that planning an event of this size is a constant challenge to keep moving forward.  There are several suggestions I would make to others planning an event of this size.

One of the most important things we learned is to make sure expectations for each party are clearly established.  For instance, who is making the travel arrangements?  What exactly does travel arrangements include—airfare, hotel, meals, transportation?  How are expenses being taking care of?  Does the agency book the travel and then the sponsor reimburses?  How are payments made to the booking agency? Check? Electronic transfer?  Some of these methods can be problematic for libraries who deal with Friends or Foundation groups that don’t necessarily have the capability to submit electronic payments.

The second most important thing we learned is to make sure the agent and the author are communicating with one another.  We got to a week and a half out from the event and found out that the author and the agent were not on the same page.  The agent had given us rather strict protocols about masks and Covid-19 procedures saying the author required it. Later we found out that the author thought we had set these strict protocols.  

Lastly, it is important to get the venue nailed down early on.  Our library has a nice set of meeting rooms, but we didn’t think it would work for an author event of this size, so we reached out to a local venue.  We thought we were all set and then they pulled out so we were scrambling to find a new venue about two months before the event.  We had also partnered with a local school to do a writing workshop with the author for part of their summer school program.  They were happy to partner with us and all seemed well.  Then two weeks before the event, we got an email saying that they had to pull out.  We pivoted and decided to offer the workshop here at the library instead. 

We are super excited to host this author event and we have created quite the buzz about the event so we are hopeful that it will be a rousing success.  We have learned a great deal as we went through this process and we will be better prepared the next time we host an event of this nature. 

Does anyone else have experiences to share about hosting a large scale event?  Any tips or tricks or even funny stories you want to share?  We’d love to hear from you!