Virtual Book Launch Party Tips with Amani Roberts

Have you considered doing a virtual book launch? Whether it's because of a pandemic or just wanting to reach a much wider audience than your local market, a virtual book launch can be a fantastic way to reach readers, sell books, and have a lot of fun. If you want to hear from an author who had a great virtual book launch, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers. And done right will help you grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part, you keep all rights and royalties. When COVID 19 forced many of us to shelter in place, that messed with a lot of book launches. And many authors had some pretty fun plans for their book launch events and had to revisit those plans. One of those authors was Imani Roberts, a podcaster, a corporate trainer, teaching team building, and a dj. So with that kind of a background, you can imagine he'd been planning a pretty cool book launch party. But as it became apparent nobody was going to be able to attend, he pivoted to doing his book launch online and it was so much fun. Please meet Amani Roberts.

Hello, my name is Amani Roberts and I'm the author of this book right here. It's called DJs mean business. It takes you through the time slots of a DJ set starting at 10pm, goes to 2am and relates each time slot to growing a business.

His book is really cool because it teaches you business lessons throughout the typical night of a dj. So if you're in HR or you're looking for a fantastic way to teach team building or some business building lessons with music, this book and quite frankly, his events are for you. Of course, if you're a DJ or a creative, you're also going to learn a lot from his book too. So Amani, how did you decide to do a virtual book launch?

I was planning on DJing, you know, being on the turntables and scratching and doing all sorts of things. But because of quarantine we can't do that. So I decided to have a virtual book launch. What that means that I would stream live from my home studio. So right now we're upstairs in my one studio, but my home studio is downstairs because when the first keys I wanted to make sure happens that I had good WI fi. So I was able to plug directly my computer directly into the WI fi router, which is really important when you're streaming. So that was the first reason.

That is such a cool tip right there. So I wanted to pause and make sure you caught it. My Mac actually won't let me plug directly into the router, so I probably have to buy an adapter to do that. But right there I just went, whoa. Of course. That makes sense. Don't have wonky wi fi on your book launch. Make sure you're plugged in. Yes. Such a good tip. Thank you. Imani, tell us about that book launch event and how it went down.

It was a two hour program. Start off. I just opened up the streaming and I was deejaying, so we waited for people to kind of get in. I streamed it on four platforms. Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter. What's up, Tina? How you doing? First it was being recorded. So it's recorded on pretty much all those platforms. So people can go back and watch it when they're not there. That was one of the first important things. So we started at 6. Then I DJed. Then 15 minutes we had my friend and boss that's from the Brig where I DJ here in LA Venice, California, Brian Kimmet. He came on. He was a virtual bartender. He shared a drink that anyone could make in their house. Just some sugar, hot water, lemons, a real simple drink that you could make, which is really cool. People love that. So he was a virtual bartender. He was there for about 5, 10 minutes. Then I kept DJing. I see you, Brian. All right, now it's time for me to introduce our virtual bartender. So I'm going to turn over to Brian right there. Amro asked me to come out here.

And teach you all how to make.

Something, hopefully with stuff that you have already in your house. Imani's favorite drink out of the gate was the Amaretto Sour, because he likes drinking candy and that's okay.

So already I bet you wish you were there. This was a ton of fun. I watched on Instagram Live and Sarah Bean, our book marketing manager, was watching on Facebook. Now, the good news is you missed it, but the replay of the whole livestream is available@iganiexperience.com booklaunch. From there, he had a book reading, a Q and A, and then he had lined up performances to spice it up. Yeah, he had singers performing during his virtual book launch. Also, he teaches business and economics at Cal State, so he got two of his students to perform as well. He gave away prizes. He did another reading and more Q and A in between. He was doing DJ sets. So fun. So again, if you Want to see the whole thing? I highly recommend you check it out because there's great lessons in putting on a virtual event and really focusing on the experience. Experience for the audience. A lot of people feel nervous, but I recommend you focus on creating a great experience for the audience and forget about how you look in his. He had 130 attendees concurrently and many more showed up for parts of it and many watched it afterwards as well. So he was really happy with the response. Now, you might be wondering, what tech tools did he use? Well, I asked him.

Technology tools. I used three main tools. First was a platform called Streamyard. Shout out to coach Deb, who turned me onto this platform so I could stream and distribute it everywhere. That was really, really important. I work with streamyard, like practicing weeks in advance to make sure I had it down. So that's what we used to stream. I had a laptop camera and then just a microphone. Just what I have at my hand is a microphone so I could talk, engage, switch back and forth between the different guests. That's pretty much it. Of course, there's some more technical things like an audio interface to make sure I have good sound and things like that. That's generally what I had for technology. Pretty basic. You can do it.

Overall, this was a really big success, and we were so pumped and proud of him for creating such an amazing experience with fairly short notice. But there are always things to learn. So I asked Imani what he would do differently if he did another virtual event.

If I was to do something differently, I would have done more Q and A, read more from the book, because I got feedback. Actually, I had a lot of my students that attended. So as part of their extra credit, I said, what did you like the most? What would you do even more next time? And pretty much the majority of them said, well, we want to hear more about the book. Both reading from the book and then the process. What I'm learning is that people are really interested in the process. How long did it take you to write the book? That's probably the most common question I get. And second most common question is, why did you write the book? So they want to hear more about that. Maybe a slideshow to go along with it. And then in terms of just really technical, when I had the singers, I also streamed it on Instagram Live, but it was hard for people to see the singers. Except for the first one when we split our screen and then we were able to share it. I would have coordinated that a little better. That's what I would have done differently.

That's a pretty cool takeaway for all authors, I think. When I did my book launch events, I was constantly surprised that people wanted to know more about the book process, sometimes more than they wanted to know about the book, but they also wanted me to read from the book. Maybe it's because you feel a little tired of your book content by the time it launches or you're just humble, but I find, and I did this too, that a lot of authors don't spend enough time talking about their book or leaving enough time for Q and A during author events. One thing I will tell you is to plant some questions in the audience to get things rolling. Because sometimes when you open it up for Q and A, nobody has questions and that's kind of awkward. So get folks to ask you some questions. Plant them in advance to get things rolling. Like, how'd you come up with the COVID idea? What is your favorite chapter in the book? Who do you hope reads this book? Because people are already going to ask you, who'd you write the book for? Why'd you write the book? So you can plant these other questions for some variety. And these questions will also get the audience thinking about other questions they may have. Finally, my favorite question is to always ask an author what has surprised them about their book launch experience or about what's happened since their book had come out. Now, for Imani, it's only been a week and a half when we're filming this, but he already has a few surprises.

People will send me pictures of themselves with the book, which I didn't ask for, but it's really cool. So I'm going to make a collage out of that. So that's really, really cool and a big surprise. The support in general has been really, really nice and good. And I can already tell nothing's definite yet, but I can just tell that when I start to say to people if I'm trying to get more gigs as a dj, maybe some speaking opportunities, I'm like, oh, I just released my book. That kind of causes them to pause. Oh, really? What's your book about? It kind of gives me a little bit more credibility right away. I actually got a referral from someone who was at the book launch, virtual book launch for a DJ gig online on Zoom. So that's kind of one of the other pleasant surprises as well. Go ahead and start writing your book because it's a great experience. Shout out to book launchers, really appreciate their support and go for it.

Yes. Thank you, Imani, for allowing us to share this with all the authors out there who are either wondering how they can do a launch when people are staying at home, or they're just wondering how they can create an amazing virtual experience so people from all over the country or world can attend their book launch. So please go ahead and connect with Imani on social media Amani Experience and to get his book. You really should get his book because there's some great business lessons in here for everyone in business. Right now head on over to theamaniexperience.com book. I'll put all those links in the description below. Now did you get a cool tip from this video smash? That thumbs up button for Imani. And now what do you think of virtual book launches? Have you done one? Have you attended one? What did you like? Not like? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbooks swag like our fabulous mug Coffee, Tea and Hot chocolate Tastes better in it. Or our oh so soft journal for writing down all your fantastic book launch ideas. If you haven't already subscribed to the channel, make sure you do that and turn the notifications on so you can catch the next video when it comes out. New videos every Tuesday and Friday, except in the summer when we take a little bit of a break. Now if you're looking for more tips on doing virtual book events, this video right here is absolutely for you. If you're prepping for a book launch, make sure you've seen this video on book launch bonuses because you're going to sell way more books if you get this part right. So go ahead, choose which video you want to see next and I'm waiting for you over there. Guaranteed good time ahead or your money back.