Have you got an artistic friend who can design you an eye catching flier? Think about unusual fliers – there are many online companies who will print 250 business cards very cheaply – could you use these as fliers? Do you know someone with access to b+w printing at work? Printing black on coloured paper can be eye-catching. You need to start thinking about your fliers and posters about 6 weeks before the day, so that you can get willing helpers to plant them about.
Use all your social networks – set up a Facebook page and invite people to your event, Tweet about the event, make a blog – but don’t send out too many invites from different addresses to the same event. It’s annoying. Make sure the venue has copies of your flier and lists the event on their website. If there are local writing and reading groups, let them know about it too. Libraries are a good place to put an A4 poster.
Find out the local papers contact info and get your event listed – this normally takes just an email, and a lot of listings websites have an online submission form. If your event is a bit wacky or topical you might even find yourself interviewed by the local paper, as I was for an ME4 Writers Alternative Royal Wedding Open Mic event!
Finally get your contributors to bring all their friends along! If you are charging entry maybe offer a pound off for contributors’ friends and family, using a guestlist. That way you can usually get a bit of an idea about numbers before the day – which can be quite reassuring.
Be early
On the day you have to get to the venue at least half an hour early (more really) – sometimes audience members will turn up early and you have to decide whether to let them sit there and watch you set up, or whether to ask them to go to the bar. If your venue has a bar or cafe, that’s great, but if not you have to decide if you want to risk sending that person away, as they might not come back. You might have to set up seats and move tables – so if you are concerned about spoiling your clothes – bring your best stuff to change into. Now is where it really helps if you’ve got some friends to share tasks with. Check audio is working if using a mic, (hopefully you will have a techy friend or group member who can sort the audio-visuals out for you.) Make sure you know where the toilets and the fire exit are and let people know in your introduction.
If there are a few of you – assign roles, one person to meet and greet, one person to collect entry fees, one person to look after the contributors and let them know where they are in the lineup and how long their set is. Let them know where and when they can sell their pamphlets/books if they’ve got some. If one of you is a good photographer, get them to take some photos of the event or video it, and post to Facebook and Youtube after. You should let people know that there may be photos/film taken of them and let them say no, if they don’t want to be on film.
In your intro make sure you let people know the format of the evening – eg, half an hour, followed by a break, followed by a quiz or raffle with some super second hand book prizes (it’s optional for your event, but a quiz goes down well), then another half hour of readings etc, and thank the audience and writers/readers for coming.
At the end thank everyone again and let them know they can join an email list to find out about upcoming events – have a book and pen ready at the back of the room!
So that’s the event done.
It doesn’t end there though! Now’s the time to collect some informal feedback and use it to make your next event even better. You can do this with a comment form, or just ask people what they thought and if there was anything they would like to see next time. If you enjoyed it and it went well – then do it again! Organising a literary event can be great fun and it gives you that important extra interest for your writing portfolio.
To do list
