An Unusual Publisher Event for Authors

Last weekend, I was in Nashville for an unusual author event. Over the last four and half years, I’ve acquired books for Morgan James Publishing. It’s the nature of book publishing to introduce a steady stream of new books into the market. Often this event is called an author launch where they launch their book into the marketplace.

As a publisher, we set the date of this launch months ahead and encourage the authors to work to build buzz and momentum for that date. We encourage their activity but typical for publishers, the author will handle the actual work such as getting people to review the book on Amazon.

Several weeks ago, Morgan James invited authors whose books released from December 2016 through March 2017 to come to a red carpet event. The authors dressed up, held their books and were interviewed on the red carpet. The interviews were live streamed on Facebook Live. After the interviews, Morgan James had special dinner to honor our authors at the famous Wild Horse Saloon in downtown Nashville.

From my many years in publishing, I’ve never seen a publisher put on this type of separate and special event to honor their authors. As a part of the event, David Hancock, the founder of Morgan James, gave each author a special “challenge coin” in a presentation box. “Challenge Coins” started during World War I where a unit carried a coin and were challenged to present the coin to prove their affiliation. These coins are popular with the Army Special Forces. David created these coins which on one side have a book and include the words “Educate, Encourage, Inform, Inspire.” The reverse includes the Morgan James book logo and “the entrepreneurial publisher” and the Morgan James website address. The coin is a remarkable reminder to every author of the partnership with their publisher.

The next day, some of the authors stayed for a day of marketing training. Not every author could stay both days but a number of them stayed and invested in themselves. The training day was excellent and included a representative from Ingram Publishing Services (the distributor for Morgan James books), specific marketing training, media training and much more. Bret Ridgway, co-author of the book, Mistakes Authors Make, spoke about  some of the mistakes authors make and his services at Speaker Fulfillment Services. One of the key mistakes that authors make is writing a book without understanding the endgame with their book. What do they want the reader to do after reading the book? Hire them for coaching or get some of their services or sign up for the author's email list? These elements have to be written into the foundation of your book from the beginning. The training session was excellent and I learned a great deal from this valuable education.

Morgan James Publishing planning two more of these events in Nashville and will follow the seasons of releases for these books. I was honored to be included and look forward to going to the events later this year.  

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