During this course, we will share techniques for keeping your remote attendees engaged from start to finish, including how to brief your authors ahead of events and book launches. As well as looking at the event experience of book launches, we will explore the different software available, and how to deal with potential technical issues.

This course has been designed to run over three consecutive weeks to allow you to fit this into your busy schedule. We also find that it helps attendees to retain information from the session.

It is split into three 1-hour sessions that take place between 1–2 p.m. (GMT). We will send you one Zoom link which will be used each time you log on for the course.

£130 +VAT (or 50% off for BookMachine members). Further discounts are available directly from Publishing Scotland for their members.

Week 1 (Monday 22nd February): The promotional period

• Settings your goals, objectives and lead times
• Choosing your software
• Communicating with attendees and authors/speakers
• Pre-launch engagement ideas

Week 2 (Monday 1st March): A successful event

• Checklists and preparing for technical issues  
• Audience participation – tips for maximum engagement
• Maximising sales opportunities

Week 3 (Monday 8th March): Event follow-up, keep up the momentum

• Creating content (text and video)
• Dealing with questions
• How to sell more copies post-event

About the tutors

Laura Summers has organised 100s of events since launching BookMachine in 2010. From conferences, to workshops on Zoom and online sessions on a multitude of platforms, there isn’t much in the field of events that Laura hasn’t put her hand to. As well as organising events Laura has oodles of experience in presenting and delivering talks to global audiences online. Prior to her publishing career in publishing Laura was both a teacher and a teacher trainer.

Suzanne Kavanagh has worked on numerous author events and book campaigns. She’s organised a wide range: from sales meetings to industry conferences and professional development. Suzanne oversaw the development of 35+ training courses, seminars and webinars annually at ALPSP and has worked with the BookMachine editorial board to programme the Unplugged series. She loves pivoting talks to online and seeing how rich an experience it is for speaker and audience.