Good times and tight budgets

Lynne Patrick

I read somewhere that one effect of the economic downturn is that publishers are cutting back on long lunches and glitzy launch parties.

A tiny, slightly ungenerous part of me thought, lucky them, to be able to cut back on something so easily! We small guys never had a budget for that kind of thing in the first place. Our version of taking an author out to lunch has always been coffee and a sticky bun in a town centre café, and most of our enjoyable-but-not-especially-glitzy launch parties have involved a benevolent bookshop proprietor, a case or two of wine and a few packs of nibbles from the local supermarket.

I suppose the entertainment budget is part of the marketing one, and we don’t really have one of those either – at least not in a monetary sense. But, as I say on a regular basis and must have said a dozen times right here on this blog, what we lack in hard cash we make up for with imagination and ingenuity.

Tonight we’re running our first murder mystery evening of the year. They’re rapidly becoming one of our greatest assets: it’s not the end of January yet and so far we have seven on the calendar and three more enquiries on the stocks which I’m confident will turn into firm bookings in due course.

They cost us very little: travel to the venue, a small royalty for the author of the three scenarios we offer, a few dozen sheets of paper and enough printer ink to create new sets of answer sheets each time. They generate sales of at least twenty books: one way or another, the venue has to guarantee that, or pay us a fee in addition to expenses. And we take a boxful or two of backlist to sell at a knock-down price, and usually get a few takers.

The host venue usually provides refreshments – tea and cakes, fruit punch, occasionally wine. and most important of all, people have a really good time working out who offed the theatre handyman (or fitness instructor, or 18^th century entrepreneur). We try to say ‘Crème de la Crime’ as often as possible too, so that they associate our name with the good time when they’re browsing in a bookshop or exploring what’s new on Amazon.

You could say that’s where our way intersects with the big guys’: giving people a really good time. But how, exactly, does taking an author out for an expensive restaurant lunch contribute to sales of the book? Or of any book? And are the glitzy launch parties aimed at readers who might go to a bookshop and order a copy – or are they a way of thanking the agents, editors etc etc etc who played a part in getting the book into the shop? (OK, maybe reviewers, and people who might want to buy subsidiary rights; we invite them too, to our far more modest events.) I’ve only been to one launch party which wasn’t for one of our books. Copies of the book were ranged along a table and were certainly for sale, but I didn’t exactly see people rushing to buy.

Now I have to come clean and confess that our next launch event will have a higher than usual level of glitz. The organisers of CrimeFest (which is kind of a British Bouchercon, but smaller, and happens in May, not October) have given us an evening slot to celebrate Criminal Tendencies, our charity anthology. It’s our way of saying a big thank-you to the people who made the book possible, and everyone who registers for CrimeFest is invited too.

We’ll do our best to ensure a good time – but free-flowing champagne is not our style, and the nibbles will be peanuts rather than caviar canapés.

And the book? It will take centre stage. Isn’t that what it’s all about?