Preparing for launch - communication is key!

Well I don't really want to use this blog to moan because that's not very positive, but here goes anyway and hopefully this will be my first and last time. Arranging a successful book launch is really important to me so I was a little disappointed when one high profile store informed me that they don't host launch events for new authors. That's frustrating, but kind of fine, at least they let me know in good time. I'm not sure that they would take the same stance if I was a celebrity but maybe one day I'll have the chance to turn them down in return.....

What really annoyed me is that one store (from the same chain) took 3 weeks to tell me that they don't host book launch events for new authors, nor do they host events without having seen the book first. 

3 weeks!! They could have told me that after 30 seconds!! That was after me visiting the store and explaining to them that I am a new author and that the book is not ready yet (it is a launch event after all, so why would the book be ready), and 3 weeks of myself and my publisher emailing and calling them almost daily. 

Now I don't mind that they won't hold a launch event for my book, that's their decision after all. But that's 3 weeks that I didn't have to waste and I think it's pretty rude that they couldn't give what turned out to be a standard response much sooner. So now we start again, but I'm hoping that we should be able to get something sorted out pretty quickly.