It was our first time ever hosting a book launch. We’ve been to a few such launches over the years of course. You probably can’t be a passionate reader or a writer with writer-friends and not wind up attending one or two. So when it came time to planning our own book launch for Craft, Cost & Call: How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer, we had a few ideas about how we hoped things might go.

The launch happened this past weekend, and looking back, I believe that things went well.

I think what helped them to go well was that we tried to let our plans be guided by our principles.

As people who believe that we are called to love others as ourselves, I can see in hindsight that it was the principle of loving others that drove our decisions. Not consciously. But as I reflect on the weeks leading up to the event and the event itself, I think it was the desire to try to treat others as we would want to be treated that shaped and undergirded most of our choices.

What kind of atmosphere would we, ourselves, most like to experience at such an event? (Relaxed fun with candlelight.) How long would we want to have to sit? (Not long at all.) What sorts of things would we most enjoy hearing? (Definitely not the authors droning on and on.) Should we serve food and beverages? (Yes, of course.) Should we do a hard sell? (Definitely not.) Should we sign books? (In advance, so as not to keep people waiting. Although, truth be told, we also wanted to avoid the awkwardness of sitting at a table if no one actually wanted to buy books.)

Again and again, we came back to the realization that even though our book launch would be a celebration of something that we had done—we did not want it to be “all about us.”

So we invited other writers to tell us a bit about their writing lives, to read portions of our book, and then to respond to it. A fire blazed in the fireplace, candlelight flickered throughout the room, dinner jazz played on the sound system, and our guests visited with us and with one another and feasted on a delicious pie buffet.

As for Karen and I, once the first guests began to arrive, we relaxed and delighted in the visible reminder that we are blessed to have people in our lives who care enough to show their support and come to a party celebrating this thing that we have done. And yes, we sold some books. We also enjoyed our guests. We ate pie. Our cups overflowed. Our hearts are full.