Maryam Ahmad, Associate Publicist at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, encourages authors to focus locally when it comes to in-person events. People enjoy bringing their children to events where they can meet authors face-to-face, which builds community engagement. Her experience has shown that local events such as book signings and festivals produce better sales results because people want to support their local authors. Ahmad explains that authors are more likely to get a return on their event investments if they start locally.