Book launch? Help!

I just started to dip my toe into the things you need to do to launch a self-published book onto an unsuspecting world and frightened the life out of myself.

You need a press release. OK, fair enough, but where can I find out what a good one of those looks like? What should go in it and who to send it to? I guess none of these problems is unsurmountable but it looks like I'm committed to a good deal more research here.

Then you need a book-launch party? A what? Does that mean party in the sense of drunk people in the kitchen debating how to set the world to rights; Mrs B girating seductively in the lounge, bouncing all her wobbly bits, whilst Mr B stands, dejected, in front of her, his hands held slightly higher than normal occasionally bending his knees not quite in time to the music. It takes you the next day and a half to tidy the house and the next fortnight to finish off all the opened bottles of cheap plonk. Are we talking one of those sorts of parties?

Why? I expect most of my friends will buy my book even if I don't invite them to a party and I don't know anyone in the publishing industry. That's the problem. Who on earth should I invite to a book launch party and why on earth should I suppose anyone who matters would have the slightest interested in turning up?

Interviews in the local media. Maybe. I occasionally phone in to the local radio station. I wonder if they'll remember me enough to be interested in my imminent book release. Probably not. They say you need to start planning six months in advance. It all seemed so possible when it was tomorrow's problem but six months before release is getting horribly close to the time I generally think of as "now". It seems almost pointless contacting anyone in the media six months in advance. By the time the book is actually released they will have forgotten all about me.

It's clear I have a lot to learn in the next nine months or so. I'm planning on a February launch so, if this were a human baby, the gestation period has just started. What a frightening thought. I have found a lot of very general information out there but the devil is in the detail. Help! And I mean that most sincerely, folks.