How to Get Media Coverage for Your Book

Ken Brosky

Today’s guest post is by Ken Brosky. I asked him to share his experience because many authors have made the same mistake he has. Plus, his advice on how to do things right is spot on.

In addition to his post, I recommend you read one of my rants, I Hate Press Releases—and hopefully you’ll never end up wasting time OR money.


For the past two months, I’ve been documenting my attempts to promote my first short story collection on my blog in the hopes that other writers might be able to learn from my mistakes.

And boy, have there been some mistakes. But they’re the good kind of mistakes. They’re the mistakes you learn from and don’t make twice. They’re the mistakes that make for an entertaining story.

Take, for instance, my misguided attempt at conducting what the experts called PR, or—to the layperson—public relations. I assumed that in order to send out a press release, you had to spend money. Not only that, I also assumed in order to contact actual press—the keyword here, I think—you needed a professional company to do it for you.

Wrong. And wrong.

I ended up spending money on something that had no value to my book whatsoever.

First off, you don’t need to pay to submit a press release. You can do it for free. You can go here for a list of additional resources. It matters not. What matters is that your press release becomes available, ends up being indexed by Google, and ends up being read. Using a free press release website accomplishes all of this.

So what do those “paid” services end up doing? Well, apparently they distribute the press release to news media outlets. How many can depend on the company. Usually “thousands” is their general estimate. It sounds like pretty good odds. If the company I hired was sending my press release to “thousands” of news organizations across the country, I figured maybe a dozen or so responses to my press release would be a fair expectation.

The actual number? Zero. A big, fat zero.

This doesn’t mean, however, that I haven’t had some success with book reviews and press contacts. In fact, I’ve been incredibly lucky so far. I did an interview with Madison’s newspaper, which published a full-page article about the book. I had another newspaper from my hometown mention the book, as well as a local arts magazine feature story.

How did I do it? Easy: I contacted them.

I sent a personalized e-mail with details about the book and then I waited. That isn’t to say this avenue hasn’t come with its own number of failures—I still haven’t heard from the biggest newspaper in Wisconsin or any college newspapers—but that’s just part of the game. You’ll fail, but sometimes you’ll succeed, and if you learn from the failures, you’ll be more successful.

When it comes to paying money to submit a press release, learn from me: save your money.

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Sharon Bially

All true.  I’m a publicist, and even for big corporate clients press releases aren’t always the way to go.  Contacting the right reporters with the right story — at the best possible time — is the most effective way to go.  But the trick is knowing what the *right* tory is: in other words: what is newsworthy about your book or story?  Many authors think they know, but are slightly off.  This — and figuring out who the right reporters to contact are — is where professional help can be worth every penny.   

Debbie L.

Just like pitching a story to an editor, you need your “hook.” Reporters want the story. How does your story fit into that paper? What is a human interest angle to your story? Examples: *Local author inspired by Autistic Son.  Or *Author visits school where he learned to write*Clock store inspires book
*After 60 years of selling books, local man publishes book
*A cat in the library sparks best selling kids book

So ask yourself what the angle is, then contact that person. Some papers have someone dedicated to writing stories about books.

Also, it helps to network with your local media.

Sharon Bially

One more word on this: press releases are most effective when sent directly by e-mail to a targeted list of reporters, then given appropriate follow-up, including by phone.  Another task that can be done by authors but is often best left to the pros.

Meredith Rutter

Great article and reminder about the free routes available to authors. I ran an independent publishing house for eighteen years and had to learn a lot of this the hard way–over and over again! It always just seemed so much easier to pay a publicist (the pros Sharon Bially mentions) in addition to the in-house work we were doing in support of all the marketing efforts. Social media wasn’t the big thing for most of the years I was doing this, but it had started coming into play and we were way slow getting the hang of it; in fact, we never really did while I had that company. The more successful publicists did make more personal contacts, no question about it, and now, as an author (budding), articles like Ken Brosky’s are getting printed out and filed away to remind me when I get to that stage, not to fall for the old pattern of mass-informing.

Marion Marchetto

Thanks for the links to the free websites. I’ve spent way too much time and money on people charging me for sending out press releases. With my upcoming series I’ll give some of these sites a try.

Shawn Spjut

Ken
Thanks for sharing your journey. Sometimes the abundance of information with regards to the do’s and don’ts of trying to get your writing out where it can be seen can be intimidating as well as bogus.

Jan Morrill

Wow — excellent information and links, especially for those of us just starting out of the PR route. Thank you, Jane, for introducing us to Ken Brosky. And thanks, Ken for sharing!

Susannah Greenberg PR

I agree that to the point pitch letters are better than press releases. And I agree that authors should go for it in promoting themselves to media. Indeed, authors must be their own marketers, publicists and advocates in these times.   But while personal contacts with media are important, I also think pitching to many media contacts is important.  And you will probably need a publicist, not a distribution service, to do this for you, and the publicist will do a better job than either a distribution service or the free press release sites.  I always pitch to both priority personal targeted contacts AND many, yes sometimes thousands, of other media contacts and have been pleasantly surprised at how attentive media are to a good story that fits their needs, how many excellent media outlets are out there,  and how many more contacts than one could possibly target one by one, can be interested in covering a good story.  Further, I should add, something new in the pr mix which is important to attend to: book bloggers are great especially for fiction.  They are very receptive to the new and disregard the imprint’s status and are very willing to check out new fiction with an open mind and without being blasted by major media promo budgets that are standard for the select few mega books coming out of the big six publishing houses and I find this refreshing for so many reasons.  I find this to be even more pronounced even amongst the bloggers in the world of Young Adult Literature – these bloggers are very active and networked online.

Jane Friedman

Really wonderful info—thanks for sharing, Susannah.

TNeal

 Appreciate hearing from someone in PR. You offer another perspective that’s helpful. I have a feeling that PR people are like writers. Some are better than others. You sound like you’d be on the “better” list.

TNeal

Excellent, timely article, Ken. John Locke has a book, “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months,” which focuses on connecting with your target audience. He would concur with the feeling that money spent on a PR company is not the best use of your financial resources.

For me, I’m starting with the local media outlets (interviewed for paper, will interview on radio) and building through my natural connections. Since I’m an hour from Madison, I’m especially attuned to your comment about the Madison paper.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Good piece.–Tom

Pamela Foster

Thanks for sharing this with us, Ken.  Live and learn, but there’s only so much money in the pot.  

Judith Marshall

I had a different response to paying for a release.  I actually got a couple of radio interviews, some blog talk radio interviews and one TV appearance on a major network.  The most important result was a response from a producer which led to the option of my novel for the big screen. 

Judith Marshall
Author of “Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever”

Jane Friedman

Wow! Would you mind sharing which service you used? And did you pay for them to write the release as well?

Judith Marshall

I used the Jenkins Group in Traverse City, MI.  Yes I used them to write the release and distribute it, plus they sent me their media contact list of 1,854 media outlets for follow up.  Later,  I also distributed the release through PR.com which got me even more attention.  Everyone’s experience is different.