How Authors Can Get Media Coverage

An answer to a reader’s question
by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Readers, Writers & Royalties columnist
October 30, 2007
Copyright 2007 David A. Rozansky

 
In a comment to my recent article series, An Author’s Guide to Hand Selling Books, Sarah Collins Honenberger asked the following question:

“Great article, all helpful information. It's not the hand sell I have need help with, it's the media coverage. Internet buzz made Water for Elephants into a best seller. I want that, and am willing to work at it. Are you by any chance working on that aspect for an article?”

Thanks to Sarah Honenberger for this comment. I am always happy to entertain questions from readers, and I will endeavor to share my insights to these challenges. Honenberger is the author of White Lies: A Tale of Babies, Vaccines and Deception.

Honeneberger’s comment is really a two-fold question: How does a first-time author at a small press get media coverage? How does a first-time author develop Internet buzz? As Honenberger suggests, these will be great topics for articles, and so I will be offering two articles on these topics. I will answer the first question in this article.

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Q. How does a first-time author from a small press get media attention?

Hornenberger is doing all the right things. She has approached many members of the press and numerous reviewers with her book and has been nominated for a prominent award. She has a collection of critical reviews on Amazon from serious reviewers, and she has collected great critical reviews in the media. The reviews are consistently positive, usually with the highest possible rating. There is no doubt that many people are talking about her book.

White Lies is a well-written book, worthy of attention. This is the first step in getting media attention. Only great books get great publicity.

However, despite all this growing publicity and great reviews, White Lies continues to flounder, at least from what I can see on Amazon (the book is not tracked on Titlez, so it is hard to see how the book has been doing). No doubt, this would be frustrating to any author, and most first-time authors who do not realize just how hard it is to get a great book sold often experience this seemingly confusing aspect of bookselling.

Honenberger apparently wants to move her publicity machine up to the next level, to get attention from Oprah, Time Magazine, USA Today, anywhere that will mention her book before millions of people, but without going the route of hiring an expensive publicist (and make no mistake, they are horribly expensive). Other authors have pulled it off without a publicist, so let us explore just how that is done.

The standard methods are often cited, and are generally obvious. To get the attention of major national media, one contacts producers or editors, submits requests, puts copies of the book in the mail, and waits. And waits and waits.

What happens on the other end? The book arrives in the mail room. Generally, it arrives alongside hundreds of other books every day. Most of these books are simply tossed. It is only the truly newsworthy and sensational authors who get on the air or who get ink. Notice I said “Authors,” not “Books.” Thus, an author like Honenberger who has a story of government deception concerning childhood vaccinations, from a true experience she had, has that much more pull. Still, with the election coming, getting any air time is very difficult.

The chances of getting this kind of media attention are slim. And when you realize that you are fighting against big-name publicists from giant media companies for a rare and valuable commodity—ink or air time from other giant media companies—the small-press author is in a tough spot.

But let us look at the process.

When a book arrives at a national magazine or newspaper, who decides whether or not to give it ink? A column writer or book-review writer.

When a book arrives at a national TV talk show, who decides to give it air time. The show’s writers.

When a book arrives at a national news network, who decides to give it a segment? A news writer.

There is, of course, a common theme here. Writers chose what books get attention. Conveniently, books are also written by writers.

The key to getting media attention is to realize that the media is nothing more than a group of writers pushing out content. Book authors have the skills it takes to do most any kind of writing: marketing, advertising, public relations, press releases, business, journalism, fiction, technical, blogging, screenwriting, most any kind of writing there is. So why can’t a book author use that skill, a skill that no publicist can match, and get to work?

I advise book authors to stop sending out requests to have their books reviewed, and instead send out queries for magazine articles, to start stringing for the Associated Press, to get involved in television writing, to type up a movie script, to apply to ad agencies and public relations companies.

The easiest method is to simply start writing magazine articles as a freelancer. In my book, BlitzQuery: The Prolific Approach to Writing and Selling Magazine Articles, due out from Flying Pen Press in January 2008 (ISBN: 978-0-9795889-3-8), I show a simple way to send out more than 100 query letters per month to magazines.

The best thing about writing magazine articles as a freelancer is that you can write on any topic you want, and magazines give writers a small space at the end of the article to write a short bio. This often allows a book author to write about the subject of their book in the national media regularly, and to plug her book every to a national audience. Some magazines will be happy to pay an author with advertising space as well, and editors are more likely to assign book reviews of authors they have published in their own pages. And all this publicity is a paying gig.

As the magazine articles rack up, the book author can then list herself as an expert with the news agencies, so that every time a related news event happens, the author is tapped for an interview on the spot (I even know of one author who has a video feed set up from his study for just such occasions). Better yet, the news agency may ask the author to write the news piece.

As the appearances on news channels and in newspapers accumulate, the talk shows develop a strong interest in hosting that author, especially when a related news story continues to drive public sentiment beyond the initial report.

Also, the act of freelancing leads to assignments as a correspondent, then as a staff writer, a columnist, perhaps even an editor. Eventually, the author becomes one of those writers who decides which books get ink, and which don’t, a great place for a book author to be.

And it all begins with a writer doing what a writer does best: writing.

So authors should forget about sending their books to this producer or that editor. They should stop pounding the blogosphere with daily links and endless emails. The have to get off the telephone. And they must start writing articles.

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This is the first of a two-part answer to a question from a reader of David A. Rozansky’s column, Readers, Writers & Royalties, a blog column about the book trade, from writing and publishing, to selling and reading. The next article will focus on how first-time authors can generate a high volume of Internet buzz.

Readers may find archived articles or subscribe to Readers, Writers & Royalties at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. Subscribe to all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.

David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com. He is available for speaking on the subject of writing and selling magazine articles.

Flying Pen Press publishes fiction and nonfiction books. In January 2008, Flying Pen Press will publish the book mentioned in this article, BlitzQuery: The Prolific Approach to Writing and Selling Magazine Articles, by David A. Rozansky, the author of this column.