Get Media Results with Your Book’s Press Release

As a publishing professional with books of my own to promote, I always prioritize the humble press release. It’s an old tool, and not a flashy one, but it sure gets the job done. A press release sent at the right time to the right person makes it easy for journalists and other communicators to tell their audiences exactly what you want them to know about your book. But finding those right people is a step you can’t skip. Let’s talk about how to build a contact list that gets results.  

Step 1: Identify your primary audience

Ideally, you should already know exactly who your primary audience is when you’re writing and revising your book. If you’re traditionally published, your editor will make sure it’s clearly identified, because otherwise the marketing team can’t do their job. If you’re self-publishing, you’ll face the same reality that marketing team does: every book needs to be targeted at somebody, or it won’t feel like it was written for anybody.

You might articulate your primary audience as:

• mid-career real-estate agents who want to break into a new market
• fans of lesbian romance and psychological thrillers
• absolute beginner watercolour painters
• kids aged 4–7 (Note: if your book’s audience is kids, the target for your marketing is caregivers and educators. Usually, one of these will be the primary market and one will be a secondary one.)
• etc.

Next, ask yourself what media your audience consumes. This might include:

• newsletters by genre-focused book reviewers
• newspapers
• special-interest magazines
• radio shows
• review blogs
• morning television
• podcasts

Identify your secondary audiences

In many cases, you’ll be able to identify more than one audience for your book. You can write a list of secondary audiences as well:

• friends and family members buying a gift for someone with a hobby related to your book
• family members of someone experiencing an issue that your book explores
• people with a niche interest who aren’t a book-buying base in and of themselves (for example, a well-researched fictional mystery with an ancient Egyptian setting would target mystery lovers as its primary audience but might have a secondary audience of Egyptology enthusiasts)

Again, ask yourself what media this audience consumes. In the following sections, I’m going to use the word “publication” to cover all media outlets, but you can assume these steps cover broadcast media as well as the written word.  

Research Likely Publications

Now that you know what type of media you want to target, start searching for specific publications that you think would be good vehicles to get information about your book to its target audience. You might already engage with some yourself, in which case you should start with those. You’ll want to find out if each publication typically reviews books or otherwise creates content related to them. That information will tell you how to proceed with finding your best contact person and what hook to use.

Find Your Contacts

In a world where everything is easy, you would always be able to look up the masthead or contact page for a publication and find out the job titles and email addresses of every columnist and editor. Unfortunately, that would spell chaos for most of those people, especially if they work for a large outlet with a lot of people trying to get their attention. Therefore, in many cases, you’ll need to do some sleuthing. Some contact pages will say, for example, “To contact a specific journalist, email them at firstname.lastname@ournewspaper.com.” They expect you to figure out whose first and last name you need to fill in.

If the publication formally reviews books…

Check the masthead for a “Review editor” or “Books editor”. That will be someone who chooses which review requests to follow up on and who works with external reviewers to get them completed. This is a role that’s more likely to exist in a literary or arts-based publication that does a lot of reviews. You can also look for book submission guidelines.

If you don’t find a dedicated editor or submission guidelines, look for past reviews of books that target the same audience as yours. Does one reviewer show up repeatedly? Reach out to that person. Are they all different? You can try contacting the best match in terms of book subject matter. Email your press release to this person and inquire whether you can share a review copy with them.

Note: If you are traditionally published, you can ask your contact in the publishing company’s publicity department whether a) they are already sending that publication a review book or b) they are willing to do so.

If the publication regularly publishes content about books…

Your steps are similar to the above. Look for a books editor, an arts editor, or another likely job title. If you can’t find one, search for stories they’ve run in the last year that relate to your book’s topics, genre, and/or audience. Your goal is to find a journalist whose wheelhouse your book will fit into. Email your press release to this person and invite them to contact you for further information or to arrange an interview.

If books are not a part of the publication’s mandate…

Your hook in this case will need to be something beyond “I am publishing this book.” The good news is that, outside of publishing-focused media, your book can remain newsworthy past its publication date. But you do have to think harder about what makes it newsworthy. Here are some scenarios:

Genre Hook

You want a popular romance reviewer to feature your romance book on their personal platform. Check if they have submission guidelines. If not, write a short but personalized message asking if you can send them a review copy. Include your press release for more context.  

Journalist’s Personal or Professional Interest Hook

Your book is about the history of lobster fishing in Nova Scotia. You see that a journalist writes an in-depth story that relates to that history, so you email them a press release and ask if you can send them a copy of your book. If there’s no urgency for another story about the issue this might not give you immediate coverage, but you’ve made a useful connection.

Subject-Matter Expert Hook

You did a lot of research into a real-world secret society for your historical fiction book. A scandal breaks out with some present-day members of that society, and the media is scrambling for information about them. You reach out to offer yourself as a subject-matter expert and include a press release that emphasizes the research that went into your book. It serves the dual purpose of lending you authority and suggesting that the media outlet might like to tell people your book exists.

Local Author Hook

You live in a small to mid-sized town or city that is not bursting at its seams with published authors. You write to whoever covers arts or community at your local media outlets with the hook that you are a local author with a new book. Invite them to contact you for a review copy, an interview, or more information.

If your book is nonfiction and fits with a particular column or show the publication runs, arts and community might not be your first choice. For example, you could contact the person who writes your newspaper’s finance column about your personal finance book or pitch your book about songbirds to your radio station’s nature show. You’ll still want to emphasize that you are a local author; this is the most powerful hook for most local media.

Final Notes

In the past, attaching a press release to an email was fine. Today, however, that’s a security concern for many people. Instead paste your press release straight into your email body, polishing it up with your email client’s formatting tools where possible.

There will be times when a publication’s contact page simply provides a web form. If they’re explicit that they only want to receive messages that way, use it—but once you paste in your press release, check to see if the whole thing fits within the form’s character-count limits. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to shorten it more deliberately. That being said, whenever you can find a specific person to target via email, do so. You want your press release to go to someone who will open it and think, “Yes! This is exactly what I like to cover.” If it takes some time to identify that person, it’s time well spent.

Need help writing the press release itself? Check out this blog post or book a focused counselling session to get one-on-one support.