The following advice is from a very nice lady who I met through the free service, "Help a Reporter Out." Lillian Brummet was looking for authors to read an excerpt from their book on her radio show. Of course she was inunndated with folks like me who were very eager to find someone interested in their work.
Famous: Tip #3
Common Courtesy & Strong Organization Skills Accelerate Publicity Efforts:
The best advice anyone could receive is: Do your research. Whatever stage you are at, whatever you are facing – research it. Find out the details from other authors and research the person or business you hope to work with. Find out what their guidelines and policies are, make a note of the person you will be dealing with. Provide them with exact and complete information.
We always follow one big rule in marketing - Common Courtesy. Never make anyone work for anything. Make every option clear and easily accessible. Always follow up with your contacts with brief outlines of previous discussions so they don’t have to go looking for information.
Always query in a professional manner and never send attachments with the introduction letter. Doing it right is essential - there is but little chance to make an impression with a reviewer, editor, reader, organization or publication.
Keep records of your endeavors using color-codes so that at a glance you can see who needs to have a follow-up letter, whether you’ve had successes or failures with that source and if you need to provide anything to them in the future. Having short, yet detailed notes about each market (publication, radio program, journalist, reviewer, etc) will help immensely. Some very important details to keep track of are the theme or focus of the market, the audience/readers of that market and contact information.
When it comes to reaching out and making contact with anyone who might be supportive of your work, I believe that it really all boils down to is putting yourself in the contact’s shoes for a moment – what would appeal to you, if you were in that person’s shoes? If you focus on that, you’ll have more positive, longer lasting results.
~ Lillian Brummet: book reviewer – Author of the books Trash Talk, Purple Snowflake Marketing, and Towards Understanding; Host of both the Conscious Discussions talk radio show and Authors Read radio program (http://www.brummet.ca/)
P.S. You can listen to her introduce my book, Anything But a Dog!, before I read an excerpt on her Authors Read radio program at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/AuthorsRead/2009/04/11/Lisa-Saunders-Anything-But-a-Dog
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