How to Contact the Media
Go directly to the source by reaching out to reporters who cover your topic. If you’re an author of a business book, you should target reporters who cover business, a cookbook author should contact food writers, and an author of a sports guide should contact sports reporters. See how this works? Don’t waste your time—or the reporter’s time—by reaching out to those who cover general news or topics that have nothing to do with your book.
Once you identify the writers who are most interested in your subject matter, reach out to them. Reporters need authors as much as we need them! They are always on the look-out for story ideas and sources to interview so don’t be afraid to contact them via e-mail (most publications have websites that make it easy to locate and contact reporters).
I recommend sending a brief e-mail to introduce you and your book. Include a short synopsis (one or two paragraphs), a brief bio about you, and ask the reporter if he/she would like to receive a complimentary review copy.
Some reporters will turn you down. Some won’t even respond. This is the reality of the publicity game. However, it’s quite likely that you will end up in their database of sources. Don’t be surprised if you hear from them in the future.
For those who request a review copy, send it promptly along with a brief personal note of thanks. Be sure to follow up within a couple of weeks with an e-mail. Ask if the book arrived safely and if the reporter has any questions for you. This is a good reminder to them to follow-through.
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Author Toolkit with checklists, worksheets and templates for book marketing. Check it out!
We’re a married team of nonfiction coauthors keen on learning more about marketing ebooks aimed at young adults mapping their futures. Our marketing downside is the Atlantic Ocean, for our target readership is the North American student, but we live and work in Western Europe (a long way from our readers, let along English-language reviewers). Our 2014 E-Books — “Collaborating: The Bittersweet Challenge of Working Together” and “Milestones of Working Partnership: Honing the Creative Edge” — tell our target readers much about “how to do it”. This makes it imperative for us to leap an ocean in one eloquent but affordable bound. This applies even if only to meet librarians face to face and overcome the anti-Amazon.com barrier that prevents them from selecting Kindle books due to OverDrive selection policy (as the public libraries’ virtual sole-source). supplier). The difficulty of finding book reviewers open to critiquing e-books is yet another hazard we face. But that’s a sand trap facing North American authors as well. We’d be keen on hearing how you cope with this e-book barrier on your own home soil. Best regards, Lyn + Hanni Shepard, Berne, Switzerland
Greetings Lyn, You may be interested in our post covering how to generate book reviews. There are several resources listed here that also review ebooks: https://nonfictionauthorsassociation.com/how-to-get-book-reviews-50-resources-to-generate-book-reviews/.
Best wishes to you!