How To Get Your Book Serialised in Newspapers or Glossy Magazines – Book Marketing Tips for Authors

Most authors find the idea of pitching or promoting their book to newspapers, magazines, radio and television daunting. However, you presumably wrote (or are writing) your book because you feel you have something worthwhile to say. So it’s worth making sure as many readers get to hear about it as possible.

One of the biggest mistakes authors – and indeed some PR consultants – make is to assume that your press release should be sent out mainly to book reviewers.

To my mind, this is a massive mistake. A book review tends to have postage-stamp sized coverage, with a teeny image of your book cover if you’re lucky. What’s more, someone has to actually read 70,000+ words before this can happen. Yes, book reviews are influential in selling books. But they shouldn’t be the only weapon in an author’s arsenal.

If you send your press release to a specific science editor, features writer, reporter or broadcaster instead, you power up your PR campaign considerably. SAGA Magazine, for example, has first serialization rights for my forthcoming book. This spans six pages and includes four photographs, plus an image of my book jacket, as well as a double-page illustration. If I paid for similar coverage in advertising, the cost would run into tens of thousands.

Journalists like stories that are:

topical (an event or activity that’s linked to a trending news topic);
inspirational (ordinary people doing extraordinary things);
educational (improves health, wealth or relationships);
unexpected (eat more chocolate, get slim);
controversial statements (men are worse bosses);
‘then and now’ contrasts (you were overweight/broke/depressed etc. and now you’re the opposite);
a big promise (lose wrinkles in 7 days with facial yoga).
Remember that most journalists won’t have time to read your book. So bullet-point the necessary facts. Or write your press release about you and your inspiration, or anything else that is interesting and relevant. Another approach is to create an event or photo opportunity for them to attend.

Here are some quick and easy guidelines for structuring your press release:

• Headline – start with something that’s likely to grab attention.

• Paragraph 1 – summarize your ‘story’ giving key information.

• Paragraph 2/3 – flesh out your story – who, why, what, where and when.

• Paragraph 4 – include a quote from you or someone relevant to the story.

• Paragraph 5 – include extra relevant information such as a photo opportunity.

• Final Paragraph – include the all-important sentence: For a review copy, permission to use printed extracts, or to arrange an interview, contact xyz.

• Contact Details: phone, Skype and email.

• If the story is for immediate release, say so. If it’s embargoed until a certain date, this gives journalists time to prepare ahead.

Take time to tailor your press release for different publications. Suppose, for example, you’ve written a dieting book. Your press release for health magazines might look at emotional and physical topics. For national newspapers, you might include more statistical evidence. For regional media, you might mention a “local author”.

Like all things, it takes a while to master new skills. But eventually, you’ll learn to do this on ‘auto-pilot’ and may even start to enjoy it. It will also leverage your time considerably. Compare the potential return on investment of an hour spent writing your a press release with an hour spent giving a reading in a local library or bookshop. To my mind, it’s a no-brainer to send out your press release to as many journalists as you can to get maximum coverage!

And if several publications want serialisation rights for your book? Then, you need to weigh up what your long-term goals are and whether their target readership is the same as yours. This is rather a nice problem for any author to have!

Stephanie J Hale is a publishing expert, specializing in helping

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Cool Magazine Book Report Idea

This is a cool idea because you will be writing your book report as if you are interviewing the person or persons from the book. It may be easiest if you are doing a book report on a non fiction based book.

Prepare about 10 questions that you will ask this person. Now you are not actually going to interview the person from the book but you are imagining you are doing this and are going to answer the questions from information in the book. Make sure your questions lead to a detailed answer which depicts information from your novel. If you imagine this person as a famous person think about the type of magazine that may have an interview for this person and act like you are a reporter for that magazine. Be creative in your questions. Here are some examples of types of people and the Magazine ideas they may be featured in for you to come up with an idea. You can even make up a name for your magazine. Like Sports and More or News Daily. Examples Sports athlete – like Sports Illustrated If they are in government or politics – like Newsweek Movie star or musician – like Vogue or Rolling Stone
Draw a cover for the magazine. You will want to make a picture of your person that you are interviewing because that is what the story is about. Please make it interesting by using lots of color and add backgrounds. For this cover you can use some shiny paper instead of regular copy paper to make it look shiny. Or a trick you can do is use crayon and then place an old piece of fabric on top and lightly iron with a very lightly warm iron to slightly melt the crayon giving it a shiny appearance.
Finally make your opinion of the person and what you think about what they said in their answers which was from the book information. You are just basically giving your thoughts on the book and how you interpreted the information within it or in this case the answers to questions.
This may seem strange but it is just another way to be creative and prepare a book report. You are still documenting information about the book and showing the main points within it and and setting, timeline, and characters, however, to your teacher it will show thought and effort and may earn you a better grade.

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