Tidbits & Tidings: How-To Find Media Contacts to Pitch
pitch, pitch, and pitch some more: book mention or book review for book sales
Tidbits & Tidings Weekly: Issue #5
Tidbits & Tidings is a weekly summary that gives you book marketing tips and what I am up to outside the book marketing world.
You will get the first glimpse of potentially explosive book marketing ideas before I write about them formally, plus a peek inside my crazy brain – where my mind leads me on books, ideas, and some personal stuff cause hey…
You never know where the big ideas could come from
~ Tess from the movie, Working Girl
Share it with your Writer Friends!
Book Marketing Tidbits & Tidings
Halloween is over so why did I include a Halloween picture in this issue? I wanted to illustrate the power of publishing calendars and how knowing when a magazine (or any one of your media contacts) will publish on different topics can be powerful information for you as you promote your books!
Publishing Calendars
File under: Media Contacts, Promotion and Pitching:
It is the holiday season and a good time to remind you book marketers about “publishing calendars.” What is a publishing calendar? It a year-long calendar plotted with monthly topics that media (magazine, newspapers, online media) decides to cover well in advance (a year in advance in many cases). Every magazine, for example, has a publishing calendar that you can access on their website and see the topics the magazine plans to cover by month for a year.
Why do you care?
You care because your book covers a particular genre, correct? You can add your voice to the topic in their magazine by submitting a written article and in the process promote your book!
First, have a look at the media contacts list that you created. Select a magazine on your media contacts list. Look at the magazine’s publishing calendar to find topics that the magazine wants to cover that matches your book’s message. Most magazines place their publishing calendar online.
An effective strategy to find a magazine’s publishing calendar is to google the magazine title and the words “media kit.” Publishing calendars are a part of the magazine’s media kit for advertisers to know the best magazine issues to place their ads. Does that make sense? Here is a link with an example: http://parentsmediakit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/PAR_MediaKit_2022_110821.pdf
**** Marketing IDEA **** Parents Magazine allows writers to pitch an idea for an article directly to them. It might be worth a shot if you write in their genre. Here is the email: parentspitches@dotdashmdp.com.
Once you know the publishing calendar and have an idea for an article that is a good fit, pitch the article that covers the topic and displays your expertise as a writer and an expert on that topic. If published, your name will appear as the article writer with your bio which will of course include the title of your book!
You have just promoted your book (at no cost to you) to an audience that is already interested in your topic… your target audience! Good work, book marketer!
You have also added to your author platform. You are now a journalist / columnist.
Perhaps you even got paid for the article. Win / Win / Win
What Am I Doing/Reading this Week? Potpourri
My son, my oldest, got married to a wonderful woman this past month. Here is a picture of them dancing their first dance as husband and wife.
I am back to reading The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel by Margaret George. Margaret George is an extremely prolific writer and her books are long, I mean frigging long. Somehow, Ms. George manages to keep her subjects interesting and their stories riveting. I love the book.
I am also still reading, Mean Baby, by Selma Blair and loving that too. My friend, Gayla Grey, writing at
newsletter mentioned that she was reading Kelly Rippa’s memoir, Live Wire wonder in her latest post. I wonder if the memoirs are alike? Ms. Blair, for example, is pretty darned honest.
I am working on finalizing my book cover for my next book that releases next year in September - Get Your Book Seen and Sold. See how long it can take to publish a book?Book publishing doesn’t HAVE to be a yearlong process but it CAN be a yearlong process. I will be writing a bigger post on book cover design but the owner at I Love My Book Cover has been fantastic AND reasonably priced.
THANKS FOR READING AND PLEASE CONSIDER SHARING IT WITH YOUR WRITER FRIENDS!
Have a fantastic weekend and let me know… however small… what YOU have done this week to market your book? I am dying to know!
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