At the Society of Authors Bristol meeting on 21st November, the subject was Effective Publicity, and the speaker was Maria MacCarthy, who is an established journalist, and has recently published her first book, so has found herself on the other side of the process for the first time.

I know there are WWers who know more about this than I do, so I hope they'll chip in.

Before I get stuck in, I should say that it was a very lively meeting, and I met some very interesting people. One of the pleasures of the Society is that a lot (the majority, I think) are non-fiction writers. Not only does it make a pleasant change from the Creative Writing world, it's also brilliant for making technical contacts - including the ones who write fiction, but have another life too. Looking down the contact list, I can see psychologists, a cellist, a landscape gardener, a sculptor, a specialist in the relationship of law and astrology...

Inevitably, quite a lot of what was discussed is more relevant, or easier, for non-fiction. To promote fiction you'll have to find some hook about yourself and how the book was written to get coverage: for non-fiction the subject is all. As they say, eight words of editorial coverage is worth eight pages of advertising.

Some of the things that were discussed were:

Think first about
Where you want coverage - special interest groups, local press?
What's special about your book: it needs something more than its mere existence to get coverage.
Why are you the person to be talking about this stuff?

The basics of a press release:
Ring and get the name of the journalist to send it to
Put the text in the body of the email to avoid spam filters
Include Who, When, Where and Why, probably in that order, most important info first as if it's cut, they'll cut the bottom
Add a quote (yourself or someone else) to give a bit of background, and an easy thing for them to put in
Mention anything else to attract readers attention - who might be interested, what the local angle is, why you're the person to talk about this
Extra info - ticket prices and phone number - separate phone number for the journalist to ring if they want to know more.
A few days later, ring and ask nicely when it will go in

Local media are much easier to get into than national - they need material, and just the fact that a local has done something interesting may be enough.

Trade papers and magazines also need coverage. Obviously for relevant non-fiction, but "former deep sea diver publishes novel" could be a big story in the Deep Sea Diving Weekly. The writing magazines are the only ones which don't need more than 'I'm having a book published' as an angle, but there's a queue for their slots.

National Magazines try for angles: something about the rest of your life. There'll be a media enquiries link on a mag's website. Look for slots: the 'Every Cloud has a Silver Lining' regular, or the 'I changed my life on my 40th birthday' one, and shape your story to fit it. www.starnow.com is where journalists post requests for case studies - Did you downsize? Have you changed your life after a breakup?. You have to subscribe, but it might be worth it to build your media profile.

Radio are used to coping with the inexperienced. Don't expect them to have read your book, or even more than the first half of the press release. At least that puts you more in control of what's said. You could try cutting your teeth on phone-ins - if it's a national station, then you can put 'has appeared on national radio' in your press releases.

National TV/Radio feeds off the press, so a small news local story can win you more coverage.

Publicists
Anyone who's being published should have someone assigned to publicity. But how much attention they can give you inevitably varies, so it's worth learning to think like one yourself.

Be nice to them. Some are brilliant, some are not, but it's very hard work and often not their fault if they can't get you coverage. And they're always juggling lots of books.

Agree what she should do - if you have any connections in specialist mags already, say, it might be better if you do. Journalists love authors getting in touch direct - it makes a change from publicists!

Take trouble over your author's questionnaire. Give your publicist as much as possible to work with: stories about how you came to write your book, stories about your background, think laterally and suggest the un-obvious people who would be interested - specialist mags, local press and radio where your book is set, as well as where you live.

General
Have a website. It's not really an option not to, and it needn't be expensive.

Have a 'contact' link on your website - make it easy for journalists to get in touch.

Get or make your own handouts - bookmarks, postcards, one author there had little business-card-sized handouts with her jacket on one side and details on the back.

Be a good interviewee: relax so you don't need warming up; have quirky and interesting stories ready [I found it was hugely helpful to have thrashed out a few already for my website]; overcome your upbringing and loosen up, be boastful and forward; be prepared to be opinionated, it makes better copy; be aware that they'll remember best the first and last things you say - try to finish on a high note.

Allow yourself some vanity in any photos: looking good is more important than looking like you. Collect any decent ones, specially if they project different images which you can use for different purposes. As well as buying the right to use your official author photo for other purposes, if a paper, say, takes one you like, get in touch and ask to buy the rights to use it permanently; it's often not expensive.

Protecting Yourself
Decide what you're prepared to talk about, and what you're not. If you have a publicist, make that clear to them.

Try to forsee difficult questions, or the questions that you won't want to answer. Prepare answers, or graceful get-outs and ways of moving the conversation firmly back to your preferred territory.

Don't relax too much: in press interviews particularly it's easy to get carried away. Specially at the end, when the interview feels 'finished', when you've relaxed, but they'll remember specially clearly what you said: be careful you don't say anything you'll really regret.

Resign yourself to the fact that all interviews get one thing completely wrong, and twist or amplify one thing till it's completely wrong in spirit, though not in fact. If you really, really regret something, get in touch straight away, and ask them not to use it.

Journalists won't give copy approval, but they may be willing to phone you and read the piece to you, which gives you a chance to correct any major howlers.

It is a shock - even Maria MacCarthy said she'd found it to be so, after 20 years on the other side. The media circus isn't so much a den of lions, more a cageful of monkeys.

Further Reading
Marketing Your Book: An Author's Guide by Alison Baverstock - excellent, in-depth guide
(The Society of Authors has a booklet - free to members, a few pounds to non-members - on the same subject.)

From Pitch to Publication by Carole Blake - general book, with sound advice on publicity
How to Get Published and Make a Lot of Money by Susan Page - very good on handling publicity.
[I would add, The Forest for the Trees, by Betsey Lerner - a very emotionally intelligent examination of the publishing process]

Useful websites
www.starnow.com (see above)
www.marketingforauthors.wordpress.com run by author and publicist Kate Allan, with marketing tips and interviews with authors about what they did to market their work
www.vistaprint.co.uk - incredibly cheap stickers, business cards, bookmarks etc. if you have a .jpg or .pdf of your cover
www.expertsources.co.uk links the media with experts in their own field - good for building your media profile, if you have an expertise. You may also be able to become your local media's 'rent-a-quote' person for whatever your books are about.

Emma

<Added>

Knew I'd forgotten something. A lot of freelance journalists have their own websites, and you can get in touch with them directly - google their name, or for a particular subject, 'journalist' and 'deep sea diving' or whatever.

That's brilliant, Enmma. I particularly recommend the Alison Baverstock book you mention - it's a slimmish and well set-out read so you really feel you can get a handle on the contents.

Another thing I forgot - alumni magazines from any schools and colleges you once went to, and workplace mags. They're always looking for material and nice positive stories, and the alumni mags particularly so, because part of their function is to sell the place to potential recruits.

<Added>

Even if you have a publicist, doing some of this kind of stuff shows your publisher you're committed and willing to do your bit, which encourages them to put more into their side of things, and into the bid (and then the marketing budget) for your next book...

Since the meeting, I've heard of this magazine, targetted at reading groups:

http://www.newbooksmag.com/nbm.html

It carries lots of reviews by reading group members, so if yours is a 'reading group' book, then it could be worth a lot to get it in there.

Emma

Posted on another thread, but worth repeating here:

a bit of general info: County & Parish Councils often have 'What's On' pages on their websites, where you can advertise your event for free.

Sounds like a really interesting event.

Just to give an alternative view of one thing though, I went to the Bookseller 'What the Media Want' Seminar last week and on of the things that Jane Mays (The Mail) said, and others seemed to agree, that phoning to ask if people had received things/what they thought of an idea etc was not the right thing to do, as they were too busy to cope with those sorts of phone calls. If they're interested they'll be in touch seemed to be the message, and, following from that, I wouldn't follow up a press release with a call. Email maybe.

Also I agree re local radio, I've been doing some publicity for my book recently and have done a couple of local radio slots, and they do have quite alot of space to fill. It's always worth emailing them and pitching yourself.

Yes, that crossed my mind too, but the report was getting out of hand already, so I stuck to what she said. I think my default would always be to get in touch in the same way that I originally had. Maybe it also depends on whether it's local or national (and whether the journalist is friendly and keen, or an arrogant so-and-so, but you can't know that!)

Emma

<Added>

And yes, Naomi, the What's On thing is really useful - not least because local journalists in need of material look at it.

The basics of a press release: Ring and get the name of the journalist to send it to Put the text in the body of the email to avoid spam filters Include Who, When, Where and Why, probably in that order, most important info first as if it's cut, they'll cut the bottom Add a quote (yourself or someone else) to give a bit of background, and an easy thing for them to put in Mention anything else to attract readers attention - who might be interested, what the local angle is, why you're the person to talk about this Extra info - ticket prices and phone number - separate phone number for the journalist to ring if they want to know more. A few days later, ring and ask nicely when it will go in Local media are much easier to get into than national - they need material, and just the fact that a local has done something interesting may be enough.

100% agree with all this.
The only other thing I would recommend is sending a picture or at least a jpeg image of the cover of your book.

As a local journalist, I would say doing the above would definitely get you noticed and some positive publicity.

Never underestimate how much the local press will give you coverage wise.

Great job, Emma.

Though did anyone talk about how you find the time and energy to do all this? (Feeling the lack of both at the moment!)

Lola, I thought of you when this was being discussed, so I'm glad it's right. The quote was the thing I think I wouldn't have thought of: it instantly made it livelier to read, and no doubt would find its way straight into the piece.

And one of the things I hadn't realised about local media is how much they feed on each other - a listing on a council website for a signing in a local bookshop can catch the eye of the local free sheet, who then do a profile. A profile in the regional paper where your book's set is read by the radio station, who call your publisher for an interview...

Emma

<Added>

Roger, yes, I know, I'm short of both too. Still, we'd all found the time for an afternoon out in Bristol... Most of us could probably have worked out some of the stuff to do with promoting your book, but I was particularly interested in the business of building your profile for the longer-term, by trying to make a relationship with the media as a user-friendly voice, so they turn to you when they need someone. Though it's the kind of thing that I'm completely hopeless at: when she mentioned getting in touch with freelance journalists through their blogs, I instantly thought of you getting in touch with Danuta Keane about MNW.

Emma

Another use for a website that's just occurred to me: if it's a 'reading group' book, have a page for a 'readers guide' or ideas and questions for reading groups.

Emma

Time to put on my journalist hat I think.

A few more places to try for publicity are (and apologies if they have already been mentioned and I've just missed them):

1. Local listings magazines - the equivalent of Time Out in London or Venue in Bristol.

2. Local county magazines.

3. Local internet sites. The BBC's local regions each have their own webspace (go to www.bbc.co.uk and find the Where I Live section).

4. The Press Association wire service. This national agency provides editorial copy for almost every local paper in the country as well as publications like train or in-flight magazines and lots of other obscure places. They do book reviews.

Don't forget that national magazines/papers etc can often have a different set of journalists to run their websites and there's not necessarily much communication between them and their print colleagues, so if you are approaching nationals, it's worth checking to see whether to send something separate to the online team.

Don't just try the local press in the area where you live. Exploit the press in the area where you were born/went to college/used to live, so they can use that as a hook: 'A former Birmingham school boy has hit the big time after...' or 'A former Exeter student has used her days at the city university to create scenes for a'.

Finally, if you have a book now out now then you should be really pushing it because everybody will be putting Xmas book recommendations in their publication.

Re: Interviews over the phone.

When the local paper phoned up for an interview (my first ever), they asked the killer question 'what's the book about' and I spent 10 mins (felt like 100) droning on about plots and subplots while there was a deathly silence on the other end. Now I have a couple of 'sound-bites' pinned to the wall which sums it up in a matter of seconds.

- Naomi

Soooo true. It's the one question I still don't have a slick answer to - time for those post-it notes on the wall.

Emma

Emma. You're a god-send. I've been mooching around here all evening fuming at the frustrations of trying to get my book 'Pets in Prospect' a hook into the public eye (ouch that sounds painful). I've got a James Herriot type of book that I just know could do well if only....there has to be an element of luck but also some hard, methodically thought out promotion. And it seems these days authors have to do a lot of that themselves. So it was brilliant to read your list of do's and be able to tick some of them off while seeing there were many more avenues to go down. I'd come up with the idea of postcards with Pets in Prospect cover on the front and blurb on the back. These have gone out with the Christmas cards and likewise friends and business associates have been willing to do the same. So that's turned into quite a good mail drop. It's something worth thinking of re linking your book to interested parties however tenuous that link might be eg my book is pet orientated, so it's been suggested I do a mailing shot to all vet practices in the UK. A rather daunting task.
Again thanks for taking the trouble to give all these pointers. Tomorrow I shall start afresh. If my book suddenly takes off then some credit will go to you for inspiring me and pointing me in the write direction.
Malcolm