Press Releases

[Ishmael]

Those planning to try e-publishing might like to know that I followed the Smashwords Marketing Guide and produced a press release about my new novel that I sent to my local paper. Response to emailing this to the paper - zilch. Next week, response to an email to a specific reporter, prefaced by a little personal paragraph on why this was local news - reply by return. A few helpful exchanges, followed by 4 column inches or so in the same week's edition. I sent a brief thank you to the reporter, indicating that he was officially on the permitted interview list when I became a famous reclusive millionaire. We shall see what effect this has on sales, but I can testify to the very positive results of following the recommended method in terms of publicity.

[tmaulhardt]

That's good to know, I'll be following right behind you soon. Thanks for sharing.

[LDWriter2]

Hadn't thought of that. My local paper does have a section on Sunday that includes local published writers buT i don't if they include E-books but I could see whenever I get mine e-published...its stalled.

[Ishmael]

Addendum:

For what it's worth, on the day that the piece was in the local paper, the book's page on Smashwords took twice as many hits as on any previous day. I don't know how much the piece contributed to this surge because I'm doing other things as well, but I guess it didn't hurt.

I'm not really at ease with this self-promotion, but my reasoning is that if a thing's worth doing then it's worth doing as well as I can do it. If anyone thinking of doing something similar would like a copy of the press release that I sent to the paper, then PM me. I do not claim it as a work of genius, but it did work and it might help you to design your own.

[Ishmael]

To my considerable surprise, the newspaper of my home city (population 500,000) ran a piece based on my press release earlier this week. They had not replied to my email (sent towards the end of October) and I had forgotten about it. Since I haven't lived there in decades, I was not surprised to be ignored. However it may just be that they timed the piece to coincide with publication last Monday.

Once again I had sent the PR to a named reporter and simply pointed out that I was born and raised in the city and also worked there for some years.

I can't tell whether the small spike in views and sample downloads was due to the PR or publication date, but it doesn't really matter.