Booking Local Media for Your Book Promotions with Jason Jones

All right, hello and welcome, everybody. As you can hear from my voice, I'm battling a little something. So it's a perfect day to have a special guest that will be joining us. But before I introduce who's here, do say hello. If you are new to the channel or it's your first time joining a live, just remember that we have prizes for participation as well as we always do. Our regular prizes for everybody who has commented on the Tuesday and Friday videos. Today's topic, we're talking about booking local PR for your book, and we have an expert on that subject here to share. And as I said, it's great timing given that my voice is a little raspy. So I'm going to turn it over to you, Jason, to kick things off, and I'll pop back in in a few minutes. And as Jason's talking, please do tell them you know, where you're from, what's your books about, and ask any questions. And just like we do with my lives, we'll make sure that your questions get answered. As we get close to the end, or if it's pertinent, I'll interrupt Jason and ask the question. All right, Jason, take it away.

Thank you so much for having me, Julie. This is wonderful. Yeah. So everybody, like she said, just, just jump in and let me know a little bit more about your book and where you're. Where you're at today. And I am going to try and stay as close to 45 minutes as I can with our actual presentation, but I do want to take your question. So if you have one and you can stay on a little bit longer, you know, I'll be here. I'd love to chat about anything you might want to know about. And there's a really a ton of information for us to get through today. So if I fly right by something that you want to know more about, just ask in the comments, and I will do my very, very best to get to everything. And also it's really helpful for me to know what specific pieces of the presentation are going to draw the most interest and questions. So as we plan the rest of the series, we know where you want us to spend the most time. So now that that is out of the way, we're going to jump in. This is all going to be about and focus on what many of you guys and what many of my clients, too, are asking about always, which is how do I get myself on radio and television and podcasts and do my own marketing and publicity and sell some books, and that's why we're going to talk about how to act as your own publicist and pitch media like a professional publicists. Because the truth is, hiring a PR firm or a publicist is really expensive. It is not in the cards for everybody. I know this because I am a publicist and have run a firm for a long, long time of my own here in Nashville. And you know, that being said, let's go ahead and jump in. Like Julie said, my name is Jason Jones. I oversee the planning and business development and PR execution for Jones Literary. I've worked on campaigns for over 500 authors over the years and I love getting to work with our authors and experts, clients all over the country, media and publishers all over. We've worked with producers and editors at places like Fox News and cnn, cbs, NBC, New York Times, you name it, hundreds and hundreds of faith based outlets which are actually more our particular specialty. And my agency is coming up on its eighth anniversary. We're still growing and doing well and we work with anywhere from 10 to 15 authors a month and book, radio and TV and podcast interviews and help them write op ed pieces and all sorts of fun things. So I've been doing this a while, done a lot of it, I know a few things. So hopefully that can all help you. That said too, I'm circling back to what Julie mentioned. Booking local media is a big part of this whole presentation and I mentioned all those big outlets and we have worked with all those folks. But you know, there's still so, so so many worthwhile local outlets that you guys as self published and first time authors and indie authors need to be pitching first and we can help you do that. I know it can be a little bit intimidating right at the outset and you're not quite sure where to start, but we're going to help you with that today. So looks like we have some folks here. God's Love, Power Connection, Christian nonfiction books, that's a lot of what we work on. Self publishing with. Dale. Is that Dale that's in here with us today? That's great.

Yeah, he joined us. Yes.

No, Dale's the best. So anyhow, this I promise you guys, this is not the webinar where I'm going to spend an hour talking about my product and trying to sell you that. So let's just go ahead and jump into the core content and get going. Several things you need to know before you guys pitch media, even your local media. So many people that reach out to me, they want to skip their local media. They want to jump right to pitching the Today show and all those big outlets. And that's a huge mistake. And I'll tell you why. There's a story that I tell a lot. When I first started in this business, I remember I was in New York. I was in the office of the booking producer at the Today show. Her name was Jackie Levin, and she had literally hundreds of books stacked on the floor of her office. They were from floor to ceiling all the way around the room, and just hundreds of books. And those were just the books that she had gotten that month. All of these authors and publishers were vying for what are essentially just a few spots on that show each month. And she also showed me her inbox. In the previous 24 hours, she had gotten over 500 emails, many of those from people pitching themselves or their clients as guests on the show. Needless to say, it's overwhelming and intimidating. And my point in telling you this is the competition is really, really fierce. Those big national media spots. And that's why before you pitch them, there are some things that are critical that you do, and you really cannot skip these things. So these will lay the groundwork for you for a really great pitch. So some things that you need to do before you send a pitch to national media is be a consumer of your local media, or really any media that you're pitching. If you're pitching local media, which we again, strongly, strongly suggest, you have to actually watch the local news so you can be familiar with their segments and their hosts. Watch, listen, read the outlet, pay attention to what they're talking about and from what perspective, where the holes may be in their coverage, and tailor your stories to their expressed needs. You never want to pitch them blindly. It's going to be obvious to the producers, and it's going to send a message that you don't care about them or their goals or their audience, that you're just in it for you and to sell a product. And they are not into that. They are in this to provide their audience with entertainment and relevant information. So watch, read and listen and personalize your pitches and let them know that you have watched them and that this is personal. And if you're local, of course, let them know that you are local. That is highly, highly relevant information for them. The next thing you have to do is ask yourself as you watch, read and listen, who is this outlet's target audience? Who is watching, reading, or listening to this, and what are their goals? So media outlets at all levels are looking for entertainment and information. It's going to benefit Their audience, like I said again, they are not and never ever will be looking to benefit you. They want information and conversation that will benefit their audience. So that means unique stories about people and events that are relevant to them or experts who have a local connection to a news story. And the case of local media. So that's where you come in. If you're pitching local media, can you talk about how a national trend or a national event is affecting your local community? So good questions to ask yourself would be, is there a particular time of year when my expertise, information or story is most relevant? Are there particular recurring news stories or topics around which I might have some input? Is there a particular audience to whom my expertise, my story, my topic is most relevant? And are there media outlets that cater specifically to that audience? Those are four really important questions to ask yourself at the outset. And one of the things you'll hear me say several times today that I have been telling authors for years, and it's hurtful for some of them to hear me say it, is that your book is not news. It never will be news. Nobody cares that you wrote a book. Millions of people write books, books. What they care about is what you can tell them that will affect their life. What information do you have that's important to them? How can they relate to you? Why should they read your book? It's not about you, it's only about you in the sense of why are you someone they should listen to? What's your story? What are your credentials and qualifications? Which leads to the next step and the next thing that you need to do before you pitch media, and that is build yourself a press kit. You, you want to make sure that you have some key elements in place to represent yourself well to the media. And in essence, that is a press kit. So what's included in a great press kit? And it's something we'll get into in a different session because there's a ton of information that goes into that. But it's critical that you provide the right information and in an easy to access and easy to read format to the media, because they are not going to read paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs about who you are and why you are writing. They want to know quickly get to the point, who are you? Why are you writing me? What do you have that's important for my audience? So, press kit, very, very important. The next piece of information is, is your website updated? Are your social feeds updated? Because I guarantee you the first thing that producers are going to do to verify the Legitimacy of potential guest is they're going to check their website and their social media. That happens for us and our clients every single day. And it's why our press kits make it easy for them to find our clients online. And also, before we start working with a client pitching media for them, we have to make sure their website and their social media feeds are clean. So make sure that your platforms are current with all your recent photos and preferably something professionally done, biographical info and contact info, because they're going to check that stuff and they're going to check your feeds to make sure you're not some sort of, you know, crackpotter, at the very least that you're who you say you are. And if they see anything that's offensive, then they're probably just going to turn you away. But on the flip side, if they see that they go to your sites and what they see strengthens your case is a qualified, credentialed expert or thought leader, then you're really strengthening your chances. So keep those things clean and up to date and make sure they're easy to navigate. And if you can show on your social feeds a history of engaging people in respectful dialogue and helpful dialogue, then that's going to be really helpful as well. So the other piece of that is it's not just the media that you have to think of in that interaction. Because when you do these interviews, you're going to be sending thousands and thousands of people to your website. So when they get there, what do you want them to see? I mean, you don't want outdated information or, you know, a website that they're not going to come back to or, you know, social feeds where they can't interact with you. So that is really important. Next, have you built enough flexibility into your calendar? There is no need, of course, to go ahead and clear your entire calendar, but you have to build in some flexibility and you have to be ready at a moment's notice for an interview. You got to make sure you think through things like who's going to take care of the kids, how do I get away from work? Is there a quiet place where it's going to be well lit and I can safely plug in and do an interview well and not be interrupted. Does that place have reliable WI fi? All these things are things you're going to need to think about. Because once you pitch yourself to media, if you get a response and they want you on their show in an hour or two or first thing tomorrow morning, you may not have time to figure those things out and if you can't make it work with them, you may not get a second chance to do that interview. So think about all those things ahead of time. Just make it easy for yourself to say yes. That is a huge piece of the puzzle. Most of the time, like I said, they've probably got three or four other sources or people that they're going to be able to go to for information or for an interview. So a lot of times it's whoever says yes first. And to just make that easy, go ahead.

I was going to jump in. And also we've had some really cool opportunities come up because somebody backed out last minute and then they were looking at the people that were backups that they had thought of or that have just hit their desk that are a good fit. And so it's those last minute opportunities that can be really important and they can be the biggest ones because you might not have been the first choice, but when the, when the first choice backs out, they're scrambling and you're right, they'll send like three or four notes out and it is the first person to say yes. So that's awesome. Everybody that's here, this is Jason Jones. We're talking about, you know, pr, but specifically booking local media for your book. And if you are new here, please be sure to say hello. And if you have questions, Jason's going to answer all your questions at the end. And I'm just, as you can tell from my voice, I'm very lucky to have a guest here today. But I'm going to do our first draw. And so if you're here and you haven't put your name in there, now's the time to say hello. But also every Tuesday and Friday when a new video comes out, we, and I'm just putting my screen up here, we have, we have prizes for everybody who comments the day a video is released and everybody has been entered to win. And I'm going to share this right now. That is where we're going to draw your names from for commenting and asking questions today. But for now, what I want to do is. Oops, one second. Here we go. All right. You should be seeing the random name picker. Now let's make sure you are. And you are. Okay, perfect. So this is everybody who has commented on Tuesdays and Fridays. Let's see. And of course, we are still celebrating our seven year anniversary. And so we have our special seven year anniversary mugs. There we go. And I don't have it here because I'm at Home. But it is our special handcrafted mug. So you can get that or you can get our usual journal or a copy of Self publish and succeed or Self Publish, Promote and Succeed. So let's see who our first winner is. Here it is. Going slow for me. I don't know. It's not liking. It's not liking the guest stream. I might have to come back.

Wow.

All right, let me hit it one time. All right. It's frozen. I'll bring you guys back after because it is not. Let me see if I stop sharing if it gives me a winner. See? And yes, it did give me. Or did it? Wow. This has never happened before. Yeah, it's just frozen. All right, we will our backup plan here. We'll do the first prize for the people that are here today. So let me try this again. That's weird. It's never frozen on my whole thing. Oh, Stella's here. I missed an opportunity with a local radio show because I thought I had to go to the studio and didn't have time to get there. I didn't have time to get there in time. Yeah, yeah, that's tough. And then let's see. Oh, that's just Dale talking to Angela. There we go. All right. Okay. I got distracted by you guys. Lovely comments. Let's try this one last time to see if we can get a winner and then we'll go back to Jason. Okay. We will do this winner instead. Take Dale's comment or Efren's comment off there. Okay. Now this is for everybody who has commented so far today. So there's been 12 of you, of course, Angela and I don't count, so there's actually 10. And financially intelligent girl. Congratulations and thank you for participating today. So email angelaeamteamooklaunchers.com Let her know if you want our 7 year anniversary handcrafted mug or if you want our oh so soft journal or a copy of Self Promote and succeed or Self publish and Succeed. All right, so yeah, tech problems. Never heard of that. Right, Exactly. Okay, so we were talking about flexibility into the calendar and then I jumped in. So I'll turn it back to you with that, Jason.

Yeah, no worries. One of the other things that I thought about too, when you mentioned the comment about the person that was not able to get to the studio in time. One of the other things you have to be ready for. What are you going to wear if you're called into the studio? If you're called in to do a TV interview tomorrow morning? What Are you going to wear, is that outfit cleaned and pressed? You know, all these things you have to have ready because you know, if it's laundry day and you don't look your best, then you're just, you know, you don't have time to do laundry obviously before that interview. So have something set aside. You know, all these things you need to think of in advance. So next, do you have everything that you'll need to send to media? We've talked a little bit about press kits, but producers are going to ask too for review copies of your book before they extend an invitation most of the time. So it's really important that you have inventory and you can get to it quickly. A PDF version is going to be okay sometimes, but a lot of them still want a hard copy. So you need to have a few on hand. And you know, don't, don't send that media mail. So it takes seven days to get there. I mean spend a few bucks and get it there the next day or even same day. You know, if you can always go back to are you making their job easier? Are you making it easier than the next guy in line? Because that's, that's the job. If you can make their job really, really easy, not only will you get booked, but you'll probably get booked again at some point. They'll remember, you know, they have a Rolodex too for those of you who are old enough to remember what a Rolodex is, you know, next time they need somebody on that topic. Oh, I remember Dale and how easy he was to work with last time. Let's get him back in. So always go back to that. They are going to want a high res headshot of you, in all likelihood a book cover image to use if they want to build out a graphic and any relevant statistics to your topic to help build graphics for your segment or to use to tease the segment. So again, do your, do the research for them. You know, why add to their work when you can do it for them? So next, do you know what your key messages are and how you're going to pivot to those? If you don't, you might want to consider some media training. But you always have to make sure that you're prepared with a single sound bite, a money quote, especially for tv, because if it's not live, what you'll find out is that a two minute interview is going to be edited down to about five to 10 seconds worth of sound bite for you and you want to make sure it's the right one. So again, make it easy for them. So prepare those talking points you want to cover in both short and long conversations. In a radio interview, for instance, you might have 15 minutes for the segment, but several minutes that's going to be commercials. Hosts like to hear themselves talk. There's a few more minutes. You're essentially going to get two to three minutes, really of time to talk. So be ready to get through your points quickly. Sometimes you'll have an hour, and that's a different conversation, but you need to have those things thought through ahead of time. So what. What are the important things for me to say in a short interview and if I have a longer amount of time? For instance, podcasts usually go a little bit longer. We can get into some different things. So order those things out and know ahead of time because you don't want to get in there and stutter and stammer your way through your two or three minutes and then regret that you didn't say what you really wanted to say and just be able to work that in conversationally. Circling back to Press kits Do you have a press kit that's going to make your key information easy to find? We can do several webinars on just what it takes to build a really good press kit, and that's one of the things that we do for the folks who end up buying one of our toolkits. But in a nutshell, a good press kit is a one or two page document that makes it really easy for media to see your availability, your areas of expertise, your credentials, your biographical information and contact info. Basic information on your book and why it is important to their audience. What problem are you solving for their audience? You need to lay all those things out very clearly for media. Links to previous media appearances are great too. If there's a podcast that you've done or another interview, they love to see and hear what they're getting when they invite you on, if they want to invite you on, and downloadable headshots and book cover images. All those things you can pop onto a press kit, onto a PDF and just link back to something you're saving in your Google Drive. That's the way we do it. And then audience and demographic information. They like that too. Also remember that the show wants to interview a person, not a book. So your your press kit should reflect that you are not J.K. rowling. Your your book is not news. They don't care about your book. You're not a celebrity that they're interviewing because you're you. Their Their, their job is to provide relevant information to their audience. So they do not want their segment to be an infomercial. If that happens, your segment will probably never make it on the air unless it's live. And if it's live, then you'll never, ever be invited back and you won't have a clip that you can use to, to show other outlets, because you wouldn't want to show that to other outlets. And they're not going to want to have you on. So just remember that it's not, it's not a infomercial. They'll tell you to go visit the ad department if that's what you want to do. I've heard that many times. So, any particular questions about anything I've covered so far? I know I'm really flying through and talking really fast, but I feel like I have so much information to cover with you guys trying to get through it all. I am. I'm scrolling. I don't.

Oh, I put one on the screen. I don't know if you can see it. Kevin asked if you'd say there are differences between a TV appearance and one for radio. I mean, there's lots, but yeah, as.

Far as, yeah, a radio interview, obviously, most of the time those are done from home and you can do those in your pajamas. TV is a whole different thing, you know, being being dressed appropriately and tv, just a lot of extras come with tv. And these days, what constitutes TV most of the time is zoom. We used to travel a lot of our clients, but nowadays 90% of it's done remotely. So you need to make sure you have a good setup. You know, that you're lit well and professionally, that you're, you know, you talk about your background, what's behind you, make sure your kids aren't busting in the room or your dog's not barking at the mailman. And lots of things contribute to a great segment. And a lot of those things we talk about in, you know, are in my book and some other things, but that's probably a whole separate pod, a whole separate webinar, just how to prepare for a TV interview. A lot of differences as far as how to pitch a TV and radio, you know, segment. Yeah, those are very different things to just what you're providing. TV is going to want visuals. You know, it's a, it's a visual medium. So it's really important what you send them and show them that their audience is going to see. And TV interviews are usually much, much shorter than radio. So, you know, and Much more, you know, the TV audience is much less nuanced and much less targeted. I guess, you know, it's a much broader audience. So you want to, you know, try and cover information in a way that's going to be relevant to a wider group of people than most of the time than you would in a radio interview. But I don't, if I go down that rabbit hole, I will talk and talk. So, yes, lots of differences. And maybe, Julie, we can do, you know, a second or third, you know, webinar on just some of the differences in these things.

And yeah, I can, I can speak to a couple as well because I've done a ton of tbn, I've done quite decent amount of radio. And as a, as a person, as the, as the expert that's being interviewed, TV is far more intense. It, because most of the TV I did was live. I did a few pre taped like that. They edited and then went live that night. But it's fast paced and they're like, okay, you got 30 seconds. And part of that is them showing your book and doing some other things. Sometimes they'll bring up your website as well. But it's, it's much more intense. You got to be ready and you got to hit your points really fast. Radio is not quite like podcast, but you do have more time. The hosts are having more fun, I find. They're more relaxed, whereas the TV people, because they're live, they're intense, they're focused not only on what you're doing, but on all the screens that are in front of them, what the cameraman's doing, what the producer's telling them. Like there's a lot going on for tv, so they're very different. I loved the rush of tv, for what it's worth, it didn't sell books. I didn't see any lift the next day from tv. But it sure looked good on social media. And it was, it was a rush. So it was fun.

Absolutely right. It is great in terms of credentialing you and it's great to push out on your socials and have everyone be impressed with you, but it doesn't sell as many books and it really is intimidating to sit in that chair and all of a sudden that little red light comes on and that host turns to you and asks you a question and all the activity in the background, the camera, you know, the crew and everyone's doing their thing and all of a sudden you know what, your three minutes is over and you haven't said anything or you think you're going to get another question and you don't. And you're so disappointed because you just thought of what it was you wanted to say, and it is fun, but it's really hard to do well. And that's one of the reasons I'll circle back, that we just can't stress strongly enough that you do local media first, because if you were lucky enough, somehow, some way to get a huge national interview as your first, it's not going to be your best. And you really don't want, you know, to wade into that. That pool not being ready. You know, chances are of you getting one of those big interviews first are really, really slim, you know, but it does happen. They are much more likely to book you if they can see a clip from a local news show, and they see that you're informative and entertaining and you can handle yourself professionally. And, you know, and that's why you do that. And your chances of landing that local show are so much better. You're relevant because you're local. You're a local expert they can access, and so do those things first. That's the whole purpose of our local PR toolkit, is that we equip you to book yourself locally so that you can then move up that chain and pitch yourself nationally, if that's what you want to do. But local is the key.

So, yeah, sorry, I was just gonna say that's. I think. I think a lot of people just think big time right away. And it's the same for speaking engagements. Having gone from having done one talk in front of, like, six people to a talk in front of 600, it was. I was dramatically shocked and not ready for, you know, being miked up and having bright lights in my eyes. And had I given that talk a few other times? Same like with TV. I did TV pretty quickly. Just thank goodness I'd done so much YouTube that I was ready for it. Efren had a question. Are there particular strategies you'd recommend for search for local opportunities online?

To search for local opportunities online, I'm not sure I'm following the question, but.

How do you find them? How do you find them?

Have to watch and read and listen to your local news outlets and know what they're covering. And if you're watching national news and you're keeping, you know, you're tracking what's happening in our country, then the pitch to your local outlet is, hey, I'm an expert on this, you know, on the economy, and I'm here and I can Tell our local community what's happening nationally, how it will affect them. So pay attention nationally and locally to what's happening. A lot of times those stories are the same. But if what you're asking is how to find that contact information for those journalists. I do. I'll get to that here in just a couple of minutes. Well, we can, I guess we can just move right into that in case it's what he's asking. I think it probably is. There's a couple of different ways that you can, you can track down a journalist, and none of these are foolproof, but if you can call the outlet and ask for contact information. First of all, if you, you can Google search the email address of a particular journalist, sometimes that works. You can find their email address and contact info on their social media platforms. Sometimes you can direct message them on their social platforms too, if their settings allow that. Also, a lot of times the news outlets will have a particular formula that they use for their email addresses, whether it's, you know, first name@newsoutlet.com, first initial. Last name@newsoutlet.com and so sometimes you just fire off several of those until you get one that doesn't bounce back. You know, if you can find someone else at the station's email address, you kind of will know what the formula is going to be. It can be a lot of work that can be pretty tedious to track that down. And that is one of the things, too, that is part of our toolkits that we, we build out. We custom build those, press those media lists because that's, it's really time consuming. But there's a few different ways to do that. And it's just very, it's very tedious work. So the next thing I guess we'll jump into is. I think we may have covered. I'm looking here, Julia. I think I've covered everything.

All right, well, there's more questions. So we can go to the questions.

Yeah.

And then. Yeah, also. Yeah, that's great. We flew through. Also. I have. I think it worked. Let's just see. I think I got it to work while we weren't on there. So let's see. That was our winner from before. And let me pop over to Random Name Picker, see if it actually picked a name. It did not. Let's. Oh, it did. KJ ZR2KO, that was our winner. Sorry. It did work. Now we're picking the second winner. So KJ ZR2KO, you are a winner from the Tuesday Friday commenters. And let's see if it's going to bring up another winner. I don't know. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Here it is. It's working now. Victory. And Darla, I saw you here. I know you're on live. So congratulations, Darla, you won. So. And kj, the funky username, you also are winners. So you've won either the seven year anniversary handcrafted mug, which I don't have here handy today, or our oh so soft journal, or a copy of Self Promote and succeed or Self Publish and Succeed. All right, so that worked. Yay. Yay for, for small victories. All right, now let me remove that off here and let me go back to the question. Let's see. Okay. Oh, I was just going to bring this up because. Yeah, Jack, I, I had the same thing. I radio and, and newspapers sold way more books than TV for me. Like I said, TV was fun. I got the biggest rush from it. It was the one that got the most responses on social media, but book wise, it was not the one that sold books. All right, so Dale has a question for you. What are the best practices for connecting and following up with media contacts? Should I send an email and follow up once a week or twice a week? What's the limit?

Yeah, email is absolutely the best way to do it. I have heard from so many journalists, they absolutely hate getting phone calls. If you can find their phone number to begin with. None of us like getting phone calls anymore, right? Just strange phone calls in the middle of the day, interrupting what we're doing. Email is it. It's the way they organize, you know, what they're working on and they can answer it in, in their own time. And it's also the best and easiest way for you to follow up, which as Dale asked, how long should you wait before you follow up? Typically I'll send a follow up every three to four days. You don't want to bother them. You got to be persistent though, and polite and professional. And I always say to try and be personable. Too memorable. You know, there is a line, you don't want to cross it. You don't want to email them every day? Absolutely not. But sometimes I'll just send an email just saying, hey, just stand in your orbit. I know you're busy. Just, you know, there was this thing I sent you last week. Hope you have a chance to take a look. And usually after you've emailed them three times, I'd say, and there's no answer, then you should probably move on or move on to a different journalist at that particular outlet. So three is probably the limit. The only exception to that rule will be if there's a breaking news story, something that's really the news cycle dictates that everyone's talking about today, send that email, and if you don't get an answer the next day, you might send another one. But usually in a couple of days, that news story will have cycled out. And obviously you can't wait three or four days in that instance. But if it's more of an evergreen topic, you know, or your book is something that you know is about some, you know, topic that's not going anywhere, then every three or four days is fairly standard. So there's another question here, too, Julie, that I saw.

That one's pretty much the same. You answered that one. Let's see. I think that was all that I saw. While we're waiting, you've mentioned. Oh, wait, hold on. Is this it? Oh, no, we did that one already, too. I think we've covered them all. So if anybody has any other questions, you're welcome to go ahead and ask. In the meantime, you did mention your PR kit. I put one link in there. You. You have kind of two things that you can offer authors that will help them with their kind of search or, you know, their PR journey. So if you want to tell people that. And I'll get Angela to drop the two, and Angela's finding the question as well. But Angela, if you can put the two links there, and if you want to just take a minute or two, Jason, and kind of explain what you have to help people, that'd be great. And then we'll come back to the questions. Yeah.

Thank you. So we've got two different toolkits available. The first is a custom toolkit where we offer consultations and coaching. We build your press kit ourselves based on conversations we have with you. We build you a custom media list, your closest major market, and then whatever, topically, whatever your book is about, we'll pull in some. Some outlets across the country that. That fall into that topic. It's. You copy my book, a media training course course, video course, entry into our private Facebook group, email scripts to help you write email pitches, a number of things in that. That. That custom package, and that's a larger package that's, you know, a little bit more of an investment. The. We also have a smaller package. So for someone just getting started, who wants some help, it's not ready maybe yet for that bigger investment. And it's called the Publicist starter kit. And that's publicist starter kit dot com. But I think you've got a button here or a link that you'll post underneath. You said.

Yeah, Angela, put the links in there and they'll be in for everybody watching replay. It'll be in the description after the video is live. Perfect.

So the starter kit is just that. It's email scripts, It's a copy of my book. It is everything that I mentioned previously, except the consultation and coaching and the custom press kit and the media list. So that's anywhere from $27 up to about $97. And all those are really helpful, some really helpful items in there. But the, you know, the full toolkit is, is really wonderful. I don't know of anything else quite like it. We put that together because we had so many people come to us that wanted to do some publicity, but they just really weren't quite ready for the type of publicity that we typically pitch, which is big national, you know, shows. And it's, it's really expensive. And so math just dictates that it has to be what it is because it's just very time consuming what we do. But I also hated turning people away and not offering any help. So we thought, hey, what can we do to hand them some of the tools that we use ourselves? You know, press kits, media lists, and we'll coach you and do consults and let them go do run their own PR campaigns. And so that's been really helpful for a lot of people and they use that year after year as they write more books. So both of those are great tools.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. And I mean, finding the outlets, when we do this for our clients and it takes so long to find the names and then to research them and to kind of figure out what's the angle. So, you know, that's a shortcut for everybody. Angela found the question that was missing, and then I saw another one come in. So what about YouTube interviews? Sometimes those reach millions.

Yeah, absolutely. And that was that. That's one of the points I was going to make earlier when you were talking about newspaper versus radio and tv. Podcast interviews really are as effective as anything because podcasts are so targeted. You know, with a TV show. We've had people on the Today show and Fox and Friends and all that. You know, they, they just don't sell a lot of books because it's, it's. They shotgun out to millions of viewers. Only 1 or 2% of those books may be really interested in what it is. You're you know, you're talking about. Obviously there will be some, or they wouldn't book you. But you're much better off with a popular podcast that's going to hit 15, 20, 30, 000 people that are there for that very specific topic and really love and trust that host. So it's really a better, you know, way to go about it is pitching podcasts and YouTubers and folks like that. Now, the YouTubers, you know, can be tough to, to get, you know, to connect with. We have found online influencers are tough to track down their contact info. You find yourself just in their comment pool or trying to DM them along with everyone else. So that's tough. But no, you're absolutely right. If you can, if you can engage in their comments and you can become someone they're familiar with and maybe you really improve your chances. But that's. Yeah, if you can, if you can get one of those shows, that's very much viable way to go. Yeah. Traditional media is definitely the. The landscape is changing for sure, and that's something that we're dealing with, trying to figure out the best way to, you know, to tackle some of these new influencers and new outlets, because they pop up, you know, it feels like weekly there's some huge new outlet.

Yeah, I think, I think the best way with a lot of the influencers, YouTubers, online, social media people, is to try to meet them in person somewhere, not stalking them. I'm not advocating stalking, but, you know, like at live events, if there's an opportunity to do the VIP and go in and meet with them and chat with them or, you know, Efren. Efren was at an event and I know he talked to a pretty big podcaster in the writing space, and he ended up getting an interview on her, on her podcast just from chatting with her. So if there's opportunities to meet, if they're a speaker at an event or there's some other sort of, you know, something going on in your local area and they're there, getting in front of them and FaceTime, I find is a much easier journey than, like you said, being in their comments or just trying to get through their gatekeepers or even me, I'm not even a huge YouTuber. You know, I have a lovely, lovely group of fans, but not the million, 2 million, 5 million, you know, out there. And I get something every day. Dale, I imagine you probably get just as many too, you know, asking you to feature this product or interview this person or, you know, all kinds of I mean, even I even had somebody wanting me to showcase a lamp the other day. I'm like, really? Do you look at my channel? Because, you know, I don't really know how I'm going to showcase your lamp. But anyways, there's a couple more questions here, so.

Yeah, that was interesting to me. The press release. Kirsten, circling back to what I said earlier about your book is not news. Press releases are typically announcing news and a lot of journalists that we work with don't read press releases. They need an email pitch from you. Hi, my name is. Here's who I am and why I'm writing you. Here's what I've done. Quick to the point. And again, some of the scripts that we talked about as part of the toolkits have 10 to 12 different examples of how you write that email. But press releases are just a bit of a dinosaur, I have found. You know, like you said, you know, Julie, companies send out press releases about all sorts of random things and most of the time those just don't get read. So send a personal email to a producer instead of blasting out a press release. And there's another question that she had to. Is there a list of local media outlets in each city to access? Not that I know of. We have access to a huge media database that we pay for every year. That's quite expensive, honestly, but we can't do our job without it where we're able to filter, you know, through a million plus journalists in each market, you know, by topic and all sorts of different things. So unless you subscribe to something like that, I really don't know where else you get the contact information unless you just rifle them through. Like we mentioned earlier, you know, the outlets, website and other things like that.

That'S, that's what we use too. We had to pay for a, you know, for access to the database because. But it's thousands of dollars, so most people, most people just pitching themselves aren't going to want to invest in that. But a lot of the websites do have the information. It's just, you just have to put in the labor to dig it out.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And then she's asking for a list of podcasts for book interviews. Same thing. Yeah, you're going to dig through. You're going to dig through.

Yeah, there is a website, there's a, there's a service again, it's, it's a few thousand bucks. It's called Podchaser is what we use. And Podchaser is a huge database. Million plus podcasters and that you can search through, but, you know, you know you're gonna end up spending a few thousand. I think we probably spend between four and five thousand a year on. On podchaser. And it's, you know, if we use it every day, so that's. It's worthwhile for us. But if you're using that to pull, you know, a list of a couple of hundred podcasters, that's probably just not real cost effective for you. So. But that's where we do it. There may be some other services where you can come, you know, compare podcasts or search by topic or things like that. I'm honestly not sure. But, yeah, you can.

You can post yourself on a service called Pod Match. It's not the same as searching through a big list, but Pod Match does get you, you know, you can get contacted that way and you can contact hosts the other way, too. So Pod Match is cheaper than that. So that might be an option for you. Kristen, I put up a question from Kevin. I've been on many podcasts and a couple radio. How can I get to the podcasters that are talking to a broader audience? Any tips?

Oh, gosh. I mean, podcasts that are talking to a broader audience. I think that's kind of the appeal of podcasts is because they are so niche. I mean, I wonder if you could give me an example of a podcast that speaks to a broader audience.

Do you. Yeah, I was wondering, Kevin, did you mean like a broader audience? Like, wider in what they talk about? Or do you mean broader as far as, like, they're a bigger podcast or reaching a bigger audience? Because that is a different. A different scenario. Because I agree with Jason. Part of the reason, like, I've. I've had tremendous results from very niche podcasts that don't have, you know, they don't have a big audience, but their audience is exactly my people. And they're the ones that reach out after they've heard the podcast and are like, that was amazing. Can I talk to you about your services? I've bought your book versus the bigger podcasts. I don't have that happen as much as those very, like, the smaller niche podcasts. So for me, I think the best podcasts for book promotion are those niche podcasts. But, okay, his example was Jordan Harbinger. Broader in reach and bigger in audience.

Yeah, I'm not familiar with Jordan Harbinger. So that's the crazy thing about podcasts too, though, right, Julie? Like, there can be really popular podcasts that I've never heard of. And I work, I do this every day. So what's, you know, what's popular in your industry or in your particular lane? Might not be in mine. You know how to. No, I don't really. Honestly, I don't have a tip on how to track those down outside of just being, you know, engaging in their, in their comments and on their social feeds and, and sending them, you know, messages if you can find their contact info and email. But, yeah, I don't. The world of podcasting is. It's kind of like the wild, wild west out here. We're all trying to figure out, you know, who's. Who we need to reach out to for our clients and how to, how to get them, you know, and a lot of them are just people like you. Julie, you mentioned, I mean, you don't have a staff. You know, you might. You get too many emails every day, and all of a sudden it becomes hard to respond to those. So you, you're very protective of your contact information, maybe. And, and so some of these sponsors, podcasts, you have sponsors that they have to, you know, be careful about who they have on, and, and it can get a little bit sticky.

But, you know, yeah, some of the bigger podcasts, some people have had success, like I said, meeting, meeting the host in person and then also getting a lot of their listeners to recommend or ask for them to be on the show. And so, you know, that in some cases, like Joe Rogan, that's the only way he doesn't take pitches. You have to come recommended from multiple people. And usually I don't think it's just like random listeners either. It's not like you can recruit your 10 best friends to do this. I think he has a certain circle of people that he pays attention to as to who's recommending. He has different people on, but, you know, I know. I think Lewis Howes has a similar approach to how you get on his podcast as well. So some of them don't even take pitches. They're, you know, their, their podcast is so much in demand that they're just choosing who they want on their show and they'll listen to their audience and kind of go based on that. So every podcast, I think it's kind of like your media. Every podcast is going to be different. So you got to kind of set your eyes on a certain target and then decide how you're going to make your way in there. If it's important enough, you'll. You'll find a way.

Well, and the, the Process is all the same. It circles all the way back to the beginning. What we talked about with you want to pitch the today's show, you need to do your local NBC affiliate first. Same thing if you, there's a huge podcast you want to be on, find one that's similar but smaller and try to, you know, do the circuit there, do as many of those as you can and maybe you start showing up in some algorithms and some feeds and you have some clips to send along. Or those big podcasters, they, they pay attention to the smaller guys too. Who are they talking to? Who's the next up and comer? They are searching. Just like those big outlets, you know, the big network news shows sometimes find interesting stories from their local affiliates. Same thing with the big podcasters. They find things on the farm, you know, that are interesting. And so if you're doing a lot of those shows, you can sometimes make yourself, you know, make them aware of you that way, you know, and again, all the while you're getting sharper and better with your messaging and, you know, just making, creating a network and selling some books, moving some books, you know, if you, you just keep shooting at those big outlets and all the while you're kind of dying on the vine a little bit. You got to keep some momentum moving forward and doing the smaller things is the way to do it. You're getting better and you're selling some books and credentialing yourself and doing all sorts of positive things. But it's the same with podcasters, honestly. We, we have booked, everybody asks us to do Rogan, of course. Oh, get me on Joe Rogan. I, and I'm very honest, I probably can't do that, you know, but Lewis, how, as you mentioned, is another one. We tried for so long to get on that show and I just couldn't break through until we work with a client who knew him, you know, and then all of a sudden it was because I was introduced, you know. Well, now all of a sudden I've got the right contact information and it happens. Same thing with Tucker Carlson. We used to book Tucker show all the time when he was with Fox News. He left and is doing his own thing now. I don't have a contact with Tucker until recently. A client of mine who was working with his vice president of programming at his new network introduced me. Now I've got that in. But it all came from me kind of circulating at the party and, and getting close to, you know, people that are close to those people. It's just the long game, you just got to play the long game a lot of times. And so it does make it hard when you're in this, when you show up on the scene with a book and you think in the next six weeks you're going to get done everything you need to get done to move this book. You're not. I mean it sometimes takes years to build out these networks and these trusted contacts and have, you know, you got to be in this for a while. It's just not going to get done in a few weeks.

So yeah, the ones that, the ones that people see I saw trying to remember her exact name, Vanessa Van Edwards, I think it is. Anyways, she, she gave a talk actually funny enough at Lewis Howe's event last year, his school of summit of greatness. And, and she said her launch where she was on major media podcasts, you know, major TV shows and all these things, she said all of that took an entire year leading up to it to orchestrate. So it looks like she's everywhere in two weeks. But really it was the year leading up her book was done and they lined up all of this media, they recorded things. You know, she did everything to the point where she says six weeks after her book's out, she's like ready to fall fast face first. Because she's been doing an entire year of media tours. But from the outside looking in, it looks like she's just doing a ton in a two week period. But it was actually an entire year leading up to that, not to mention the two years prior to that that she actually spent writing and producing the book. So it's an incredibly long journey. So even when you see it and you think this person's doing this massive tour over two weeks, it's not like it's years and years in the making. And so if you're just launching and just starting your marketing, you really have to be looking at this as a two year, three year. Like, you know, I'm going to build momentum every day and you know, two years from now maybe I'm doing all these things, but today it's probably not going to happen.

Well, you have to engage on social like we talked about. They see a history of you engaging, you know, an audience and you can, you start with, if you're a year out, you start with booking and pitching some of the longer lead stuff. You know, podcasters are like that their production schedule might be such that they're only in the studio once a quarter and they record 12 interview or 12, you know, different episodes and then you work your way backwards to the short lead stuff, which is radio, who might have you on tomorrow, you know, or your local morning television show, who might have you on in three or four days. But you start several months in advance pitching the podcasters and those monthly magazines and those quarterly trade publications and all those folks, you know, so they'll cover your book six, eight months down the road. And all the while you're working, you know, short, as that timeline gets shorter on booking the short lead stuff. And then, like you said, you look up and your book launches in a month. And now you've got 40 or 50 things, you know, coming down the pike, but you absolutely cannot get it done in 30 days before your book launches. So when people reach out to me and say, hey, my book launches in six weeks, what can I do? A lot of times, sadly, the answer is, you know, not much. You know, you can, you can do some outreach, but if you haven't done all these things, and like we talked about for the past hour, is your website finished, all these things done, you just have a lot to do, house cleaning before you're even ready to do that. And a lot of people don't know what they don't know, so they don't know that they should have been doing these things until it's too late. But you can still do them. Your book release might not happen when or how you thought it would, but, you know, what are book release dates nowadays? I mean, it used to be when I was at HarperCollins years ago, we would release a book, it hits the shelves. If it doesn't sell enough copies in three weeks, then they're sending it back, you know, so we had to do as much as we could over the course of that few weeks, but now, you know, it's a little bit different thing. So if you have to back it up a little bit, back it up and do it right. And now, you know, with your second book or your third book, how much time this takes, and you're laying groundwork, and it'll get easier each time because you have some contacts built in next time. So, yeah, it's. It's a long game. And media is, is no different. It's just lots of things you need to do. But hopefully through our talks and we can do more of these, we can, we can help people figure that out. And with our toolkits, we can help equip some people. And, you know, I hope that it's all helpful.

Yeah, for sure. I've got one more draw to do for everybody who has commented today. So let me do our final draw of the day for everybody who's been participating. The chat has been very lively. So thank you for everybody making the comment. Oh, Angela can't win. Angela is on my team. Those of you, most people know that, but Angela is our operations manager at Book Launchers, so she's the one that mails out the prizes. All right, next up, we have Dale. All right, Dale, I know you don't have our signature seven year mug, so congratulations. I'm pretty sure that's what we'll send you unless there's something else that you're, you know, really anchoring for. But he has. Usually we just like automatically send Dale all our new swag, but the. The new handcrafted mug, I don't think we've sent to Dale yet. So there you go. Dale, just make sure Angela has your mailing address, please. I think she does, but. So, yeah, thanks for being here and congratulations. That's awesome. We're going to rapid fire. We have a couple last questions here. I. Somebody mentioned, and I don't know where it is, but about mailing the books to the right people. I have opinions on this, but I'm curious if you ever just, like, randomly mail a book to a person and what happens?

I don't. Unless I have a specific person request that I send them a book. I don't, because like I said at the beginning, I've been in those mail rooms rooms, I've been in those offices. Your book's gonna add it to the bottom or the top of a stack in someone's office, and they have no idea who to contact, if they even open it, you know? Yeah, I think it's a waste of money.

Just in Covid, I sent a lot of books out just for something to do and testing things, and a lot of them got sent back. I mean, a lot of people weren't in the office at that time either. But yeah, a lot of them got sent back. And I never. I didn't get a single response from any of them. So I'm not a. I'm not a big fan. And now, and having seen some of the people, like some of the Instagrammers that do book stuff, they get hundreds and hundreds every week sent to them, so. And to the point where they don't even know what to do with. With all these books because the library won't take their donations anymore. Like, it's. It's quite funny. All right, quickly, if you have nowhere to start. No. No idea where to start? I mean, we can drop your links in here. Again, that's one thing. So Angela, if you can put his links in there. But yeah, any, anything else you'd say.

Where to start? Start, you know, start locally, local radio, local tv. I mean, it's, there's just a few basic things. We outline them, you know, press kit, pull it together, write a, write an email that's effective and as part of the toolkit, you get that, you know, 27 bucks. But write a personable email that's professional and effective and, and have a press kit and that's where you start. But you got to give yourself a pretty good Runway. So.

Yeah, another one. Are there any media or conferences where you might get to know media contacts personally?

Yes, if, well, if you're, specifically, if you're a faith based author. For instance, we go to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention every year. It's usually in Nashville or Dallas. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of radio personalities, TV folks and podcasters there. There's probably those types of conferences for lots of different industries for your local media. I would say if there are events that they're sponsoring, you know, sometimes you can just go to an event where, you know, there will probably be local media present. Although, you know, that can be a little, a little dicey. They're on a deadline, they're there to do a job. They don't have time to be real chatty. You know, it can be tough. But yeah, you can find some things.

Yeah, agreed. I think that's it now. So thank. And we're just about at the top of the hour, so thank you so much for being here and helping me carry the live show today. I really, really appreciate it and that was some fantastic information. Lots of people said thank you over and over again. So, yeah, the links are below if you're watching the replay. If you have any comments or questions, please let me know. And if I can't answer it, I will hunt Jason down because I know how to find him.

Thank you so much for letting me do this. And I, I, you know, there's so, so much to talk about. It's really hard to cram it all into an hour. So apologies if I, if, if I got going really fast and maybe that's great and was a little bit all over, but it was a lot of fun and I'm glad to do it anytime. And you're, you know, send me emails, you guys. Any questions that I didn't answer today, just. Julie, let me know what they are and I'll respond via email to these people directly.

So awesome. Thanks so much, Jason. And thank you, everybody, for being here. Take care.

See you.

Bye.

Bye.