Jack Canfield and Steve and Bill Harrison explain how authors get on national TV. A ghostwriter landed Fox News by researching which presidential candidates acknowledged ghostwriters. A dentist pitched a story about candidates' teeth using photos as the hook.
So let's say someone's an author or they're an expert or they want to get whatever it is on tv. They want to get their first national TV show. You know, something like Good Morning America Today, whatever, a big show. What steps would you tell them to take?
One thing I would say is definitely have some local video. Have some video on YouTube or some local segments, you know, that you have. I would watch that show as we talked about, look at what their formula is. Probably the best way of really breaking through TV is to have something that's timely. You know, there's such thing as an evergreen topic like how to make the perfect cup of coffee. Okay. And you can get on, you know, shows like the View with that. But if you can talk about, for example, if you're a pet expert, you know, how to. How to pick the perfect puppy for Christmas. See, now that's timely. Okay? Or we, for example, have one of our clients is a ghost writer. Here's a formulaic hook probably a lot of people watching could use, and that is that go ahead and be willing to do a little research and talk about the presidential candidates. So this ghostwriter, like, how would a ghostwriter get on Fox News? Okay, that's something like maybe for our type of circles of authors. Well, what we said to him is, why don't you do some research about how. Which presidential candidates were honest? You know, they all have books. We. Which ones are honest about working with a ghostwriter, which ones are most appreciative and all that sort of thing. And he got on Fox News for his first national appearance, and we had a dentist who said, can you judge a presidential candidate by his teeth? And he showed pictures of the different presidential candidates and which ones had had dental surgery and stuff. So look, to try to hook into what people are already talking about in the news and make it visual.
You've used the word hook three or four times. I think I know what that means. You know what that means? People who write copy know what that means. Some of our viewers may not know what that means. What is a hook?
A hook is this. If I am having you as the guest on my show, okay, and we're going to break away to a commercial, and we're going to come back. We want to be able to say, you know, coming up, and then fill in the blank. Okay, so what would you put in that? I often say to my clients, write the phrase coming up, fill in the blank. And what would the host say to tease people into wanting to hear more? So coming up 10 foods you should never eat. It's like, whoa. I had a client actually use that hook. Generated millions of dollars for many years because it's a great tease.
