5 November 2003

Taming The Sharks: A Baffled Author's Guide To Getting Publicity
by Diane Silver

Before her life as a Broad Universe gadfly, Diane worked as a reporter, editor, press secretary and media relations consultant. She has taught journalism at Michigan State University and the University of Kansas and currently keeps her son in new shoes as a magazine editor and media relations advisor at KU. In her copious free time, Diane edits The Broadsheet and serves on the Broad Universe Motherboard.

This article is designed to help you:

• prompt newspapers and magazines, both print and online (including genre and mainstream media), to publish features and interviews about you and your work,
• get interviews on radio or TV talk shows or newscasts.

Rule 1
News media marketing, or free media, is only one tool in an author's marketing toolbox.

Rule 2
Not every author has a situation that is going to win publicity, but there are ways to improve your chances.

Rule 3
When dealing with the news media, the only way to succeed is to deal with the way the industry actually works, not the way you'd like it to work.

Rule 4
News releases are often ineffective. An e-mail, telephone call, letter or even a casual conversation can work better, but the real trick is to learn to think like journalists and to organize information the way they do.

What's News?
Journalism is a bizarre profession because you spend all your time chasing a substance—news—that's impossible to define. (Trillions of bits of information are generated each day. Which ones should be classified as news and, therefore, covered? Different people give different answers. How do you know you're right, and how do you justify your choice to your boss?) Given that situation, journalists use a set of guidelines called news values. In other words, information with these characteristics is said to have value as news. These are:

• Consequence—Things/ideas/events/trends that are or may have a direct impact on the lives of the audience. This usually involves money, health, safety or quality of life.
• Human Interest/Bizarre—"Man Bites Dog." Any real-life story that is heart warming, funny, ridiculous, bizarre.
• Celebrity—Famous person either because of "accomplishment" (Olympic gold medalist, serial killer) or chance (child of movie star, Iraq War POWs).Also can be famous or notorious place, company, organization.
• Conflict—Wars, fights, lawsuits, arguments, particularly if consequence, human interest or celebrity is also involved.

None of the news values will create a story unless you add Timeliness (new book, new edition, upcoming reading, new award, new class). You also increase your chances if you localize the story (hometown author or local setting for novel or local reading or award).

Consequence
Stories involving consequence would usually center on the topic of the book and the author as an expert on that topic. Science fiction has the advantage here, although fantasy dealing with politically or socially relevant issues can also work. Examples of possible current topics:—cloning—terrorism—religious fundamentalism—plagues—the U.S. as 21st Century colonial power or empire—any sort of alternative history that relates to the Middle East & the West or the U.S.

Consequence can also center on the impact of the book, its mode of publication and its marketing on the publishing industry. The first ebooks and POD books were news, for example. Any book that's the target of censorship and that raises free speech issues can also be seen as news.

Human Interest/Bizarre
Stories involving human interest usually center on the author and any heart warming or unusual story about her work on this particular book. (My Left Foot author writes with his foot, an author's real grief over the death of a relative leads to a newspaper story about a novel she wrote about grief.) Other possible angles include a former scientist/participant writing an insider's view of a field, and a self-published book that is picked up by a major publisher.

Celebrity
The author or someone else involved in the book is famous or related to someone famous. Key point: "fame" is defined as famous to the audience you're targeting. Examples: an award, if you've won a major one like the Nebula, Hugo, or Tiptree—particularly when targeting sf/f media; author is famous for something else before publishing book; author is related to or has connections to someone or something that's famous.

Conflict
Being sued, censored or denounced can generate publicity. Example: Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone, the retelling of Gone With The Wind from a slave's POV received enormous publicity after being sued by Margaret Mitchell's estate.

How To Get The Story Out

• Provide facts and contact information for author. Doing this in writing helps head off journalistic errors. (brief e-mail or one-page letter + author interview.)
• Never call or visit when journalists are on deadline. (Best time for morning newspapers is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Best time for magazines depends on publication schedule. For broadcast media, no later than 2 p.m.)
• Don't write a press release unless you've trained as a journalist.
• Find mainstream media by searching web or Gale Directory of Publications & Broadcast Media or Burrelle's Media Directory. Find genre media via Locus, etc.
• Don't mention that a story about a book or author would involve consequence, human interest, celebrity or conflict. Instead, show how such an article involves the news values.

Examples
It's always easy to talk theory, but far more difficult to put it into practice. Below are some of the ways I would publicize a few books. I've chosen fairly well-known works in the hope that most of you will be familiar with them, but picking well-known books makes this a fairly useless exercise. The one tried and true media rule is that journalists always cover what is already famous. To make this an effective exercise, then, I'd you to participate in a little fantasy. Let's imagine that all of these novels are being published today by unknown writers. How could we interest journalists in them?

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Consequence: Tie to SARS. Talk about impact of future plagues. Localized: Born in Denver, lives in Greeley, CO. Denver and Colorado media.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Consequence: Link to concerns about fundamentalism. Localized: Born in Ottawa, Canada, and alumna of University of Toronto and Harvard. Could use local angle in Ottawa and with alumni magazines of both universities.

The Mount & Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
Human Interest: The bizarre content of one book where humans are horses and of the second book where women turn into dogs, or author shows you can still be creative at an age when most people have retired. Localized: Born in Ann Arbor, Mich., father was founder of the University of Michigan Linguistics Department. Local angle for Michigan, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan. Strong possibilities for U of M alumni publications.

Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks
Consequence: Exploring non-violent ways to stop a war. (How do you end oppression without becoming as violent as your oppressors?) Also, using fantasy to examine real-world issues. Localized: to gay media because of lesbian and gay main characters.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Celebrity: Play up the fact that Woolf, as hypothetical first-time author, is the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a well-known literary critic and daughter of Julia Duckworth, member of the Duckworth publishing family. Also, as writer for famous periodical, the Times Literary Supplement. Consequence: Since novel traces the career of an androgynous individual from masculine identity to feminine, consequence could involve issues of gender identity and gender roles.

Try It Yourself

Let's pretend that Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is being published today. List two ways to publicize the book. Here is some background information that might help.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851)*
Born in Somers Town, Great Britain, in 1797 to well-known parents: author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin. Unfortunately, Wollstonecraft died as the result of Mary's birth. Mary is therefore raised by her father and a much resented stepmother. When Mary is 16, she meets the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a devotee of her father's teachings. Together with Mary's stepsister, they ran off to continental Europe, not hindered by the fact that Shelley was already married. In 1816 they visit Byron and his friend Polidori in Geneva. Byron suggests that they all write a ghost story, and Mary writes Frankenstein—the only story of the four to be published as a novel.

*From My Hideous Progeny.

To check out if your publicity plan matches mine, click here.