Marketing your book with a press release

In the old days (before the Web), marketing a book with a press release was the total opposite of grass-roots marketing. Today it's different. If you do it well, you can market your book directly to potential readers by using low-cost press releases distributed over the Internet.

It used to be that press releases were terribly expensive since they had to be snail-mailed (or faxed or wire-delivered) to traditional media outlets like newspapers. Then your release would be filtered by editors and writers, and if it got picked up at all, the resulting article could be totally different than your original message -- and your book might not be mentioned at all!.

Now, a host of inexpensive (and some free) press-release services can distribute your announcement. Your pitch can be seen by tens of thousands of Web surfers through Google News and other sites. Smart use of keywords and hyperlinks to your book's Web site can provide one of the cheapest marketing vehicles you'll find.

But even with this new tool, most press releases announcing a book are still god-awful, and generate no interest. They focus on the author, the publisher, or argue why they book is important. What a press release should do is explain what the book can do for the reader. Limit your release to one page, and don't include hype and puffery. Stick to facts that other people might find useful.

If you've never written a press release, you might want to read this free e-book: The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly.

If you're ready to get started, here's a link to Yahoo's directory of press release outlets.