Your Query Letters: Answering a Request from a Reporter

I think I've mentioned on this blog the value of using the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) service to get exposure for you, your business, and your book--maybe more than once! (Use the search engine in this blog if you want to know more about it!).

I'm pretty sure I've also mentioned using out-of-the-box methods of selling books, and I know I talked about selling books in retail stores other than bookstores in The Frugal Book Promoter. This post is a bit about using them all to help your book sales. It will also serve as a template for some kinds of pitches--especially when you're following up on a request from a contact.

Specifically I am pasting a quick pitch I used to answer a HARO call for information. It's really just an adaptation of a more formal query letter, but I thought maybe it would inspire you to be a little less formal with your queries and pitches and still provide reporters and others with what they need if they are open to featuring you in a story. 

 Notice that a pitch or query absolutely must be tailored to the needs of the editor or writer you are contacting and that, generally speaking, it shouldn't have the tone of a formal business letter. Notice, that I am answering this reporter's call for my favorite ways to sell books to retailers.

Elaine, I give lots of ideas for selling books in the multi award-winning book you see in my e-mail signature, and all of them are things I've tried myself. I know their out-of-the-box character is one thing that has kept this book selling for years, well into its second edition.

One of my favorite stories is how I combined my thirty years as founder and owner of a chain of retail stores with my newer career in publishing and, I have to say, that retail experience has surely come in handy.

You probably know how hard it is to get books into airports.  Here's how I did that for a novel set in Salt Lake City. It was published just before the Winter Olympics in 2001 and I knew that retail stores in and around that venue would be looking for tie-in products. Bookstore buyers do the same thing. That is, they look for merchandise that is current,  that will interest their customers and those who walk by their windows and down their aisles.

 

So, it's up to an author or publisher to finding an angle that will make the book profitable for whatever retail outlet he or she is approaching. The Salt Lake City aspect of my book was perfect for this occasion and so was the fact that the "cute meet" in the book was set on the slopes of Alta, one of the Olympics venues near Salt Lake City.

 

I targeted the chains in airports, but also the gift stores paying special attention to independent gift stores. (I sent query letters and sales packets first to the airports in Utah and branched out to other major airlines' hubs).  I offered buyers a package deal of twelve books that came with a free point of purchase display with an Olympic-Utah themed header card.

 

I sweetened the pot by telling buyers that if they didn't sell at least ten books before the Olympics, they didn't have to pay for the order. Every one of them paid, though I didn't see reorders from them all. I don't think it's necessarily the no-risk offer that is so important. I think it's that an offer like this is contagious. If the sales person (in this case, the author or publisher) is so sure of her product's appeal, the buyer or owner of the shop will catch the bug.

 

This particular sales technique once worked on me when I was in retailing. I was shown colorful little odd-shaped lollipops I never would have put in my store otherwise, but the sales person suggested we could sell them as tie-ons in our giftwrap department.  BTW, I explain this in a little more detail  in my HowToDoItFugally book for retailers, A Retailer's Guide to In-Store Promotions .

 

[I always include an offer to help any way I can with images (not attachments), more information, and a media kit. My signature gives several ways to contact me. I always include a phone number in case the reporter is on deadline. And, of course, always include a thank you.]

 

Once you have written a few query letters or pitches, it becomes a lot easier to write another. And I save each new query letters with a different focus that I write so I don't have to reinvent the wheel if that a similar query should ever be needed again.

 

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  Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

Holiday Events, Retailers, and Your Book

 

I’m trying to get my Christmas shopping done. I’m even getting boxes ready to ship to people who live out of town (or in LA, across town!). That may sound nutty, but it’s a longstanding habit and one that came in very handy when I was in retailing and found November and December exhausting months. This holiday season is so important to retailers. Did you know that many retailers don’t break even for the year until about December 4^th. Thus their year’s entire profit must be made in less than 30 days?  That means the holidays are a great time for book sales...and for approaching a retailer with a profit-making event idea.

This same early-bird habit has worked for me as a writer too. Anyone with published books is, in fact, a retailer. Not exclusively, but they are whenever they’re selling books at seminars they’re speaking at, when they’re selling books from their own Web site, and when they’re promoting (retailers—even online retailers—must promote!). 

It goes to reason that the more we understand retailing, the better retailers we’ll be. But it’s even more important that this knowledge can be used to partner with retailers like bookstores and alternative retail situations where your book can be sold. Stand in a retailer’s shoes, and you’ll better understand how to let him or her know how you and your book can make a difference for them. May I suggest some of my own retail books (http://howtodoitfrugally.com/retailers_books.htm)?

I especially recommend the one for retailers on planning in-store events. Authors and books are mentioned in it as a way to up a retailer's profits. (-:. But if you substitute "author" for "retailer" here you'll be able to apply much to your own event marketing and you'll certainly benefit when you pitch an event to retailer. You'll be able to talk their language (language like "p-r-o-f-i-t-s").

 Find it here: http://budurl.com/RetailersGuide. You could even quote me in your pitch!

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second ediction of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Promotion for the Shy Writer and Newbies

In The Frugal Book Promoter , I advise the shy writer to promote by what they love to do most, writing. Yes, you can sit behind your computer and promote. There are a litany of ways for both publishers and writers to get the message about a book out there; they’re all listed in The Frugal Book Promoter with advice for how to do each of them. But the ones that seem most appreciated are the ones that authors (and their publishers!) can utilize from behind their own computer screens. I also include methods that are accessible to those who haven't yet developed a lot of contacts.

Among those are publishing in anthologies and lesser-known or beginning journals. The emerging writer has a better chance of recognition with these kinds of publications and the shy writer need never show his or her face or even pick up a phone. And "anthology" and "lesser-known" does not mean you don’t have to sacrifice quality. New or small or online does not necessarily mean that a journal isn’t respected.

One of my poems about morning glories and chicken poop was just published in Writings from the River edited by Frederick Bridger (www.frontrangereview.org). It is Montana State University’s journal (so it has the academic cache), but they specialize in a Midwest sensibility which this little poem (borrowed from my childhood experiences) had in abundance. By the way, they will soon be publishing under the name Front Range Review.

I had a similar experience with Mary, a journal put out by St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles.

I also had the luck to publish with a brand new journal Pear Noir . When one submits to something brand new, one has no idea of what to expect. It turned out to be beautiful and this note today is mostly to urge you poets and short story writers to submit to them. When I received this well-designed volume, I was surprised to see that a fellow UCLA instructor, Les Plesko, was also published in it along with quite a few recognizable names in the literary world.

So, one can luck out. But even if the newbie journal doesn’t turn out to be all that you’d hope, it is always a thrill to have someone think enough of your work to want to include it.

Keep in mind that payment for some of these journals is often very low. Sometimes they pay only in copies. I wouldn’t submit, though, if they don’t offer at least one copy in return for using your work. That feels a little scammy. You’ll want to see your work, after all, and you shouldn’t be forced to buy a copy to see it. In fact, that’s one of the ways you can determine the difference between an authentic literary journal and one that will publish anything to get unsuspecting authors to buy lots of copies or one big, thin-paged, unedited, and generally awful volume.

On the other hand, it is nice to buy an extra copy or two of a legitimate journal to support the people who cared enough to publish the very best--YOU.


PS: All of these literary journals will qualify for Poets and Writers'list of published poets (and other writers)--even if they don’t presently have these journals on their list of publications. It is a nice little literary touch to be listed among the nation’s greatest authors on that magazine’s site.
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Why Book Fairs Are Like Tulips

It may be dead-of-winter in your neck of the woods, but spring is creeping up on us. That means book fairs will be sprouting about the same time as the tulips. So put on your promotion hat and your get-with-it boots and be thinking about how you can take advantage of fairs. There are all kinds of ways and the most likely way, surprisingly enough, may not be to take a booth at a fair.

Here are alternatives.

 Share a booth with one or more authors. Or rent an hour's signing time with an organization like Authors' Coalition of Book Publicists of Southern California.

 Just go to the fair. In costume or not. Take fliers. Hand them out. Put them on the tables in the refreshment area. This works best for authors who have exhausted those on their local lists meaning there may not be one on the list who hasn't purchased their book anyway. It's also great for authors who haven't yet published.

 Pitch yourself as a speaker or panel moderator. If no one bites on your offer, the fair planners will know you are out there.

 Take part in value-added promotions that Authors' Coalition builds around the fairs it does. You don't have to live in the area or be willing to pay travel expenses in order to participate in them with us. The organization provides what might be termed long distance promotion. This year they'll have CDs for readers, a slideshow for those who are active speakers, a catalog that goes out by mail to booksellers and maybe even totes (more about that in about a month).

 As an information source - Read book fair fliers and catalogs. Research the names of the publishers - of the writers' organizations - of the services offered authors for promotion. Last year I ran across the US Postal Service booth and learned about the stamps they will print for you--with your book cover on them!

 If you consult, edit or provide any other book-related service, a fair may be the place for you. Authors' Den partnered with Authors' Coalition last year by providing fliers and a contest to win an iPod. Bet they got lots of new associates that way because the interest was huge.

 Your book club or writers' organization can help other writers by sponsoring a speaker at a book fair. The Tennessee Writers' Alliance sponsored me at the Southern Festival of Books , and they certainly did me a favor as well as -- I hope -- providing a service for the betterment of their writing community.

Now is the time to do your research, make your plans. Check out Authors' Coalition, whether you can make it in person to the LA Times/UCLA Festival of Books , or want them to work for you from a distance with their value-added programs. See if there's a fair in your stomping grounds that you can support or utilize. Learn how to make any fair work for you with AC's blog that explores what worked best for the ones they have done in the past (yes, they are your laboratory!).

Find a way to use a fair to reach readers, booksellers, the people you speak to and to cross promote. Writers need each other to make our efforts go farther and farther.

Happy writing, promoting and, yes, editing,

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, HoJoNews@aol.com
Find details on participating in the Authors' Coalition booth at the LA Times/UCLA Festival of Books at http://www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com/fair_booths.htm.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.