Book Marketing Blogs

Magazines – for magazines you’ll want to plan to pitch them 3 to 9 months out. The general rule of thumb is that bigger the magazine the longer the lead time.

Book signings – For booksignings in bookstores you’ll want to plan to target the manager or community relations manager about 3-4 months out. For smaller, niche stores your lead time probably won’t be that significant

Local TV – Plan to pitch your local television stations 4-6 weeks prior to your event.

National TV – depending on the nature of your topic I’d recommend going after them as far in advance as two months. If you’ve got a subject that’s making a lot of noise in the media there’s a chance they might start booking these guests much earlier. In those cases it never hurts to pitch too early!

Radio Interviews (local) Pitching them two weeks out should be sufficient

Radio Interviews (national) – the same rules apply, unless the show is syndicated in which case you might want to expand your pitching out by about 2 weeks

Newspapers (regional and national) pitch them one to two weeks out. Unlike magazines newspapers work on a much tighter timeline, often making their decisions the week of the story or (in some cases) only days before it’s scheduled to appear

Good news if you’re looking for another place to sell your book. The Borders/Amazon.com agreement will expire soon and Borders is gearing up to sell from its own site again. A good move in my book! Watch for the Borders Store online – opening soon!

Wooden Horse Magazine reported that the September 24 issue of TV Guide magazine would include life-sized hospital gowns, to promote the new season of Grey’s Anatomy. However, the gowns only went to subscribers in New York and LA, causing the Horse to observe: “Talk about target marketing: New York and LA – surely the twin Nose Job Capitals of the World.” We can’t say Nay to that.

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

Our favorite defender of truth and the American Way, Stephen Colbert, has a book coming out next month, I Am America (And So Can You!) So how did he write his first book? He tells USA Today: “First of all, I didn’t write it. I dictated it. I shouted it into a tape recorder, and then I gave it to my agent. He transcribed it and sold it as a book. I found out, after doing this book, that the real problem I had with most books was that they weren’t written by me.”

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

If you’ve ever been disappointed (or pleased) by a movie’s ending, it could be due to focus groups – who got the final word. It’s a strategy that’s been used in that industry for some time, but now it’s showing promise for books. New York magazine reports that Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, used a focus group of 200 for his book’s (Microtrends) cover. Out? A snowball. In? The Magnifying Glass.

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

As e-books become more popular, Shelf Awareness reports that more of these readers are using their cell phones and PDA’s to read their e-books. And e-books are no longer the province of sci-fi loving techies; women who read fiction and romance are propelling those titles to the top of e-book bestseller lists.

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

If you’ve ever wondered how many libraries carry your book wonder no more. Head on over to , plug in your book title and voila! A list of libraries will pop up that carry your book.

Want to know the U.S. population? Apparently you will not find the information on the U.S. Census Bureau web page – not because the information isn’t there – it is, but it’s displayed in red type across the top right hand side of the page and because it looks like an ad, we ignore it. Or at least 86 percent of those surveyed did. So says an interesting article from WebProNews.

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

Well, it’s not edible, but the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review has a must-read article titled Goodbye to All That; The decline of the coverage of books isn’t new, benign, or necessary. Quotable: “without books, indeed, without the news of such books-without literacy-the good society vanishes and barbarism triumphs.” Amen to that.

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

Forget Spam, now there’s Bacn (sic), which refers to email that’s not quite spam, because users actually want to read the contents, such as newsletters (perhaps our own Book Marketing Expert newsletter, anyone?)

And would you like some eggs with this?

Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.