Lean Publishing Tip of the Day: Interacting with Journalists and the Media as a Book Author

If you self-publish a book or books, you may end up contacting or being contacted by journalists or other people in the media.

In this Lean Publishing Tip of the Day, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp shares some tips for what to do when you are talking with media professionals.

Tips For Contacting Journalists

If you're planning on contacting journalists, here are a few tips:

1. Keep a spreadsheet where you list contacts you find by name, email address, social media accounts, profile page, organization, and status (i.e. contacted, not contacted yet, etc.)
2. DO NOT send canned promo emails to journalists. They see dozens of even hundreds of these per day and know them when they see them.
3. ONLY send customized, focused messages to journalists. You should make it clear that you actually read a recent article of theirs that's relevant to your book or expertise, and that's why you're contacting them.
4. ONLY contact a journalists if you have something of real value TO THEM to share with them. Essentially, if you can provide them with a good quote they can copy and paste, they might cite you in an article, and you'll be on their radar.
5. Think about your goal as essentially introducing yourself and getting into their contacts. You want journalists who cover the same subject area (or an adjacent subject area) to think about you as an expert with something interesting to say, whom they may want to contact for future stories.

From the Leanpub Author Help Center | Special Note: Contacting Journalists About Your Book

Tips For Talking To Journalists, Media, and PR People Who Contact You

If you're contacted by journalists or media professionals out of the blue, it can be exciting, intimidating, or even scary, depending on the situation.

1. You can always say "No comment". Remember, what you say is up to you. If you're flummoxed or nervous or worried or feeling pressured, you can just politely decline to answer.
2. Stay on topic and speak professionally. Typically your hope is to get quoted, get invited onto a show, things like that - you want to convey the fact that they can trust you on a mic or in front of a camera.
3. DON'T TALK ABOUT YOURSELF unless you are the subject of the conversation. Typically the journalist is trying to cover an issue for their audience, and if they think you're just promoting yourself instead, they will lose interest in you.
4. With that said, you can talk about your book if it's relevant, or if you manage to make it relevant.

A Final Tip: Dealing With Mistakes

A rather bleak joke that basically anyone who's ever had their book or event or organization or themselves, or basically anything they're directly invovled in, covered by the media in a story, is that every story has at least three mistakes.

Misspelled names, wrong or wrongly attributed quotes, mistaken dates - basically anything that can go wrong will go wrong some of the time.

Dealing with this is obviously a case-by-case thing, but the most important thing to do is: FIRST, BE POLITE. Just contact the journalist or whomever you can with a calm, brief, professional correction.

This can be hard to do, but it's definitely the correct first step when it comes to correcting a mistake. Don't overreact - you want to maintain a relationship going forward, and hope that your being covered isn't a one