How to Hustle for Book PR

It's one thing to write a book. It's another to publicize and promote it.

On January 12, my first book, Found It: A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs, comes out. It comprises 51 chapters in two parts, the first on how to better run your business and the other on how to do it while raising a family. It literally came to me in the night. I wrote fast. I wrote furiously. And three weeks later, I had a manuscript in hand.

After the manuscript sat with an agent for about 15 months, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I created a publishing company, Piggott Press, and found a distributor (three cheers for Small Press United!) Then I hired an editor. Fortunately, my editor was the best thing that ever happened to my book. Unfortunately, the process took about five to six months -- a million years for this impatient entrepreneur. A little cover design, a little book layout, and poof! A book was born.

Now, I'm not one to shy away from marketing solid work. Particularly work that I think will help a lot of entrepreneurs. But what with the current state of our media, the job of marketing a book -- particularly one's own book -- is a job that neither pays well nor sees an end in sight. Here's why:

1. Print. There are the big guns, like The New York Times or The Chicago Tribune. Or People Magazine. Or Inc. Magazine. And then beyond them are the local and regional newspapers and magazines. And then the niche magazines and even the fanzines. Just stop by Barnes & Noble's magazine section to see what I mean, for starters.

2. Blogs. If I started to recount the number of blogs there are to target online, I'd probably be reduced to weeping before too long. Fortunately it's easier to search by name or by niche. And particularly for my book, there are a plethora of blogs about moms and motherhood to contact. Blogs are a bit more interactive than the print outlets, for the most part, but far more numerous. And it's very hard to tell the real rapport that a blog has with its audience and vice versa. What sounds and looks like a great outlet may very well be a bad place to be featured.

3. Online Magazines and Newsletters. Some entrepreneurs may zip right past these outlets, particularly those "newsletters." But in all honesty, this is one of my favorite areas to hit. If a newsletter has a subscriber base, it's already targeted to their needs, wants and desires. It's an incredible place to capture the attention of would-be buyers. And not unlike any of the above outlets, there are boatloads of them.

4. Radio shows. There's traditional radio. And digital radio. And BlogTalkRadio.com's hundreds of niche shows.

5. TV. Of course, The Colbert Report takes the top… and then there are the daytime talk shows, the late shows, and the news shows in-between. Reality shows and shows in development, and then local and regional news shows that work with their national counterparts. (Hey NBC, got any spots for this author?)

It's a doozy. So I made the wise move of hiring RAW Marketing to help me wade through the myriad media outlets. But even upon hiring a professional team, there is no rest for the weary -- I'll work harder on promoting this book on my book tour and by doing speaking engagements than I did at any point during the writing of my book. Wish me luck. And then please contact me for an interview on your blog. 

Jill's book is also available on Amazon

Jill Salzman

Jill Salzman is currently growing her third entrepreneurial venture, The Founding Moms, the world’s first and only kid-friendly collective of monthly meetups for mom entrepreneurs.  A graduate of Brown University and law school, she started a music management firm and then launched a baby jewelry company before creating her current venture. Jill has been featured in national media outlets including People Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Daily Candy Kids, NBC5 and WGN TV. She is the author of Found It: A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs, a columnist for NBC Chicago,  and she gave her own TED talk on 11/11/11. In her spare time, Jill enjoys kloofing, baking, and erasing her daughters’ crayon artwork from the kitchen walls.

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