Having a book signing/reading is no fun, if no one comes. Since this is a smaller town, I put up flyers. And I practiced writing press releases for the local paper.
What Is in a Press Release?
Having never really written a press release before, I wasn’t sure. I have read a few in the local paper and in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday edition.
They seemed mostly to say what was happening and something about the author. So I tried writing a short piece with those things in it.
How Long?
When I called the local paper, the person on the phone said they would fit something in, trimming what I wrote to fit. That sounded like a short piece which is 300 to 400 words to me.
So I wrote a 400 word piece. It was hard to do as I was talking about me. And I sent it in.
What Happened?
The paper wanted only 300 words. So someone cut out 100 words.
I expected that. What I didn’t expect is how they were cut off. The person did not read the piece, just hacked things out so some parts of it didn’t make sense.
What I Learned
Writing press releases is not easy for several reasons. One is writing about myself. I can get past that by pretending to write about someone else.
Another is making sure all of the important information is given right at the beginning. That part is not cut out.
The third thing I learned is to edit the piece myself down to 300 words. That way the printed piece will look more like what I wrote, not what someone else left when they hacked it off. Hacking is not the same thing as editing.
Writing press releases is an important skill for any self published author to have. It is one way to let potential readers know about any book events the author has planned.
