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Online promotion, through internet marketing, can increase public speaking invitations, improve book sales and expose you and your book to thousands browsing the web. As an author, you need to learn to prepare online press releases because many print publications that include book reviews and articles about authors have become online publications. Editors of print or online publications are not likely to welcome hardcopy press releases as warmly as most newspaper and magazine editors did just a few years ago. Therefore, in preparing press releases and book publicity for online distribution, standard press release rules must still be followed if you intend to turn that book publicity into speaking engagements. Editors are not interested in promoting an author's book unless the author can show that the book changes people's lives for the better. Be sure to market yourself and frame your book in the press release as newsworthy and interesting to a large number of readers. Before your press release reaches the readers of the print or online publication you are soliciting, your press release must interest the editor. As you prepare the press release for online distribution, you must give the editor reasons to continue reading your press release. Good writing skills and knowing how to construct a press release are the first and most important ingredients to creating solid news, electronic or print. Before you begin writing your press release, set yourself some standards: 1) make a list of the facts regarding the news you are releasing, 2) calculate how to present those facts to an editor, and 3) determine an effective method of structuring what you have to say to the editor and the readers of the publication to which you are making your proposal. Continue to consult your standards as you write and produce your online press release. Start with a headline that is descriptive of the press release. Pretend you are writing a headline for CNN Headline News. Keep the headline brief, factual and not too cute. Newspaper and magazine editors don’t generally like cute. Then comes your lead, the statement that introduces your readers to the press release. The lead should be a short statement of "what your news is." For example, "Author's new book illuminates old angles on historic photographic preservation." Assuming the audience is comprised of photographers, this type of lead may interest them. In the second statement, give the author's name and a brief summary of the book. Now you must demonstrate to the editor that you can make a personal connection with the readers. Using the photographer's hook, talk to the readers through the editor about historic family photographs. Most everyone has family photographs and hardly anyone knows what do with them or how to share them. You may connect with readers through the editor on whatever subject your book is exploring--fishing, cycling, relationships, children, stamp-collecting or other topics. Communicating with the editor, show your connection to readers, the first step to finding the individuals in groups that will invite you to speak to their organizations about your book. When print press release requirements are satisfied, then you may move on to online marketing techniques. For those using online distribution for their press releases to print publications via online submission, there are a couple of rules. Submit text in an ASCII document or WORD attachment to an email message. ASCII documents are without formatting, such as bold face, colors and bullets. Wordpad or Notepad, usually loaded on desktop and laptop computers, are ASCII programs. To give the editor some choices, submit more than one good-quality photograph at 300 dpi in jpeg format Do not embed images in WORD documents when using online distribution. Embedding images in WORD documents causes data transmission problems and we all know what happens to problem online submissions. Send images and text in separate files, which can be done as attachments to email. If you have a website or you are using online distribution of press releases to publications, you may want to investigate PDF (portable document file). With PDF, you can design a self-contained document with embedded images that can be uploaded to your website or emailed as an attachment to your list or editor. Last, do not overwrite your press release. Using too many descriptive words adds to the word count of your press release but will not add to its communications value. In most cases, adjectives and other flowery descriptions are throwaway words and phrases for editors. The most basic rule of press release preparation intended to secure public speaking engagements is to provide contact information--name, address, telephone, fax, email and website URL. Failure to observe this and other press release preparation rules can land your online press release by the side of the cyber highway as unread litter where no group shops for public speakers. Visit my blog and read my article, How Internet Press Releases Help Me Make Money, http://sunnynash.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-internet-press-releases-help-me.html to learn more about free book publicity and public speaking. Sunny Nash, author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, is an award-winning writer, photographer, producer and public speaker. Nash’s work appears in the African American National Biography by Harvard and Oxford; African American West, A Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, A History of Black Photography 1840 - Present; Ancestry Magazine; Companion to Southern Literature; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways; Southwestern American Literature Journal and other anthologies. Nash is listed in references: The Source: a guidebook to American genealogy; Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Ebony Magazine; Southern Exposure; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others. Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s by Sunny Nash can be purchased at all major bookstores, domestic and international, as well as the Republic of Texas Museum in Austin, operated by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, whose mission since 1891 has been to preserve Texas’ historic landmarks such as the Alamo in San Antonio and Texas heritage like stories by Sunny Nash. Take a look at Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s by Sunny Nash http://sunnynash.blogspot.com/p/bigmama-didnt-shop-at-woolworths.html Visit Sunny Nash’s Blog http://www.sunnynash.blogspot.com
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