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Authors using internet marketing and online press releases to create public speaking events about their books increase book sales, expose their books to thousands of web browsers, attract author publicity, get literary exposure and find consulting contracts, all of which help authors build a dream writing career. When basic press release rules are satisfied, move to internet marketing. Many print publications that include book reviews and articles about authors have gone online, not only to join the frontline of the cutting edge publishing frontier, but also to attract readers and to cut costs, especially in hard economic times. According to Nielsen/Netratings research, 83 per cent of readers who download and read magazines online have never purchased a printed copy of the publications they read online. A recent PR Week/PR Newswire survey of about a thousand newspaper and magazine journalists found that more than half of them forecast declines in print circulation and increases in internet publication. You can bet, in these digital times that seem to be leading to a paperless industry, editors are not likely to accept hardcopy the way newspaper and magazine editors did just a few years ago. It doesn't take a genius to see that hardcopy is becoming a thing of the past. However, press release preparation and book publicity for online distribution still need to follow standard press release rules, if you intend to turn that book publicity into speaking engagements. By the way, the book publishing industry is undergoing a digital transformation as well, which will be covered in more detail in later articles and blog posts. In many ways, the old rules still apply. An author must present a convincing argument to editors, in general, to get them interested in promoting an author's book. Unless the author can show that the book changes people's lives for the better, he or she should be prepared for rejection. At the very least, be sure to market yourself and frame your book in the press release as newsworthy and interesting to a large number of readers. Here is a serious word of caution. Do not approach your press release like some people write their email or social media posts. I have received some materials so poorly written that I had no idea what the person was trying to say. I gave up and finally deleted the mess. If that person was so careless about writing to me, then they didn't deserve to be read. People's time is too short and too important to waste on trying to figure out what you intended to say. As you prepare the press release for online distribution, you must give the editor reasons to continue reading. Good writing skills and knowing how to construct a press release are the first and most important ingredients to creating solid news, digital 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 first statement the reader sees that introduces the press release. The lead should be a short statement of "what your news is." The lead makes the person want to read more. In other words, the lead must be engaging, a grabber that summarizes your press release in one sentence. In the body of your press release, you must demonstrate to the editor that you can make a personal connection with the readers. Keyword rich text gives your press release the chance to be discovered by keyword and browser search engines. Remember, while enriching your text with keywords for the search engines, do not forget that you are talking to readers through the editor about your book. A human connection is necessary with the editor on whatever subject your book is exploring--fishing, cycling, relationships, children, stamp collecting or other topics. This same human connection may lead you to readers who will invite you to speak to their organizations about your book. Internet marketing for online distribution follows 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 and Notepad, loaded on most desktop and laptop computers, are ASCII programs. To give the editor some choices, submit more than one good-quality photograph of yourself and your book cover at 300 dpi in jpeg format. Do not embed images in WORD documents when submitting to editors for 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 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, emailed to your lists as an attachment or even printed. 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. In today's digital environment, you want to be careful how personal you get in releasing your information. Nothing placed on the internet can be guaranteed to be private or stay private, especially information that is posted on your social media networks. Write the press release well but do not overwrite. Using too many descriptive words adds to the word count of your press release but may not add to its communications value. In most cases, adjectives and flowery descriptions are throwaway words and phrases for editors. Run your spell check on the text when you have finished writing. Then read your work several times. Subtle errors can escape your eye as well as your spell check program if you happen to inadvertently substitute 'their' for 'there.' Authors need to learn to use the internet to their advantage. Internet press releases offer free publicity for authors' books. Visit my Blog and read the 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, an award-winning writer, public speaker, photographer and independent producer. Author of the family memoir, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, Sunny Nash's writing and photography appear 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. For look at Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's by Sunny Nash: http://sunnynash.blogspot.com/p/bigmama-didnt-shop-at-woolworths.html
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