What's your Pitch?

If you want to have television and radio interviews, you need to pitch to producers. A lot of sources will tell you to find what's hot in the news and find a way to weasel in on the story.

So, let's say you wrote a novel about an earthquake and suddenly San Francisco has its long-awaited shake down. Hmm, sounds like CNN might be interested in having you on as a guest. Should you pick up the phone and demand that your publicist call them?

Well…, hmmm, I don't recommend it.

This might sound a little silly to you, but you'd be surprised at how many authors call their publicist and request something like this. Chances are, however, that CNN will be able to find a real seismologist. Chances are also equally high that the viewers would be more interested in watching said seismologist explain why the earthquake was a certain magnitude, then listen about how you came up with the concept of writing a novel about an earthquake.

Another mistake that writers can make is to focus their pitch solely on their writing. Because every author writes, interviews about the writing life are not going to stand out. Unless you typed your manuscript with your toes, or were forced to pen your Magnum Opus on a park bench in NYC because you were homeless, why not make your Q&A stand out from among the other author press kits?

When looking for radio, magazine and television opportunities, the best tip I can give you is to make yourself interesting to their viewers or readership.

So, let's take our scenario earthquake book and consider this for a bit. For our purposes, let's also pretend that San Francisco is still standing.

You could try pitching something like this:

Is San Francisco really ready for the big one?

Nearly a million people live in San Francisco yet have no idea how devastating the expected earthquake will actually be. John A. Doe was shocked by what he discovered during his research for his novel, Earthquake—The Big One, and your listeners will be too. For a start, did you know that there are millions of little pockets of fossil fuel waiting to implode on us? The Queen of the Pacific has never been closer to sinking to the bottom of the ocean. I propose a guest appearance with John, where he'll tell us where the fiction ends and reality begins.


Okay, so I’m feeling a little tongue-in-cheek tonight, but you get the idea.