Article Writing: An Effective Way to Launch Your Book, Extend the Life of Your Book,
and Build Your Business

What: This tip sheet outlines the key strategies necessary for using article writing to promote the launch of your book, to extend the life of your book past its publication date, as well as to build your business.

Why: Article writing can be a very effective tool to help you sell your book and also—in the words of Arnold Sanow, a speaker we saw recently—“become a ‘little bit’ famous.” Becoming a little bit famous will help you build your reputation as an expert in your field, which will lead to more publicity, speaking engagements, and broadcast interviews.

Article writing can also be an important way to continue the marketing and publicity for your book long past its publication date. By repitching your book through regular article placements, you can keep the content of your book fresh and timely. Sometimes a critical mass of attention is needed for a topic to get noticed. Thus, finding ways to continue to build the readership of your book as you build your own reputation as an expert can pay off.

In addition, article writing is a great way to explore extending your content into another title or other concepts. Articles can even become the core content of a future book. This was the case with our new book by David Korten, Agenda for a New Economy. The concepts in the book were first published in an article David wrote for Yes! Magazine.

How:

1. Prepare your materials: prewritten articles and excerpts.

 You can prepare to pitch articles in several ways:

• One way is to write up four to six article ideas (two-to-three-sentence descriptions of article topics you can write on). Then you can pitch these ideas to editors, along with a longer description of who you are (i.e., why you are an authority on the subject) and a general description of your book. This method allows you to gauge interest in your article topics before you write the actual articles. You have to be prepared to put together the articles quickly—sometimes within a week—if you get interest though.
• Another way is to do what many of our authors do, which is to write five to seven “canned” articles ahead of time that can be shopped around to magazines and websites before the publication date of the book. We recommend a variety of lengths: 750 (most popular), 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 words. You might have a quiz or a checklist that would make for a fun piece. It is best to have a couple of articles that are overviews of the material and then a couple of articles that tie into current events. Some authors excerpt their whole book as articles, so ask yourself if an excerpted chapter would make an interesting article.
• Finally, as an ongoing strategy to keep placing articles beyond the initial book launch, set up a schedule to write one article a week or month that you can send to various outlets. The articles can include a combination of the nuts-and-bolts timeless advice from your book and content tied into current events.

2. Be aware of lead times for pitching outlets.

As you plan your articles, it is important to be aware of the lead times that are needed for placing articles. It is ideal to have articles published around the publication date of your book because then your potential readers will be able to buy the book while it is available through all appropriate distribution channels.

• For print publications like magazines and trade association publications (e.g., American Society of Association Executives’s Associations Now, American Business Women’s Association’s Women in Business), you need to place the articles at least four to six months in advance of when you want them to be published.
• For websites and enewsletters, you need to place your articles one month in advance of when you want them to appear. Since many print publications and daily newspapers are now available only online, the need for online content has exploded. You have many more opportunities to get articles published online than ever before.

3. Decide where to pitch your articles.

• Expertclick.com. This is a website that connects you with journalists and speaking agents. Become an expert in the Yearbook of Experts, Authorities, and Spokespersons. Membership costs $995 per year, but we have heard from several contacts that it is worth it, plus there is a 30-day money back guarantee. As part of your membership you are listed in the Yearbook of Experts and you can send out search-engine-optimized press releases once a week via a wire service, set up a search-engine-optimized press page for yourself, and access other services that allow you to connect with journalists. As a result, you can distribute your content to thousands of journalists who opt in to receive the wire feeds and it can also be accessed by tens of thousands of journalists who use the Yearbook of Experts to find experts in particular areas.
• Isnare.com. This is an article distribution website. Thousands of publishers have opted in to receive articles distributed by isnare.com. Isnare.com also submits your articles to thousands of article directory websites. See the partial list here. Anyone can submit articles to this site. It costs only $2 per article, or you can get a premium membership with further distribution and other services for $59.95 per month. Check it out!
• Troymedia.com. We heard about this website because Carol Kinsey Goman, author of our book The Nonverbal Advantage, is an HR columnist on it. Her column has been running in the Financial Post/National Post in Canada consistently, the Sun chain of newspapers, and various others newspapers, in addition to appearing on a number of websites. Troy Media has over 14,000 media subscribers, most in Canada but a growing number in the United States. The site supplies editorial content to the media on various topics, including human resources, which they either use as is or use to write their own stories. In 2008, the site’s circulation/audience reach was over 225,000,000. Troy Media is issue driven: as current and former journalists, the site’s editors look at the issues from a perspective that is familiar to the media. Contact Gary Slywchuk, editor-in-chief, (403) 835-8192, for more information. Gary has over 30 years’ experience as a reporter and editor for newspapers.

• Scribd.com. This site is fast becoming the YouTube of the publishing world with over 60 million readers. Berrett-Koehler was recently included in a story on it in BusinessWeek magazine. Berrett-Koehler is posting excerpts of all our books on the site, and the site just started selling our ebooks. As an author you should think about this site as an outlet to post your articles because of the huge exposure it can lead to for you as an expert.
• NetSpeedFasttracks.com. This is another great website where business authors can write articles and post interviews. It is a content-rich site focusing on professional development topics. This website is membership based, and its members are corporations. It is a wonderful place to get exposure to corporate readers. The site recently polled its users, and the topics they cared most about are coaching and mentoring, creative and innovative thinking, communication skills, conflict management, team building and morale, management of change, emotional intelligence, leadership development trends, conflict management, interpersonal effectiveness, and management of generational differences. The person to contact regarding writing articles is Dan Kennedy.
• Selfgrowth.com. We recently heard about this site, which is looking for articles on self-improvement, health and fitness, relationships, finances, home business, spirituality, sales training, and mental health. It gets one million visitors a month. Click here for information on how you can get set up to post articles. We recommend experimenting with the site, but don’t pay for anything until you see results with the free placements.
• Syndicatedwriters.com. This is a site we aren’t very familiar with, but it looks interesting to check out as well.

4. Use other ways to distribute your articles.

• Target websites for your core audience. Pick the top 10 to 20 websites that you want to distribute your content and offer your articles to publishers of those websites. Let them know the types of articles you have written and the lengths. Many publishers will jump at the chance to simply cut and paste content without too much fanfare. Pitch yourself as a regular columnist if that seems appropriate.
• Build your own email distribution list. As you come into direct contact with journalists and publishers who are interested in your content, build your own contact list so that you can reach out to them directly in the future. Then, as you write articles each month, you can email these contacts directly with your new articles. You can also feature the articles in your own enewsletter and offer them to people to use in their own publications/websites.
• Archive your articles on your website. Offer a “featured article of the month” on your home page with a link to past articles and an option for people to sign up to receive your articles every month. Make sure journalists know that they are welcome to use these articles for their enewsletters, websites, and print publications as long as they give proper credit. Click here to see how our author, Carol Kinsey Goman, does this effectively on her consulting services website.

5. Consider other outlets to help you become known as an expert and get media coverage.

• Helpareporter.com (HARO). This is a website that connects journalists and experts. You can sign up for free and receive three alerts per day with a wide variety of journalist’s requests (usually 15 to 20 per email) that you can follow up on yourself. Peter Shankman runs the site, and all he asks is that you do not abuse the relationship with the reporters. We know authors who have gotten exposure on Good Morning America from leads they received from HARO.
• PRleads.com. This is another website that connects journalists with experts. It receives about 500 email leads a week from journalists. This site will interview you and send you only the leads for the topic areas that you are an expert in instead of sending you every lead that comes in. It costs $99 per month to join, but you get leads to the topic areas that you are an expert in and you also get some coaching on how to respond to the leads. We have authors who swear by this service and have been quoted in major newspapers, in magazines, and on websites and have been invited to appear on national TV.

Help: A book we recommend to all authors who want to be more savvy about marketing and PR is The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, who also has a blog at www.webinknow.com.

Special thanks to Katie Sheehan, one of Berrett-Koehler’s publicity managers, for compiling the information for this month’s Author Tip Sheet.

Please let us know if you have any questions, feedback on any of our advice, or your own advice on how to use article writing as an effective strategy.

Thank you!

Katie Sheehan, Kristen Frantz, or Jeremy Sullivan.