Part IV from my interview with Alex Carroll of RadioPublicity.com:
The format for your news release:
* Upper left: Available for interview
* Upper right: contact and phone number
* Headline: the most important thing
* Subhead: added reason to book the author
3 columns: Print in color if possible:
* Column 1: bullet box teasers
* Column 2: photo of book plus interesting statistics in bulleted paragraphs
* Column 3: author bio plus photo of author
Doing your phone pitch, some hints:
* Keep track of your phone calls.
* Keep your pitch short.
* Leave one voice mail. No more than one.
* When you call the second time, hit 0, talk to the operator, and ask that the producer be paged.
* Give a short pitch to the producer.
* Let him or her know how you are going to send the package. E.g.: Watch for the big red envelope in the mail!
* Follow-up in a week by phone.
