Book Coverage: It’s All About Connections — Or Is It?

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before: “If you want to get any attention for your book, you’ve gotta know the right people. It’s all about connections.”

While there’s some truth to that—humans do tend to prefer people we know to people we don’t—it’s not the whole story.

Take a step back and think about it. It’s simply not possible for editors and producers to meet all their coverage needs with people they know. If, for example, they have to produce 3 interviews a week, they’re not going to have 3 friends who have just published a book on their show each and every week.

Second, the sentiment as a whole is outdated. It comes from a bygone era in media when a set of gatekeepers determined access to a limited number of opportunities. Back then, if you knew someone who was booking a given show, that could get your foot in the door. If you could take an editor to lunch, your odds of a mainstream review shot up.

But the media landscape has changed: there are infinitely more opportunities now across traditional media and an explosion of new formats, which makes things so much more competitive for outlets. Nowadays, if you run a publication or show, your audience has innumerable options for their news and entertainment—so if you don’t give them what they want, they’re going to go elsewhere. A good producer or editor isn’t going to think, “my 40k subscribers ONLY want to hear from my friends and acquaintances!” She’s going to know her subscribers want the value and content they signed up for, so she’ll find the best people to deliver on that—which might be you!

At the end of the day, journalists need stories. Stories that will nurture a loyal audience of listeners, readers, and followers. Figuring out how to pitch your book with a compelling story hook is key.

At our sister company Press Shop PR, we’ve been doing book publicity for decades now—so sure, we do have tons of contacts and they come in handy. But for any campaign, somewhere around 75% of the hits we coordinate are with people we had no prior connection to; most of our success comes from people we found via thorough media research and reached out to for the first time.

So there’s tons that you can do with no connections at all—as long as you’re familiar with the basics of publicity. We rely on our research know-how and an emphasis on “story-forward” pitching for each and every project.