Book Marketing Tip #11: Join HARO, Help-A-Reporter-Online

NOTE:  In January 2018, an updated and expanded edition of The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide was released, offering 65 book marketing ideas and new "Deep Dives" sections exploring social media strategy, how to work with beta readers, and how to earn free press coverage. 

To download the new Smashwords Book Marketing Guide for free, here are the coordinates:

Amazon
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iBooks
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Smashwords

The new 2018 edition of The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide is also available as a serialized podcast on the SMART AUTHOR podcast, starting with Episode 10.

Click here to access all SMART AUTHOR podcast episodes.






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The information that follows on this page is from the 2013 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which will remain here for historical purposes only.


Book Marketing Tip #11:  Join HARO, Help-A-Reporter-Online

Each day, thousands of journalists across the globe are on deadline for stories they need to write, right now.  These journalists often need to interview experts for the insights that build their stories.  Merely because you’re an author, you’re probably more qualified than you think to serve as an expert on many topics.  Journalists love to interview authors, and when they interview you they’ll identify you as the author of such and such book, which gives you free publicity!  If you were a large company, you’d hire a PR agency such as Dovetail and pay them $8,000 a month or more to get you interviews (and press coverage) from these reporters.  But clearly, most authors don’t have that kind of money, nor would I ever advise they even consider spending so much, especially when there are some free publicity tools out there that allow you to do some of this yourself.  One such tool is called HARO, which stands for Help A Reporter Online.  HARO is a free service that emails you a summary of what reporters are working on, and the types of experts they want to interview.  Subscribe to this service today.  To read my review of the service on the Smashwords blog, go to http://blog.smashwords.com/2008/09/haro-great-publicity-tool-for.html .

Authors also use HARO for research purposes.  If you’re writing a non-fiction book you plan to publish on Smashwords, and you need to interview experts, you can post a query to the HARO list.  Experts will want to speak with you because if you include them in your book, it’s free publicity for them.