One Thing That Works For Me with guest Audra Jennings: A Good PR Inquiry Email

 

 

 Good Monday morning, Seekerville! I (Carrie) am here to introduce today's guest for this month's 'One Thing That Works For Me' series. Please join me in welcoming my friend, publicist Audra Jennings, as she shares the importance of a good PR inquiry email!

 

Your book baby is due soon, and you’re preparing for its launch into the world. You know you need PR and marketing help, so you start reaching out to publicists and blog tour groups to learn more about their services. What do you need to provide in your inquiry email to let them know more about you so that they can determine if they are a good fit for you?

 

There are a number of publicity and tour companies out there who promote books, but each have their specialty and know what the reviewers and media they work with like and don’t like and whether they are the ones who can help you be successful. Not everyone may be the best fit for you and/or your book, and you want to make sure you’re compatible. For that reason, it’s always best to send certain information to them to let them know more about you and your book, similar to making an inquiry to an agent, rather than sending an email that simply says, “Can you send me more information about your services and rates?” (If you have never sent an inquiry into an agent, some of these tips may help you there.) 

What should be in that first email to a PR company?

 

1. A professional presentation

 

Make sure you read over your email for spelling and grammar mistakes, and please use punctuation. I’ll be the first one to admit I could use some proofing in emails, and I’m not going to make judgments on accidental uses of it’s instead of its because I had to go back and fix that somewhere while writing this post. However, at least read over and try to put some writing effort into your email. It doesn’t give your best first impression as an author if your email is incoherent or doesn’t use periods. Just remember, this isn’t a text to a friend.

2. Some information about you

You don’t need to give your life history obviously, but you should introduce yourself. Who are you? What have you written? What is your passion? Why did you write this book (especially if you write non-fiction)? 

3. The title of your book

This might be a given, but I’ve gotten some interesting emails. 

4. The official description of your book/back cover copy 

This will tell what your book is about in a nutshell and tell us the basics of what we need to know about it. A publicist will be able to read this and know if they think there will be interest in your book from media and reviewers and be able to help you. A publicist also needs to see if they can connect with your book in order to promote it. (Remind me to come back sometime to talk about why good back cover copy is really important.)

5. The book cover

Like the song from Mary Poppins Returns, “The cover is not the book…” However, a cover does make a first impression with readers. It’s something we want to see in getting to know your book. 

6. Publisher

This will help me know more about how to advise you. There are some things we are going to need to address or talk about if you were doing this on your own without a publisher’s support. A publicist may have worked with your publisher before and may know how to answer some of your questions based on this answer as well.

7. Release date

Sharing your release date gives a timetable. There are aspects of PR and marketing that take some lead time, so knowing when your book is releasing will help your potential publicist advise you on what needs to happen and when or how quickly they can get a blog tour on the schedule. There are also times of the year when there are more releases than others, and they may not have the availability to take on a project within a certain timeframe.

8. Your website

In addition to what you share in an email, we want to go find some more information and look around, maybe see what other books you have released. (You really should have a website if you don’t, but that’s another post for another time.)

9. Your social media links

  

Like your website, we do want to be able to find you. 

 

10. Your goals and expectations 

 

Looking to do some podcasts? Are you looking for lots of online reviews? Need help with your social media? Want to take over social media? Hoping to get on Good Morning America? Won’t be happy unless you sell 100,000,000 books (that was an interesting email). Different companies and individuals provide different services, so may or may not be able to help you with need. It may be that you need help from a couple of places.

If you don’t know what you need, that’s ok. You can say that too. We can take a look at all of this information and make suggestions of what we think will work well for you.

Yes, that is ten things for one email, but isn’t really a lot when you look at it. Most of this you would probably include anyway. Best wishes on your new book launch! 

 

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Audra Jennings is a freelance publicist in addition to working on staff with a Christian publisher as a part of the marketing team managing publicity and social media. She has worked in PR for almost twenty years. Although she really does love to sleep, she doesn’t really seem to get much of it because outside of her PR work, she has a side business with her dad, The Crafty Dad and Daughter. In the fall, they travel all over the DFW area on the weekends doing craft fairs. Claiming for the longest time she was going to turn into Ouiser from Steel Magnolias in her old age, she crossed the line into gardening this year and started growing tomatoes. Don’t worry though, she doesn’t have a dog that’s losing its hair (she doesn’t have a dog at all). Audra lives in Corsicana, TX. Visit her on her website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Audra speaks truth, y'all! We'd love inquiry emails like this at JustRead Tours, too!
So helpful & saves all of us (you & the team) a lot of time.

 

What questions do you have for Audra about crafting a good PR inquiry email?