Why Publicity Builds Legitimacy

by Shel Horowitz

Why is it important to get news coverage? Of course, you hope that people who see the article or hear/watch the interview will buy your book. But the real payoffs continue long after the paper is recycled, the interview is forgotten.

People need ways of sorting the good stuff from the junk--especially in our oversaturated age, with over 100,000 new books published each month just in the U.S., and tens of thousands more flooding in from other markets. Since even a really avid reader can only manage about three books a week, tops (or 150 or so in a year) and most people will read only a handful in a year, your audience wants a way to know which books are good.

When that reader gets to your website and sees that you've been covered in famous publications...interviewed on dozens of shows...gotten endorsements from prominent achievers in your field (and from ordinary readers like them)...all these things work to build that all-important credibility with the reader. With all those reasons to take a chance on you their unfamiliarity with you as an author becomes much less of a barrier.

Also, in most cases, these kinds of credentials establish your credibility *with the media.* Reporters and editors will know, first of all, that you are worth talking to because all these other publications and stations and websites found you worth covering--and also that you're reasonably comfortable being interviewed and won't freeze up over the air. So they're more likely to call you as a source; and publicity builds more publicity. (The exception: some of the largest TV shows won't want you if you've been aired by their direct competitors--but that's pretty much only an issue for shows like Good Morning America and the Today Show.

Shel Horowitz walks you down the path from unpublished writer to well-published and well-marketed author. A publishing consultant and book marketing writer, he’s helped several writers publish award-winning books. Several of his own 10 books have won awards and or been resold to foreign publishers, including Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, which was a category bestseller on Amazon at least 34 separate months.