Time-Saving Shortcuts To Securing A Ton Of Podcasts For Your Book

Stop wasting time with ineffective outreach and discover time-saving shortcuts to securing a ton of podcasts for your book. Industry veteran Jackie Lapin, leader of Conscious Media Relations’ Radio/Podcast Tours, breaks down the exact steps and essential materials authors need to become an irresistible guest, helping nearly 400,000 authors grow their businesses and sell more books. She reveals the structure of a perfect, one-and-a-half-page pitch letter with an irresistible “hook,” the critical components of a comprehensive Media Kit (including the essential “20 questions”), how to write compelling, spam-avoiding subject lines, and the three key promotional items—your book, a free gift, and an upsell—you need to maximize your interview success and stand out in the crowded podcast landscape.

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Time-Saving Shortcuts To Securing A Ton Of Podcasts For Your Book

Podcast Strategies And Collaboration Insights

This episode’s guest is Jackie Lapin. I am actually coming to you from Author Nation. I’ve been there all week, meeting some really great people. James Patterson was the keynote yesterday. That was really exciting. A lot of fun stuff is going out in the author world. Jackie, I’m going to go ahead and introduce you. Jackie Lapin, for the last few years, has been the leader of Conscious Media Relations Radio and Podcast tours, and has helped nearly 400 luminaries, leaders, filmmakers, and authors grow their businesses and sell more books.

She’s created viewership and changed more lives by introducing them to up to 9,000 radio shows and podcasts, including such clients as Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Joe Vitale, Marie Diamond, James Twyman, Arielle Ford, Hay House, and more. She’s booked more than 10,000 interviews for her and her clients. Jackie, I’ll let you take it away.

Juliet, I have to say I’m always grateful to partner with you, to support you, to be here to support your community. Juliet and I love to work together. We do a lot of it, so thank you for your grace and the gateway that you provide. I’m here to talk about podcasts. You’ve heard that I do podcast radio tours, but what I want to do is I want to give you guys some ideas how you can do this on your own. As we wrap up, I’ll tell you a little bit more about what we do in case you’re looking for a shortcut.

In the meantime, what I want to do is ease your way into more podcasts and how you can actually start improving your ability to get booked. How many of you have been on more than twenty podcasts? A lot of you are still just getting rolling in your podcast efforts. Of course, podcasting is one of the most effective ways to get the word out on your books, and especially in books that are personal memoirs, personal growth, spirituality, health and wellness, the gamut.

If you’re trying to do those kinds of books, I got news for you. It’s really tough to get booked on newspapers and television. Podcasts are welcoming. They’re always open. What’s nice about it is there are now 4 million podcasts. If you’re saying, “I don’t know where my podcasts are. I can’t get on any podcasts,” you are not trying hard enough. That’s the simple answer or you need some skills. You have big general podcasts, and some of those are really hard to get on, but the best thing is to focus on a niche. Go forth in your niche and where you go.

“Focus On Friendly Podcasts”

However, niches are all kinds of things. Niche is are women, women’s business, relationships, business, but specifically business for entrepreneurs or employees. As they say in in the world of marketing, the riches are in the niches, and you really want to be focusing when you’re looking to get on podcasts in an area that’s going to be particularly friendly to you.

You don’t want to spend your time trying to hit pie in the sky, big numbers podcast, because they’re not going to take you in anyway. My friend, Marie Diamond, who is leading Feng Shui expert in the world and a coach to top worldwide leaders in royalty and television stars, and music stars, I’ve done podcast tours with Marie and we did well with her, but the biggest podcast didn’t start paying attention to her until she showed up with like 34 million Instagram hits. At that point, they started looking for her.

You’re just not going to get on those. You need to focus on the ones that are really friendly to you and your topic. Obviously, there’s the first place to start looking for your podcasts is your friends and the people that you know. Yes, you may be in a circle that has friends, but you also may be in a coaching program, or you may be in an organization like eWomen or you might be in a mastermind. You might be coached by someone who has a podcast.

There are people in your world that are prime podcast territory for you, and then you want to hit the low-hanging fruit and then move out. I want to talk about the materials that you need to get booked. The most effective way to get booked is a pitch letter. A pitch letter really is a one-to-one-and-a-half-page document that makes you irresistible to the host.

The structure of a pitch letter looks like this. The top of it is your hook, and the hook is why you should be on this show. Not, “I am so and so, and this is what I do, and I would like to be on your show.” That does not work. What you’re going to do is you’re going to hit them between the eyes with the compelling story. It might be your hero’s journey story. It might be something that you are doing that is really a fix for what’s going on in society or in the zeitgeist. It might be something that you have developed that nobody else has. It might be stories about the people that you’ve served, jumping in instantly and talking about dramatic results that they’ve had.

You are looking for a hook, and one of my giveaways for you is going to give you some ideas for what that will be. It used to be in the radio world where you could time things for a holiday because radio was immediate and you could say, “I’m going to do a Halloween pitch,” or, “I’m going to do a new you pitch.” The problem being of sometimes in that is that sometimes, your show may not air until after that day. Two, it might also be that somebody is listening to it a year later.

Crafting A Winning Interview Pitch

You can’t time things specifically. Let’s say you have an event coming up, you never want to say, “Now I’m proposing this around this event,” because when you get on the show, you’re not going to say, “I have an event on this day, this day, and this day,” because it’s going to be out of date. What you do say is, “Go to my website, check my events page, and you’ll see when the next one is coming up.” Very important that you should know that because otherwise, you’re going to date your interview. That strong hook needs to really get them in the eyes because if they aren’t intrigued in the first 30 seconds, they’re going to turn off. That first lead paragraph needs to be really impactful.

The second part of your pitch lever is why you, what are your credentials? Being the author of your book is clearly one of those why you elements. You’re an expert in whatever your book is about, but you can also then tell them about your credentials and your achievements and your awards and the results that you’ve gotten for clients or what other people have said about you. All of those things. You really want to back up what your credentials are to be talking on this subject.

The third part of the pitch is what you are really going to talk about in the interview? The reason that a host will put you on the show is one of two things. You’re interesting or you’ve got something interesting to say or you’re offering something to that audience that’s going to improve their lives. That last part of this is really going to talk about what the content is that you’re going to deliver. You’re going to put it in a paragraph and then you can use bullet points. Your audience will learn or your audience will discover these 4 things, these 5 things. It clearly spells out to the host what it is that you’re bringing to the table.

You wrap it up basically with the call to action. “I’d love to please consider me for your show.” You can go from a page to a page and a half. Shorter is better, but if you need that much space, do it. Our pitches are all page and a half. I tell people that I capture their mission, their message, their book, and their soul and a page and a half. Don’t just do it alone. Feel free to have other people read it and give you their opinions. People you trust who have a marketing orientation, not just your brother-in-law. Get somebody to look at it and see how that works.

“Podcast Introductory Sheet Guide”

There is another tool, and that is called a Podcast Introductory Sheet, and a podcast introductory sheet, if you really don’t want to get into the writing of the whole pitch letter, you can use this as well. It is a one-page sheet that has a bio on you, a couple of testimonials from other podcasters that have had you on the show and they’re raves about you. We’re talking bullet points here, 3 to 5 bullet points about what you talk about, what are the subject matters, and we do these for you. If you’re interested, you can go to ConsciousMediaRelations.com/sheets, and we do that. We also do speaker sheets, which is two pages.

Your cover letter would say to the host, you basically encapsulate that almost first paragraph like you would in a pitch letter. “Here’s why I think I’m an appropriate for your show. I listened to your show on such and such and I think this is a great match,” or, “I know you covered this subject, etc.,” and then, “I’ve attached my podcast introductory sheet for you to consider.” Those are the two ways that you can pitch.

Essentially, you got your pitch letter, you’ve sent that out. By the way, you can put artwork in the pitch, a copy of your book, cover an image of you. We also brand them with the name of your book at the top. We create a little graphic like that, but you don’t need to do that. You can just do dear so-and-so and you can copy and paste this pitch into the email that you sent. You need to have a great photo, a JPEG photo that you’re going to give the hosts once they say yes to you.

You should have a digital copy of your book in PDF form. The reason being that, fortunately, it’s changed a lot in the last couple of years, it’s gone to almost everybody wanting a physical book to now 75% will take the digital book. That 25% others are still going to want a physical book. Don’t send your pitch until your books are available and you can get a bunch and mail them or go into Amazon and send it from there. You need to have available books.

The last thing you’re going to really need is a media kit. The media kit is what you send once you get booked. Don’t send it in advance. You send it once the host says, “Yes, I’m going to book you.” In that, you’re going to have the following things. This is what we do. Part of what the package that we do for authors is the media kit.

The main release, which is what is this interview about. When I do it, I repurpose the pitch letter as the main release. The second page is your bio. Not two paragraphs. You want to give them a full page, page and a half of who you are. You want them to understand you and how you got to this place. Give them a full bio with a photo of you.

The third thing you want is an on-air introduction. Never leave it to them to decide how to introduce you. Juliet introduced me. I gave her that introduction. You want to make sure that you’re introduced in the way that you want to be introduced. That can be shorter than your bio, that should be only about 3 to 4 paragraphs max.

The next thing is critical. It’s your twenty questions that you want to be asked in the order you want to be asked them. Why this is important are two things. One, this is your roadmap. This is how you are taking the audience to where you want them to go. This is giving the host a simple, easy way to be your advocate by just using the questions you provide. You’re going to seed those questions with things like, “I have a great free gift for you on this matter,” and the question will elicit that answer. It’ll also basically encourage them to buy the book and why.

“Interview Tips For Authors”

Let’s talk about the three things that you need to have when you’re doing an interview. Let me finish the media kit, then I’m going to come back to that. The other reason that you want to do that is if you’re new to this game, having twenty questions is going to make it real easy for you because you’re going to know what’s coming.

There are hosts that are not going to follow that, but if you’re at all intimidated, most of them will, and you’ll know what’s coming. If you really need to build your confidence, you write out the answers to those questions. You don’t give those answers to the host, but you know what you’re going to deliver in each of those questions. It makes it really easy. It allows you to really know what you want to deliver. The good part about all of that is hosts are lazy, they’re going to use your questions and by the time you’ve done it, the third or fourth, fifth or sixth, seventh time, you are a natural. Not only do you feel so comfortable, it actually makes speaking from stage easier because you got your sound bites down.

The last thing you want in your media kit is what we call the learn more page. That is in bullet point, how the public can engage with you. That will be your book, you know where you can find it on Amazon, then it’ll be your free gift. We’ll talk more about that in a minute, then it’s going to be what your upsells are. We’re going to talk about that in a minute, and then your social media and your website.

That package put together nicely with a few pictures in it is going to suffice for the host and it’s going to prevent them from saying, “Send me this.” When you do and what we do is we put together a little Google Drive folder with the media kit, your photo, and the digital copy of the book. We deliver that when we confirm the interview and makes it really easy. There’s not a lot of back and forth. That’s a really simple way to do it.

Book Marketing Strategies Simplified

Let’s talk about the three things that you should have when you are doing a podcast. The first thing obviously, is your book. You’re going to want to be marketing your book throughout this. You obviously don’t want to be too salesy and over the top, but you’re talking about the content from your book. That’s an automatic.

The second thing you want to talk about is what your free gift is. Every author should also have a free gift because they may not buy from you right away and you want them on your opt-in list so that you can continue the dialogue with them and offer them new things, more things, and keep it rolling. The third thing that you want is what is your upsell? If you are doing more with your book than just giving people information, if this is a leading tool to some aspect of your business, you need to tell them what’s the next step.

“I have a coaching program, I have eCourse, I do a mastermind,” whatever it is that you are trying to get them in. Again, no dates, but whatever you’re trying to lead them to, you want to start promoting it subtly in the interview. That means that you put in a question that says, “What can people do if after they read the book they want to take the next step?” You build it in and that delivers it.

You need three things if your book is your business leader, when you get on those interviews. There are some people who have a memoir, they just want to share their story and they don’t care about the rest of this. If this is a business builder for you, that’s what you need to do. Alright, so we’ve finished media kits. Any questions so far? I’m happy to answer. Christie?

I don’t have a question, but I did want to just comment. I’m a co-host of a show we’ve been on for four years, and I have to tell you, when someone sends us the Google Drive link with the media kit, it is a gift because chasing people down for the information is a pain. It almost guarantees that they will never be asked back because we had to chase them. Yeah, that please do that.

I’ll go second on that. I used to have a podcast called Ask Juliet with new authors and I stopped it because none of the new authors had media kits. It was, “I need a headshot.” “Let me go get one.” “Can we put this off for a month?” It was all over the place. You’re not going to get a place on my show if you don’t have your stuff ready for us.

Effective Subject Lines For Pitches

You need to do it at the time of the confirmation of the interview. Do not wait to be asked or get closer to the podcast. When you confirm the interview, send all of that at the same time. It’s going to make you look like a superstar, just as these two ladies just said. Thank you, I appreciate that. Alright, so let’s talk about the subject line for your pitch letter. What are you going to put in that subject line that’s going to get their attention?

The first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to write guest for a show or a guest for your show because you want to call this out so they know it is not spam or it’s not something that is irrelevant to the subject. You’re then going to give them a highly compelling reason to be on the show. Usually, if you are offering information that’s going to enlighten the audience, what you want to put in that subject line is the outcome that they’re going to receive.

What is it that this audience is going to benefit, grow, and improve? What’s it going to do to make their lives better? If your subject line includes that, like guest for your show, Amanda Johnson, on this particular subject,” you’re going to get their attention. Our pitch letters, we tend to have long subject lines, but they get attention because we’re telling the host why this author stands out, what it’s going to do for their readership, their listenership.

Maximizing Pitch Deliverability Tips

That’s really an important factor when you’re sending the subject line to cut through the noise. That’s just a shortcut formula that will help improve that in your reception. Make sure, by the way, that you can individually send pitches, which is the ideal way to do this or you can do blast pitching, which is what we do. We send to 9,000 podcasts and radio shows every time we pitch one of our authors. We have a private specialty list, plus we have individualists by subject matter.

If you’re going to do blast pitching, the first thing you need to do is make sure that your CRM can deliver maximally to this audience. Make sure that you cleaned out all the deadwood in your list. Make sure that you’re complying with the best practices of whatever service you’re using. Nowadays, it is very hard to maximize your deliverability.

FYI, if any of you are have ever been on Infusionsoft, the latest mandate from Infusionsoft is if the people on your list have not responded to you for some reason in the last fifteen months, they will take them off your list and you cannot send to them. Google and Yahoo are making it harder and harder to get to people. You really need to clean up your list and make sure that you can get to folks.

The other factor is that you want to make sure that you have a good list of email addresses. How do you do that? The first thing is, if you are going to go looking for podcasts, you can go to the big pod catchers, iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and a number of them. There’s a lot of smaller ones or niche ones, but the big ones, you look for the niche that you are in, business, women, whatever it is, and go find the shows in that.

Let me caution you, don’t go for the big ones. You are not going to get booked on the biggest ones. Go for the middle or the lower ones because if you’re just getting started, you need to get your skills up, you get on the low-hanging fruit, that’s fine, but if you’ve got some skills, you’ve been at this a while, go for the middle range and find the shows that are right for you.

Now here’s the problem. In most cases, they’re not going to show you the contact information. They might show you the website. What you’re going to need, first of all, try the show website and see if there is either an email or a contact submission form. If not, go to the host’s personal email, personal website, see if you can find an email there.

The fourth choice is the contact form on their website. Your fifth choice is go to social media. You can obviously deliver your entire pitch in any of those places, but if you’re going to do it on social media, cut it down. Reduce it to a much smaller pitch, or you say, “I’d like to submit a full pitch to you. Here’s a little bit about what I do. How do I do that?” Those are the ways that you can actually find email addresses or get to these people and then build your list.

The other option is you have to subscribe to podcast services. They are more expensive and there are some podcast matching services, PodMatch being one of them. There’s also something called RadioGuestList, which is really cheap. It gives you a lot of stuff that circulates again and again, but you can potentially pick up some things there. I will tell you on PodMatch, again, it has a limitation after a certain point of time that you get things that are less relevant to you. Those are different ways to either build your list or start the context. Build a list of hosts that you want to reach out to. Ideally, pitch them individually, but if you do a blast, you can cast a wider net and see who shows up.

Targeting The Right Audience

You want to really look at these shows and see who their art target audience is and is it a match for who you are trying to reach? I could get pitched to be on people’s shows and periodically, I will just decline because it’s not the right audience for me. I have a second business that I adore and it’s called The Historic Traveler.

What it is, is an online destination for people who love history, travel, and historic novels. I give people three articles a week with focusing on a location, plus my photos from all over the world and book recommendations of what to read to make you feel as if you live there. We have an 80-page magazine. People periodically will extend an invitation and or they’ll ask me to pay for an interview and most of the time I won’t. If it’s absolutely right, I will if I’ve seen that they have a big audience and make sense.

The majority of people, if it’s way off base, I’m not going to waste my time. I’m going to focus on my audience, which is people who love those three topics. Women usually, although some of the audience is men, and people who are in their middle and upper years. That’s whom I’m going to focus on for this. You need to look at your books and say, “Where really are my peeps hanging out?”

Here’s one of the best things about when you get on somebody’s show. A lot of times, that is the beginning of a relationship. The next time they may invite you to be on their summit or you guys might do joint ventures. It’s a door opener for a relationship that can lead to other things. I highly recommend that you keep an ongoing database of shows you’ve been on so that you can go back to them.

Also, let’s say that you have a second book or you have a new topic or something like that, you can re-pitch the old people. If they loved you before, they may say, “Sure, come on back. We’ve got more to talk about.” It’s an easy hit when you’ve done, but here’s the thing, don’t try to pitch them again for at least six months. When people say to me, “You do a three-month podcast tour,” actually, it lasts about five months, “Can we start over again right away?” I tell them, “No, wait six months because you’ve already gotten the people that are most interested and they’re going to reject you if it’s too short a time period, but they’ll welcome you after six months and you can try it again.”

I’m going to tell you a little bit about what we do and if it’s a perfect match for you, let’s have a conversation. When you’re looking to get on podcasts, how’d you like to do that? Get a minimum 30 invitations without doing any work. That’s what we offer. All those things we were talking about, first of all, I read your book. This is not ChatGPT. I read your book, I write the pitch letter, I write the media kit, and then we send to, as I said, 9,000 shows at the same time.

We’ll send twice and our podcast tour manager will take over after I’ve written the materials and she will manage your tour. We have a done-for-you. We’ll do everything. All you do is tell us when you’re available and show up for the interview or we have a done-with-you. That creates more of your work, but it reduces the price.

Podcast Pitch Tracking Process

That works like this. When we send the pitch and we get the responses back, we log them in an Excel file on Google Docs. It’s one that we can all see and we’ll put in the information from the host, name of the show, where it airs, contact information, the size of the show, if we know it, what the details are, the Zoom or calling or whatever it might be, the website. All of that is there in this document.

We make an introduction between you and the host. You actually book the interview, put it in chronological order in that document, and then you basically send the reminder to the host a few days before. That’s something we would normally do if we were doing the done for you. If you take the back end off of it, it reduces the cost. The done-for-you is $8,000 for 3 months, but if you want us to stay on for the next 2 months, because we’ve already booked interviews in those 2 months, it’s another $700. It’s $8,000 for 3 months and $8,700 for 5.

The done with you is $6,000. We do have another version, and by the way, I didn’t tell you, the best part about both of those is that there is a guarantee of 30 invitations. You’ll never go away with less and we’ve never returned anybody’s money, just so you know. The other option is something we call the direct access path. This is for people who are on a budget, where I’ll write the pitch, I’ll write the media kit, but we’ll send from an address that’s your address and we’ll create an email address specifically for you that’ll come back to you.

When the host hits that return button, it’s going straight to you and then you manage the entire tour. It’s a lot of work and a bit of a fire hose sometimes, but if that’s something you prefer, that’s $4,000. I will tell you, it’s a lot of work, but at least you’ve already got the tools, you’ve got the media kit, and you can manage the process yourself. That’s basically what we do. If you haven’t been to our website, we have 90 testimonials. I encourage you to go on over and take advantage of looking at those.

Remember I talked to you about free gifts? I’m going to give you a couple of free gifts here that are going to help if you’re going to be booking your own podcast or you’re going to be already getting podcasts. The first one is called 20 Factors That Tips the Scale in your Favor to Get Booked on a Podcast. It’s going to give you some of those hook ideas. That is ConsciousMediaRelations.com/podcast. Grab that one.

The second one is when you really are starting to do the podcast and it’s the Guide to Becoming a Formidable and Sought-After Podcast Guest. That’s going to give you tons of great information about making you so irresistible that people can’t wait have you back on, or they see you on your shows and they want you so badly if they’ve seen you on other people’s shows. That is ConsciousMediaRelations.com/guest. Grab that one as well. Both of those are going to be really valuable to you and I encourage you to take a peruse through that.

“Promoting Interviews: Do Your Part”

Let’s talk about being a great guest. This is one of the things that I do address in there. If a host books you, you need to be prepared for the quid pro quo. You have to do your part. If they send you in pictures and content for you to send to your audience, you really have to do that. Whether you only have a social, whether you only have a newsletter, wherever it is, you need to get it out. Do your part.

Of course, they’re going to be promoting it to their community, but they want you to do the same. Some are going to want you to do it before the interview if it’s live. Others will tell you, “Your interview is going to air on this date. Here are all the materials.” Here’s something else that you can do. After the interview, if they tell you that it’s okay and you have to ask permission, there is an AI service called Opus where you can take the interview, put it into Opus. It’s going to chop it into little bits, put the words that you’re saying on the screen and you can put that out on social media.

I’m telling you, it is one of the most clicked on likely posts that you can do. People love those. I just did an interview where this guy brought me on to talk about the books that influenced where I went and what I saw. I talked about reading a couple of books, particularly Robert Harris’ Pompeii, and then we talked about my going there and what I saw.

We showed my pictures. It was a great interview. He gave me the video, we posted it and it got great response. He did a particular graphic on that brought it to life. Play the game and be a good podcast guest. I’m going to pretty much stop there and open it to questions. Let’s see if you have specific issues, questions, experiences, comments. I’m here to answer them.

I put a link to Opus.pro. That’s what she’s talking about. I think it’s $20 a month and you get a whole bunch of minutes. I do that with not only my interviews, but also when I’m on another show. Go over and grab that link. I wanted to share, so many of you know that in my first book, I was going through a nasty divorce, killed my ex-husband in it. It was very cathartic. My headlines when I sent out for interviews were how plotting a murder kept me out of jail. It turns out fiction pays better than felonies.

I got interviews like you wouldn’t believe from those headlines. Make sure they’re catchy, they match your personality because if you know me, I have a great sense of humor and sense of humor as well. Think about what fits your personality, because they’re going to be expecting that when you’re on the show, too, right, Jackie? That headline matches that personality.

“Sharing Stories And Lessons”

Sometimes, it’s the drama in your life that makes it. I love those headlines, by the way, Juliet. Those are great. Sometimes, it is drama in your life. I once wrote a pitch about a woman and I went through all these terrible things that happened. You couldn’t believe that all this happened to one woman. It was just awful. The line after that was, “If this woman can be incredibly happy after all that, don’t you think that she has something to teach you?” It got a huge response. Don’t hesitate to tell your own story and bring it to life. Make it compelling. The hero’s journey story, from here to here. I do a ton of that in the pitches that I write.

Manifestation Tips & Spiritual Insights

You really want to show how distinctive and different you are. That is the most important thing here. You don’t want to sound like every other book or pitch out there. If I had $1 for everybody who did a manifesting book, I’d be a rich woman. I’ll tell you my story. I’ve written two books. One was the best spiritual book of the year at the International New Age Trade Show. My first book came out right when The Secret was coming out. Guess what? It was a lot of the content related to The Secret. Didn’t know they were writing it. Universe has an interesting thing about getting the information out in multiple ways when it’s ready to come.

What was really unique, my second book was called Practical Conscious Creation: Daily Techniques to Manifest Your Desires. Seventy individual little articles and 70 tips on how to go about your day while raising your personal frequency. There were a million manifesting books, but none that sounded like that. When I got out there, I did 100 interviews. This was a year and a half after The Secret and the world had been done to death with manifesting.

My book did extremely well because it was a different take, a different angle on this common subject matter. I’m telling you, people loved the content because it was unique, even if the basic information was very similar in some ways. Look for ways to make yourself distinctive. That’s the really important word. Distinctive. How can you stand out from the crowd when you’re pitching yourself to a podcast?

I just wanted to say, this is the writer editor in me. Specific words work better. General words like, “I help people manifest,” for example, or heal, they’re general words. If it’s more like a specific thing, heal your body after surgery or something like that, something specific, it works better. Specific words work better.

The other thing is, too, you can use really strong average adjectives. What I didn’t mention in your pitch letter, you can also write this in the third person. If you’re at all hesitant to say, “I,” which you know is not really all that terribly advisable, you can write it in the third person and send it from yourself. When you do, you can use words that are strong and brave. “Her acclaimed book, her number one Amazon number one bestseller.”

“Mind-blowing novel on,” whatever.

Quote other people as well. One of the things that we love to do if somebody has got testimonials from somebody recognizable, and that’s important, we put it at the bottom of the pitch letter because it basically gives you an automatic credibility that so and so this caliber has endorsed you. By the way, if you are going to use testimonials either in your media kit or your pitch, you really need to give them a full name and or title, not Anthony B. Juliet?

I didn’t have a question. Does anybody else have questions?

I have a question. Do you have some examples of gifts that authors have given as part of their media kit?

“10 Tips For Success”

Yeah, when I did my first book, I had a recorded meditation called The Money Tree. It was all about seeing your financial abundance expand by having a tree that had money in your tummy and just grew all over you. People loved it. They jumped for it. Meditations are secondary to content that really informs people. This is harder with a memoir, but if you have something where you’re offering advice, you can do 10 tips on, the 5 things you need to know about, 10 things you shouldn’t do, how to stop from going over the cliff.

I used to do a webinar and I think it was called Ten Things That’ll Sabotage Your Speaker One-Sheet. It was like the fear of as opposed to the benefit of, so you can do either of those things. You can offer them any kind of digital product that can improve their lives, a measuring tool. How to tell if you’re verging on burnout, for example. That’s another kind of thing. There are lots of different types of free giveaways that will entice people in. I’m just trying to think what else.

Jackie, Rich’s book is about growing up with Asperger’s and now he’s a college professor who teaches English. He can really go along the lines of, “If I can do it, you can too,” and really encourage people with disabilities, people who think they can’t write a book. His book is very inspirational about how he has managed to be successful with that diagnosis.

Rich, I would give them something like 6, 7, 8, 10 ways to kickstart your career, your college education or whatever with Asperger’s, things like that. What is going to give them some really solid, do these, take these steps and it’ll get you on the right route. Make sense?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

By the way, Rich just won a BookFest award and I see Tess is here. Tess just won a BookFest award as well.

Congratulations.

Any other questions? All right, Jackie.

Can you use Amazon review testimonials? Yeah, you can. You could add them in. Absolutely. Thank you.

“Community Building For Authors”

Yeah, and Tess has a lot of them on there. You guys, thank you. Next month is Shannon Procise and she’s going to be talking about community building for authors. You can always go over to and register for that. I believe it’s the first Friday in December. Of course, you guys will all get invitations for that as well. Jackie, thank you. That was amazing.

Thank you for the invitation. Thank you, guys. If I can support you, just let me know.

How do they get ahold of you besides the Conscious Media if they wanted to talk to you?

Jackie@ConsciousMediaRelations.com is perfect.

Very good. All right, thank you. We’ll see you next time.

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About Jackie Lapin

For the past 15 years, Jackie Lapin’s Conscious Media Relations’ Radio/Podcast Tours have helped nearly 400 luminaries, leaders, filmmakers and authors grow their businesses, sell more books, create viewership and change more lives by introducing them to up to 9000 radio shows and podcasts, including such clients as Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Joe Vitale, Marie Diamond, James Twyman, Arielle Ford, Hay House and more. She’s booked for than 10,000 interviews and for her clients.

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