Press Release Writing Services for Authors, Experts and Businesses

Picture the books editor at a regional paper on a Monday morning. Overnight, a few dozen releases have come in from publishers, publicists, venues and businesses with something to mention. Features desks and trade reviewers face the same pile, and nobody there has time to open everything.

So they scan subject lines and first sentences, and they ask four questions. What happened? Why now? Why would our readers care? Who do I call to follow this up? A release that answers those four quickly gets read to the end. One that makes the editor dig for the answers usually doesn't get a second look.

The same mistakes turn up whether the release is about a memoir, a bakery or a software update:

• A headline written as a slogan ("A Must-Read Tale of Hope") instead of a plain statement of news.
• Adjectives doing the work that facts should do. Editors discount "groundbreaking" on sight.
• No date, no place and no reason the story is happening now.
• A quote from "a spokesperson" saying the company is thrilled, and nothing else.
• No contact name or phone number, and no way to ask for a review copy or an interview.
• A send list that has nothing to do with books, the region or the trade.

A well written release puts accurate news in front of the people who choose stories, and it hands them what they need to act on it: the facts, a quote, a contact and, for a book, a way to get a copy. Once you post it on your own website, it's also a dated record of your news you can point to later.

What it can't do is make anyone run a story. That choice belongs to the editor, and we'll say so in our first conversation.

Every release starts with a conversation by phone, email or video, whichever suits you. We're listening for the news: what's new, why it matters now and who it matters to. For an author, that means the book's subject, where the story is set, how it came to be written and whether a local paper would see a connection. For a business, it means what has changed and who it helps. By the end, we've agreed what kind of release this is, whether that's a launch, an event, an award or an announcement.

The headline states the news in plain words a busy editor understands at a glance. The subhead adds the second most important fact, often the date, the place or the reason it matters. Above both sits the release line. That's either "For immediate release" or an embargo, a note naming the exact date and time the news may run. The dateline opens the first paragraph with the city, state and date, so the reader knows where the news comes from before reading another word.

The opening paragraph answers who, what, when, where and why, usually in two sentences. Everything after it runs in descending order of importance, which journalists call the inverted pyramid. The reason is practical. An editor short of space cuts from the bottom, and a release built this way still makes sense with its last three paragraphs gone. Dates, prices and place names come straight from the notes you send, so check those notes before they reach us. A single wrong date is enough to make an editor distrust the rest.

"We are thrilled to announce" gives a reporter nothing to print. We draw one or two quotes from the interview, in your own words, and each one should say something worth repeating, such as why you wrote the book or what the new service changes for a customer. You approve every quote attributed to you, word for word.

For a book, the release carries a details block an editor or bookseller can copy: title, author, publisher, format, ISBN, page count, price, publication date, where to buy it and how to request a review copy. For a business, it ends with a short "about" paragraph that editors call boilerplate. Every release closes with one named contact, a phone number and an email that someone actually answers.

When the release is final, we send it to our list, and the send is part of the fee. You also get the final release as a file to send to your own contacts.

That file is worth using. If you already know someone at a paper, a station or a trade magazine, send it to them yourself, with a line of your own on top. A familiar name in the sender field gets opened. Put the news itself in the subject line rather than the words "press release", and paste the text into the body of the email as well as attaching it, since plenty of newsrooms won't open an attachment from a stranger.

A book is news when something about it connects with the readers of the outlet receiving the release. That might be the subject, the place where the story happens, the author's own life, or timing that lines up with an anniversary or a season. The release leads with that connection.

It then carries the book details block, a short author bio and a note that photos are available. Tell us your publication date as early as you can. Monthly magazines plan well ahead while local papers want news close to the date, and the right send date depends on which of them matters more to you.

For the full walkthrough, read our guide on how to write a book press release. If the release is one piece of a bigger plan, it helps to plan your book launch first.

An event release has a different job. It has to drop straight into a listings page, so it carries the date, start time, venue, street address, the cost or the word free, accessibility details and who to contact. We write it so a calendar editor can paste it in without rewriting a word.

Calendar editors work weeks ahead, so plan the send around that. A release that lands two days before a signing usually lands too late. If the venue is promoting the event as well, ask them for the exact event name and start time they're using, so every listing matches.

A finalist spot, a hardcover edition or the audiobook coming out each gives a regional editor a fresh reason to mention you.

If you're announcing an award, check the organizer's rules first. Some ask winners to wait for the official announcement, and a release that runs early can embarrass everyone involved. A sales figure has to be true and provable too, because an editor who checks it and finds it inflated won't trust your next release.

Most news needs one release, and $650 covers it. The quote changes when the job does:

• A second piece of news. A launch in March and a signing in May are two releases, so we'd quote the second one separately before you commit to anything.
• Articles alongside the release. Blog and SEO articles are $0.30 a word with a $240 minimum. A 1,000 word article to run on your site the same week comes to $300. A 600 word one would be $180 at the word rate, so the $240 minimum applies.
• Somewhere for the press to find you. An author website starts from $1,400, and the final price depends on what your site needs.
• A changed brief. If what you're asking for changes after we quote, we requote rather than add to the invoice.

We don't sell packages, so you pay only for what your news needs.

A wire service posts your release across its own network and a range of partner websites. That has real uses. Public companies often use wires for disclosure, and a wire leaves a searchable, dated record of the news.

What a wire report often counts as pickup, though, is your release reposted word for word on sites that publish whatever comes through the feed. That's a different thing from an editor reading your release and deciding to write about it. For most authors and small businesses, a long list of automatic reposts looks impressive in a report and does little for book sales or inquiries.

Whoever does the sending, the people worth reaching for a book or a local business usually fit on a short list: the papers and stations where you're known, the publications that cover your subject, the reviewers who handle your kind of book and the event calendars in the towns you're visiting.

A short list also protects your name. An editor who keeps getting releases on subjects they never cover starts treating the sender as spam, and you don't want that reputation attached to your next book or your next announcement. On any list, every editor who opens a release counts, which is why the writing has to earn the open.

A release published online can help people find your news, but it won't lift your search rankings on its own. Google's spam policies name links with optimized anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites as an example of link spam, so stuffing a release with links can do more harm than good. We write for people first and use keywords only where they belong naturally. If your goal is search visibility for an ebook or a retailer listing, our ebook marketing services are built for that job.

Western Reflections Publishing has been publishing from Lake City, Colorado, in the San Juan Mountains, since 1996. Our back catalogue is regional history, biography, memoir and Western writing. We approach a release the way we approach a manuscript, reading your notes for the detail a reader will remember. In practice that means asking what an editor would ask: what's new here, why this month, and who in the region will care. What you're paying for is judgment about which story an editor will run.

The price is on our pricing page, and your quote confirms it in writing before work starts. After that, the fee doesn't move unless you change what you're asking for, such as turning one announcement into two. There's no clock running while we talk, so a long interview costs the same as a short one, and there's no surprise invoice after the send. It's how we price editing and design too, with every rate published where you can compare it.

Press release work often involves news that isn't public yet: an unannounced deal, an award under embargo, a book whose publication date hasn't been shared. We sign an NDA at the outset, so your news stays private until you say otherwise. If the release carries an embargo, the date and time sit at the top in plain words, and we'll agree that line with you first. If the news involves another company, such as a distributor or a venue, tell us who else has to approve the wording, so their sign-off is on the calendar well before the send date.

If your news won't interest an editor, the quote says so, and finding that out costs you nothing. Then we'll suggest what would work instead, such as an article, a feature pitch or waiting for a stronger moment. The PRSA Code of Ethics asks its members to be honest and accurate in all communications, and we hold ourselves to the same idea. In practice, that means no inflated figures and no invented quotes.

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