Process Pieces: How I craft press releases

A guide for writers, business owners, and other creative people with cool ideas to share but who are also afraid of annoying people

In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing one of the more nuts-and-bolts parts of my work: When/where/how I send out press releases, without hopefully annoying my journalist colleagues too much and still getting some press.

Give it a read and let me know what you think
(or if you have a totally different process. Or, if you’re a fellow journalist, if there’s anything you DO NOT LIKE or REALLY DO LIKE in relation to getting cold pitched).

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How to craft PR Pitches: A guide for writers, business owners, and other creative people with cool ideas to share

I used to be TERRIBLE at talking about myself.

Truly terrible.

I had a bit of exposure therapy in my PhD program, where we crafted elevator pitches to talk about our research and teaching (basically “turn that research statement into a couple of sentences, and be sure one of them is just about why the work matters”). That was HARD, but good, and started me on my path away from dreading any time I had to hype myself up.

Today, I feel confident talking about myself and describing my work to people unfamiliar with it, even when the stakes feel high. However there’s forever more to learn about the nuance of sharing your work, and I feel like now the greater issue is streamlining these conversations: Not because I don’t want deep, rich, nuanced discussions (those are the best) BUT because of the practicality of being a person who needs to get ideas in front of many eyeballs, and has a limited well of energy to draw upon to do it.

For a long time, I struggled with exactly how to balance customizing reach outs to folks with templates and systems. I want the people I connect with to feel the care and appreciation I have for them, and the interest I have in their work. I also want to be sure to have enough time to reach out to everyone.

Thus, my PR pitch template system was born.

I created this system a couple years ago, but my use has been sporadic until recently, not because it doesn't work but just because I was creating so many systems at once to streamline businesses, writing, etc. that it kind of fell through the cracks.

In a moment of divine/cosmic timing, I recently offered to share these with my fellow Fermenters Guild members, which reminded me that I hadn’t sent out a round of pitches in a while. And got me to revisit my templates and update them for the current suite of offerings I want to pitch this summer.

I’ve used this method to share my writing with folks: I work with an AMAZING marketer at Storey, Emma Sector, who does all the launch-related PR (thank you Emma), so I really only send these out for books when I want to bring some fresh eyes on something that’s been out for a while, or to share writing outside my books that might have local interest or something (e.g. if I wrote a magazine article that includes a local restaurant and want to make sure the city’s newspaper sees it).

If you’re doing your own book marketing, then this is good to do at the launch and then again after some time has passed.

In my case, I mostly send out press releases for Roots + Branches (p.s. I have a separate newsletter over there too), and the Culinary Curiosity School.

I use it to share new things, of course, but also to reconnect with folks about projects that have been around for a bit that are timely in some way, or that I’m just feeling pulled to draw attention to.

One important aspect of this work is assessment and iteration: You can go as much into the metrics as you want here, but at a basic level you want a sense of who is most responsive as well as the kinds of responses you receive.

If a lot of people are asking for clarification, that tells you to put in more details (and what kind of details) next time around.

Which is where the iterative part comes in: You will not be amazing at this immediately (I am not a professional marketer but I hear this is universally true from every marketing pro I’ve ever spoken with). That’s ok.

Most people will never write back. That’s ok too. Sometimes just seeing the pitch (or seeing your name in connection with a specific topic) gives a news journalist/podcaster/etc. something they mentally file away for later. In other words, you’re getting on people’s radars in ways you may not fully see (or may not see immediately).
Writing pitches gets you comfortable with rejection and radio silence out of necessity, and if you continuously reconnect to the emotion and energy around your excitement/why this matters/why you’re the person to do it, you’ll have a much better time.

The example docs below are all from my 2023 version of Writing Playground, but the format can be adjusted to just about anything.

These include: A sample email, plus a customizable press release template and a sample press release so you can see the template in action.

Ready to tell people about your book/cooking class/new product/whatever else?

Here’s what I do: