Boost your book’s visibility with these 4 publicity article idea tips!

Get publicity for your book by pitching article and segment ideas that work for the media, podcasts, and blogs. Use these 4 publicity article idea tips to generate killer options.

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Associates links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, I will receive a couple of pennies (at no extra charge to you).

A neighbor friend recently sold her home and moved into a smaller independent living apartment. Every time I saw her while she was packing up – and every time I see her now that she’s moved – she says, “I wish I had started so much sooner. Don’t make the same mistake I did if you ever think about downsizing!”

Her experience gave me all kinds of publicity-generating article ideas about downsizing for authors of books on home organizing, including:

• 5 mistakes retirees make before downsizing
• Can’t take your collections when you move? Here’s what to do with them
• How to avoid overwhelm when starting to downsize
• Can an estate sale help you downsize before a move? Here’s what to know

Each of these topics would work well for a newspaper or magazine article, TV talk show or podcast interview, or blog Q&A.

Getting publicity — news media exposure — for your book is all about generating article ideas and segment concepts that will resonate with the media outlet’s audience.

Publicity requires proactive pitching

You present — “pitch” — those ideas to the right media outlets as a way to get interviewed. You’re identified in the article or segment as the author of Insert Your Book Title Here. Your book, of course, is the credential you need to be interviewed on that topic.

Many authors in full-on promotion mode understand this. They know that simply writing a book isn’t enough to attract media attention. These authors realize they have to be proactive and contact the press with newsworthy angles.

They get it.

What they sometimes struggle with is generating article and segment ideas they can use to snag interviews that will get them that priceless media exposure. (Publicity is considered 10 times more effective than advertising.)

Do you wonder what you can pitch to the press, too? Here are four publicity article idea tips that will jumpstart your brainstorming.

4 publicity article idea tips

Generating the kinds of ideas that work isn’t as hard as it might seem. For the most part, it involves doing two things:

• Studying your target media outlets to learn what kind of content they use.
• Re-visiting your book with the media outlet’s audience in mind to identify how the content can help them.

Presuming you’ve done the work to understand what kind of content your top publicity targets use, we’ll focus here on how to generate those ideas you can start pitching immediately. Then I’ll share a few examples from my inbox.

PAUSE: The following information is for nonfiction authors. Fiction writers, I’ve got help for you in “Finding the hidden news hooks in your fiction.”

Start by adopting a “service” mentality. Ask yourself, “How can I help the newspaper/magazine/website/radio talk show/TV talk show/podcast/blogger’s audience?”

With that in mind, set aside some time, grab a pen and paper, and do the following:

1. Examine your book’s table of contents.

Many authors can turn each chapter title into an article or segment idea.

For example, the photo on the right shows the table of contents for my review copy of You Get What You Pitch For.

One chapter is “Understand Their Pain (and Be the Cure).”

We can turn that chapter title into this article idea: “5 ways to identify your customer’s problems so you can provide solutions.”

2. Capture the questions you hear most about your book’s topic.

If the people you’re talking to about this subject have the same questions over and over, others will, too.

Turn those questions into article and segment ideas.

Maybe the author of a book on how to create new habits keeps hearing, “I know I need to develop better habits, but I don’t know where to begin.” That might be the genesis of “4 proven and easy ways to start a new habit.”

3. List the problems your book helps solve.

Returning to what’s on top of my desk right now to provide an example, I’m looking at my longtime friend Sue Hertz’s book, Write Choices: Elements of Nonfiction Storytelling. (I read it; I love it.)

Sue has told me while the book helps nonfiction writers learn how to cultivate their storytelling skills, it has resonated with memoir writers in particular. Keying in on that, and thinking about the struggles non-writers might have telling their own stories, here’s a topic idea: “How to begin telling your life’s story when you don’t know where to start.”

4. Ask your favorite AI tool for help.

It’s all about the “prompt” when you ask an AI tool for help.

Provide as much specific information as possible when prompting the tool for publicity article ideas for your book. Tell it what you want it to do, and provide the information it needs to generate something useful.

Here’s an example, going back to the beginning of this article where I referenced authors of home organizing books. My prompt might be something like this:

I’d like to get more publicity for my book, “Home Organizing for the Chronically Unorganized.” I want to propose article ideas to the media that are related to my book and that will interest a general audience. My goal is to be interviewed as an expert source. For this project, I’d like to focus on helping people who are downsizing before moving to a smaller location. As background information, I’ve pasted my book’s table of contents below. Please provide 7 article ideas about downsizing before moving to a smaller location that you think the media in general might be interested in.

Note that while I don’t see any harm in providing your table of contents if you think it will help generate more useful output, I don’t advise uploading your entire manuscript to an AI tool. Your book’s content could be used in answers to other people’s prompts.

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You’ve got all the information you need to use these publicity article idea tips to create a list of angles that will resonate with the press. They’re in your book, brain, and files. When will you make time to brainstorm?

Publicity article ideas from my inbox

I receive a lot of email pitches from publicists and others. Here are several book-related article ideas from my inbox that show how this works.

For the author of Get Your Head Out of Your App: A Psychic’s Guide to Attracting and Keeping True Love: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, national psychic shares 6 secrets to finding true love.

For The Power of Positive Leadership: How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World: Can a negative leader become a positive leader? Seven leadership tips that make people feel great and achieve incredible results.

For Crunch Time: How To Be Your Best When It Matters Most: 6 ways to perform like a champion under pressure.

For Upside: Profiting from the Profound Demographic Shifts Ahead: 7 top trends that will shape the coming decade.

Just one rule

The only rule for this process is simple: The article idea must have a direct connection to your book.

That’s because your book is your credential with the press. It’s what qualifies you to be interviewed about the article or segment idea. If there’s no direct connection, there’s no reason to interview you.

You’ll find that necessary connection when you use any of these publicity article idea tips.

Not sure how to write a “pitch” letter with your article or segment idea? Get a pitch letter template and a sample of one that got results in “Build Book Buzz Publicity Forms & Templates.” This collection of fill-in-the-blanks forms and actual samples offers everything you need to pitch the media, craft your author press kit, and snag news media attention. Get all the details here.

What’s your book about, and what article idea can you pitch for it? Please share both in a comment below.

(Editor’s note: This is an updated and expanded version of an earlier article.)