Essential Information for Dealing with the Media

When you see a television interview, watch it carefully and you will see that some people have short, easy-to-digest answers while others tend to ramble. Also you will observe some people always manage to slip into their conversation about their key point or their new product without being offensive.

You may wonder how they pull off such successful interviews. It is not by accident. They are showing their own savvy skills with the media. You need the insights in THE MEDIA TRAINING BIBLE.

When I want to learn a specialized skill like media training, I turn to an experienced expert like author Brad Phillips. For years, he has been a broadcast journalist and worked with well-known broadcasters like Ted Koppel and Wolf Blitzer. His ABC and CNN experience combined with his years of working with top executives on the topic of media, make Phillips someone who knows the inside information about working with journalists and reporters.

Whether you need to know the basic ground rules to working with the media or insights on answering tough questions or just understanding the different types of media formats, you will find important information inside THE MEDIA TRAINING BIBLE. Whether you are a small business owner, a book author, a CEO or working at a nonprofit, I recommend this book.

Can You Find The Way?

I watch the news when I work out on my treadmill and that news is generally dismal these days. It's easy to fall into a negative way of thinking about your writing or the publishing world.

This week I received a fresh reminder in Gary D. Foster's newsletter, Religious Market Update where he included this item from a four-year-old Publishers Weekly: "Tough Odds Although the data is 4 years old, it is basically unchanged in ’08: 950,000 titles out of 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies, while just 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Only 10 books sold more than a million copies in ’04. Fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000. Nearly 200,000 new titles are published each year. (Publishers Weekly, 7/16/04)"

My encouragement to you is not to dwell on the statistics but look for a way to be the exception and succeed. It will take some diligent searching and trial and error on your part but it is possible. As a writer, your first task is to craft an excellent product with riveting page-turning excitement (whether fiction or nonfiction). Then once you have that product, you need to figure out how to reach your audience. Understand that more than 50% of the books sold are purchased outside of the bookstore. You will need to tap those non-bookstore sales channels.

Some times you can look at successful people and wonder if they know anything about failure. Just take two minutes and listen to what third baseman Brooks Robinson, newscaster Ted Koppel and singer Amy Grant have in common. Or watch what author Caitlin Friedman says about the challenges and opportunities in today's market.

It does not happen overnight but takes persistence and determination to find your way through the publishing maze.

As another resource for you, look into this link which gives 100 useful search engines for writers. I will not gloss over the truth that the days ahead can be challenging for writers yet there are ways to achieve your goals. Are you determined to find them?