If you’re an author and you want to get onto Fox & Friends (or any other show for that matter), avoid the Number One problem authors make when pitching.
Don’t pitch your book as the story.
In the April 11 issue of PR Week, Jess Todtfeld, an associate producer at Fox News, says authors sometimes make the mistake of pitching book titles, rather than a story that ties into it.
“My feeling is they’re saying, ‘Here’s a book and here’s a pile of press notes–you figure out what the segment is. You come up with an idea for it.’ That won’t happen because we get a very high volume of pitches. ”
He gets about 10 books a day in the mail, 10 emails an hour and probably 25 or 30 phone calls.
Another tip from Jess: He ignores any pitch that’s addressed to “Dear Editors and Producers.”
I did an interview with Jess and featured more pitching tips from him in the September/October 2004 issue of The Publicity Hound subscription newsletter which you can order for $9.