Why most Oprah fans need an ebook on how to pitch

Women’s Wear Daily says the staff at “O, the Oprah Magazine” isn’t pleased with Susan Harrow’s new ebook “Get into O Magazine.” And WWD doesn’t seem to be either, based on this review.

But reviewer Amy Wicks doesn’t present a very convincing argument. Some of Susan’s “secrets,” she says, are “relatively commonsensical topics” that anyone can learn just by picking up the magazine, or referring to the “O” editorial calendar. 

And she objects to the ebook’s “eyebrow-raising price” of $197. Instead, she suggests that people pay $18 for a one-year subscription to the magazine and learn essentially what’s in the ebook.

If only it were that easy.

If Amy could sit at my desk for just one week, taking phone calls and answering emails from people who are desperate to either get onto Oprah’s TV show or into her magazine, she’d understand why Susan wrote the ebook. Most people who contact me:

—Can’t pitch their idea convincingly in less than 15 seconds

—Have topics that Oprah or her audience wouldn’t care about

—Don’t know what an editorial calendar is

—Lack experience in front of a TV camera  

—Don’t understand how big magazines like “O” operate

—Can’t afford publicists who know how to play the game

Some people who want to get into “O” even admit they haven’t read it.  

That’s why the market is flooded with teleseminars, CDs and tapes, ebooks, transcripts, boot camps and coaching programs on how to get onto “Oprah,” other national TV and radio talk shows, and into top-tier newspapers and magazines like “O” and even Women’s Wear Daily.

Much of the material in Susan’s book, including strategies used by various publicists on how they got their clients into the magazine, are indeed secrets that most people don’t know about. If they weren’t secrets, then magazine editors wouldn’t complain about pesky people who don’t know how to pitch.   

The editors at “O” ought to be sending Susan Harrow thank-you notes.

Full disclosure: I earn commission for selling Susan’s ebook and other people’s publicity products, but I refer my readers only to those that I can stand behind 100 percent. I also read Susan’s ebook before I promoted it.