Yesterday I set up a little experiment to see whether paying for press releases can prove to be worthwhile for authors seeking to promote their books. The experiment was based on a press release I wrote, and issued through PRLog.org, one of the established press release services. Today I’ve got the data, so let’s take a look and see what we found out.
So, here we are, roughly 24 hours after significant numbers of readers were first getting around to looking at the day’s press releases. Where have things settled out, and what can we learn from the data? Let’s start with a refresh of the numbers, which look like this:
| Unique Hits | 310 (up from 216 at 11:30 yesterday) |
| Total Hits | 348 (up from 241) |
| Headline Impressions | 31,512 (up from 17,449) |
| Click Through Rate | ~1.1 % (down from 1.38%) |
For starters, let’s be sure we understand what the data are, which in this case is a bit opaque. Unique Hits usually means non-redundant visits, while Total Hits might include re-visits. however, there’s a later chart in the report that reports “Activity by day,” and that table shows a total “activity” of 468 for yesterday alone. What does that mean? I don’t know, because there’s no explanation.
Headline impressions is easier, and should mean the number of individuals that visited a page where the headline of the press release was displayed.
Click rate means the percentage of viewers that were interested enough to click on the headline and read at least some of the release. The click rate declined over time (1.38% through 11:30 the day of the release to 1.1% today) as the news became more stale. Multiplying the headline impressions (31,512) by the click rate (0.011) gives the number of individuals that read some or all of the press release. That number is 347, which is close enough to the reported 348 (the discrepancy is due to the rounding of the actual percentage to 1.1).
The analytics report also gives the names of the 67 media outlets that displayed the press release, and includes outlets as diverse as newspaper, television, investor and other sites, as well as the sites from which the most number of clicks originated.
So how should we look at these numbers?
In and of itself, a click rate below 2% is not necessarily bad, especially for a minimally targeted press release, and particularly where the number of potential viewers was so large (over 37,000). The press release template allowed me to pick up to 8 key words; I used tags like Thriller, Cybersecurity, Politics, Trump, and so on, as well as a limited number of main fields, which were less on point and helpful. These would allow the recipients to categorize the press release to some extent if they so choose. But I would have to assume that for the most part the press release was visible mostly to people who would have no interest in it. In fact, the gross number of click-throughs was a pleasant surprise.
Having lots of people read your press release is nice, but the more important question involves what is usually referred to as the “yield” of the press release, which is the desired result. In this case, that would be stories and/or sales.
Stories on the Internet tend to fall into three categories:
- Simple reprints of the press release, sometimes with a reporter’s name added as if there had actually been some creative work added.
- Stories written purely from the press release, perhaps augmented by the background knowledge of the reporter.
- More in-depth stories, where the reporter contacts the source and/or does independent research on the subject.
An astonishing amount of online reporting – in many areas, such as technology, the great majority of stories – is in the second category.
In this case, I garnered two hits in the first category. One, in an on-line journal, and the other a news aggregation site. How worthwhile are these hits? The first has an Alexa ranking of 15,083 globally, and 9,853 in the U.S. For comparison, I happen to be in Baltimore today, and see that Alexa ranks the Web site of the local paper (the Sun) at 9,752/1,683. Rezul’s rank is about 1,800,000 million globally, and it’s not ranked in the U.S. at all. On the other hand, EReader News Today’s numbers are 118,484/28,878.
So we could say that the press release yielded one qualified, if low quality, placement that might conceivably result in a sale. However, my sales logs indicate that at most one book sale could be attributed to the press release (and that’s a maybe). So this time around, the time and cost ($49) involved in issuing the press release likely had no positive reward.
Conclusions: Based on this single experiment, with a catchy, timely headline, it might appear that spending the time and money to create and issue a paid press release is rarely likely to be a good investment, absent additional activities built around the press release to compound the impact.
Of course, issuing one press release indicates nothing. If someone had called me up, interviewed me, and written an article, I would have been delighted. And I would have considered my $49 well spent. The fact that so many readers clicked through indicates that there was at least some chance that next time this might occur. And perhaps I might do a better job or writing the press release as well.
But how often is someone likely to have the luxury of a catchy, timely headline for a fictional work, and also have the skill to write a really intriguing press release? Sadly, not often. Next time I try this experiment, I’ll use the same service, use a more typical headline, and see what happens. My guess would be that I’ll see far fewer click-throughs.
I think that the take away for the average author is that drafting and paying to issue a press release will almost always prove to be a waste of time, unless her book is very timely, or she is already a known author, or the issuance of the press release is supported by the efforts of a paid publicist, or an equally skilled author.
But, as with every other promotional tool available to Indie authors, what we all really need is more data, so that we can tell what works, and what doesn’t. If you’ve used press releases, it would be great if you would share the results (or absence thereof).
Have you joined The Lafayette Campaign?
Andrew Updegrove: Tales of Adversego 
Pingback: Are Press Releases Worth it? | Andrew Updegrove: Tales of Adversego
This is all very interesting, Andrew, and I’m heartened to see some actual data emerge from this intriguing single experiment. In particular, your point about the impact of the headline made so much sense to me. I was once told by a PR guru that the real hook is in the author’s own personal backstory (even for a work of fiction), so maybe that’s the way to go next time? Many thanks for the clarity of explanation and the generosity of spirit motivating the sharing – so typical of this excellent blog. Yet another fascinating and thought-provoking post.
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Thanks very much, Marcus. I would love to obtain more data, as a single example proves very little, if anything. Perhaps some number of Indie authors might be willing to join a marketing collective, with all together agreeing on approaches, and then pooling their aggregate results. The findings could be so much more useful to authors than the usual blanket recommendations from service providers.
I think that the back story angle makes very good sense as the basis for a story, but I wonder how effective it would be with an unsupported press release? True, Frank would be the exception to the rule with his book, since he was already famous. But for a lesser mortal, it would be much tougher. One can imagine that “Former FBI Agent Tells All about Hoover Era” or “Navy Seal that took out Bin Laden Tells How it was done” would be very effective. But for most authors, the unique aspects would be tougher to promote within the four corners of a release.
On the other hand, a publicist, if they could get through to a reviewer might do better, since they could talk about specific events covered in a book.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of “publicists” out there that don’t do much more than take your money and send out press releases. One that I think does have credibility is Smith Publicity, which has worked with many Indie authors. But whether successful placements of stories actually end up producing sales is a topic for another blog entry.
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Andrew, I think you hit on something here. “If someone had called me up, interviewed me, and written an article, I would have been delighted.” It does appear that in order to have a successful press release, additional activities should be built around the press release or the press release should be built around a particular activity.
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Reblogged this on Memoir Notes.
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Thanks very much for reblogging my post, Lynette. I’m glad you found this useful.
One thing for authors to keep in mind is that reviewers are constantly being approached by authors and publicists, so they don’t need to go looking for books at all. So the purpose of a press release for this market isn’t to attract attention, but to be a sales tool used by someone making direct contact.
That means that an unsupported press release can only be expected to work in the situations where a journalist is looking for news to write about, which is very rarely going to be the fact that someone wrote a book, unless there’s avery interesting back story to go along with it, and the press release does a very good job of highlighting it in very few words.
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Being a self-published author, I am well aware of all the “services” offered to promote one’s book. I get a few followers each week on Twitter whose sole purpose is to promote my book–for a charge, of course. I also get the occasional email from book promotions services. I’ve learned the hard way that none are worth their fee.
I’ve come to the decision to write for myself, and if anyone wishes to read my scribblings, fine; if no one does, that’s fine too.
When I’m ready to publish my current project, I intend to try the traditional route. I’ll probably go that direction for at least a couple of years.
The sharks are circling us, my friend, looking to make a fast buck.
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Indeed they are. One of the problems with still being in what might be considered the frontier days of self-publishing is that there aren’t really any reliable, easily found mechanisms for knowing which services are reputable and which are not. Perhaps worse yet, many of the sources that authors might turn to (e.g., books about self-publishing) are just as bad, listing all sorts of time-consuming techniques without realistically benchmarking them.
As a result, we all have to spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out who’s reputable and who isn’t, and what works and what doesn’t. For example, there are some promotional sites that do produce (e.g., BookBub and EReader News Today), but the only way you’re likely to know that is from other authors. I’ve been active in self-publishing for four years now, and I’m only really finding reliable information on this now, and that’s only as a result of being part of a writers’ community site.
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And thank you for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us.
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I know it is not exactly the same Andy, but I have had two newspaper articles published here in Spain, one a full page spread in the largest English Language paper and the other a half page in a widespread freebie. I can’t say I noticed much difference in sales though on either occasion.
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That’s discouraging; I’m sorry that didn’t work better. There will be a couple of interview articles coming out about my book soon, and I’ll be interested to see what, if anything comes of them. Unfortunately, it illustrates how much disruption there’s been in the publishing trade from every angle over the last twenty years. A few decades ago, interviews were one of the main discovery mechanisms. Now those found in traditional outlets don’t seem to work as well, perhaps because people are used to getting their information in other ways.
What was good about the old system was that there was a recognized way to work with it. Your publisher and publicist arranged the interviews, and you went out on a book tour. You can still try and put one together today, but there are far fewer newspapers and non-syndicated radio and TV shows (at least in the US), and of those that still remain, far fewer of those do book reviews and interviews. So a book tour today is more likely to be dominated by readings at book stores and libraries.
On the other hand, there are thousands and thousands of web site and blog reviews out there. With this new system, the author has to do everything on their own (or pay a publicist a lot to do it for them), from identifying to contacting to interfacing with the reviewers, each one of whom probably has a far more limited reach and impact than the old, trusted, local book reviewer.
It will be interesting indeed to see whether new systems evolve, as they usually do after disruptive innovations, that provide more or less the same winnowing and curating functions as the old systems, and also who they will favor if and when they do.
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Hi, I wrote a press release – but did not use a service. I am starting local first. I contacted only 4 editors/journalists in the area so far & had my first interview today. I am not sure if you have done it yet- but I might try targetting your hometown first & see if you can garner support there? Best of luck!!
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Hi Brittney, thanks for the comment. Yes, I have approached some local journalists, but was lucky enough to be able to be introduced to them. So while I did indeed provide them with a copy of the press release, I didn’t need it as a calling card to help open the door.
There are a number of items that most publicists recommend including in a “media kit” for outreach to journalists, usually also including things like a one page overview that summarizes the type of information about you and your book that a journalist might be interested in. I did one of those for my first book, and if I get around to approaching any journalists I don’t have an intro to, will make one up for second book as well.
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sounds like you are on the right track 🙂
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It would seem the sheer number of press releases would make writing one on the same order as querying an agent – another activity with a very low click-through rate.
Trump was a stroke of luck. And that didn’t get you sales. Without Trump, you might not even have gotten the clicks (if I’d seen the release, I might have clicked through just to see what HE was up to, expecting possibly some good gossip).
Standing out from the crowd is the key; I’m sure Hugh Howey’s press releases get attention – but then he’s ALREADY famous.
What’s a new writer to do? Dunno. Keep writing.
Thanks for publishing your results for this and the 0.99 and free promotions – I love how the SP community shares the information.
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My pleasure, Alicia. My main goal with my blog posts on promotion is usually to try to help separate the wheat from the chaff. There are thousands of articles and posts on the Web that will tell you to do the same long list of things – most of which either don’t work, or will only work for certain people that really click with that technique (e.g., Twittter).
My goal is to find the small number of techniques that will generally work for most authors. Assuming they exist, of course.
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I am going to be so far out on so many bell curves it won’t even be funny.
There will be NO energy for promotion: it’s taken me fifteen years to get to the point of being able to publish (yup – working on the same book all that time) due to illness, and it will take me at least two years each (probably more) to finish the other two books to complete the story.
I have a few one-of-a-kind ideas, and I’m hoping some of them may take off. The constant ‘work’ of promotion that I see other writers undertake is completely beyond me, so I’m not even going to try it.
Oddly enough, I’m not worried. There have been many kind words from the readers who’ve been there while I posted a scene a week over the past two years.
But I continually update my database of promotion ideas, looking, as we all do, for THE technique that might work for me.
I’m pretty sure KU will help me: long book, tends to pull people all the way to the end if they like the first couple of chapters.
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That’s the spirit, Alicia! I think that ultimately writing has to be its own reward. If success follows, that’s a happy and unexpected surprise.
My focus on promotion has less to do with getting more readers for my book than being challenge-driven. I’ve had success in my career taking on hard challenges and figuring out how to surmount them, and I’m looking at book promotion the same way.
Unfortunately, by definition, this nut is a lot harder to crack, since there are so many good books out there. That gives any individual author almost no way to differentiate themselves, especially in fiction. For every author that writes great books and succeeds, there are a hundred (a thousand?) more who are just as worthy.
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