How to: Write a Pitch Memo

Today I’m going to give you a bit further insight into the publishing world by explaining how we do one of the most common tasks here at the UPF for the marketing department. I’m going to explain how to write a pitch memo. Basically a pitch memo is a letter to a media outlet asking that they write a review of your recently published book. In publishing, you only ever pitch to general editors or book review editors. You never go to the exact person that you want to write the review because your publication might think that journalist/scholar or whatever has a vested interest in your book. So here are my steps to writing a pitch memo:

1. Make sure you have the absolute right contact information. People change jobs pretty frequently these days, and this info can be hard to get sometimes. Especially with scholarly journals. Those are a pain in the rear.
2. Learn as much as you can about the publication. See what their recent articles have been about. Does you book seem to fit? If not, you should probably start looking for another media outlet.    
3. Read as much of/about the book that you can. Try to find a really interesting fact or two. You need to be able to give your pitch memo as much of a sense of urgency as possible and spark some interest in whoever will make the decision about whether or not the publication reviews your book.
4. Start the actual pitch memo with that interesting fact/sense of urgency. It’s like the lede in a news story and should be its own paragraph.
5. Give a brief description of the book. Make it sound as interesting as possible, but also be accurate and concise. You want to catch their interest, not give away the entire book so that they feel like they don’t need to read it.
6. Talk about how your book fits in with their publication. Use your research about them to talk about how it fits with a recent article or series that they did. Like I said before, if your book does not fit they probably won’t review it, and you are wasting your time.
7. Give plenty of contact information for yourself. You want them to feel like they are your priority and this includes being explicit about how they can get in touch with you.  
8. End your letter charitably. Thank them for their time. They are a busy person, just like you. Make sure they know that you appreciate their time and consideration.
9. Proof read. This means more than just using spell check. Read over your letter a couple of times and maybe even out loud. Make sure you don’t have any awkward phrasing or missing words. Bad grammar is like a death sentence in the world of the media.  
10. If you are sending this out to more than one publication, make sure you tailor it to each publication individually. The beginning of your pitch can be the same from publication to publication, but make sure that you mention specific things about each one and how your book fits in their bigger picture.

And there you have your pitch memo. This isn’t a guarantee that they’ll write your review, but it will help get their attention if you have a well-crafted and interesting memo for them. Also, don’t be afraid to follow up with them if you don’t get a response. This does not mean to badger them constantly, but the more time you invest in them, the more time they’ll invest in you.