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"Anyone who's been to a movie or turned on a television in the past fifty years can list dozens of pop culture images of cheerleaders, from the now-classic movie Bring It On, to Saturday Night Live sketches, to Heroes' telling first season tagline, 'Save the cheerleader, save the world' ... We imbue cheerleaders with hundreds of different meanings, but no matter what, we are fascinated by them."

That's journalist Kate Torgovnick describing her favorite subject-- a topic that became her first non-fiction book project: Cheer!: Three Teams on a Quest for College Cheerleading's Ultimate Prize.

Today, she tells us how she crafted a book promotion program that distinguished her book from thousands of other tomes, television shows and movies about cheerleading--no small task in a cheerleader-saturated world. 

Welcome my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You've mounted an impressive campaign to share Cheer! with the world, it's a new, overwhelming kind of work for any writer. How did you plan and develop your jam-packed book tour and promotional events? In your opinion, what is the hardest part of this process? Any advice for first-time writers looking to promote their work?

Kate Torgovnick:
I’m not doing too much of a book tour. What I’ve put my energy into is getting press for CHEER! in both high-profile and (excuse my marketing speak) niche media. Continue reading...

 

Honestly, I think what helped me most in this pursuit is that I left my full-time job at Jane magazine a year and a half ago, and have been freelancing ever since.

So I got used to hustling for assignments and sending out a million pitches a week to a huge variety of publications. I was naturally meeting (or at least e-meeting) a lot of editors who ended up being extremely generous about covering CHEER!.

Other than that, there’s a lot of time between when you turn in your manuscript and when your book comes out—for me, it was nine months. I recommend using that time to brainstorm every magazine, newspaper, television show, radio show, and blog that might cover your book.

Do some online research or call each place to find the best editor or producer to pitch. Even if you have a publicist through your publisher—I am lucky enough to have a stellar one—I recommend sending out a lot of emails yourself. There’s something special about a pitch coming from an author, especially if you really take the time to think of the best angle for that particular venue.

You’ll only hear back on one out of every five pitches, and perhaps one out of every 15 will end up actually covering the book. So I really think of it as a numbers game.

Other than that, I would spend time thinking about who will want to read your book and how you can get info directly to them. One of the best things I’ve done so far was to send out copies of the book to about 200 college cheerleading coaches, since they are the information keepers in this world. (My publisher was kind enough to provide the books and mail them out, since they thought this was a good idea).

I was at cheerleading Nationals the other week, and almost every cheerleader I talked to said, “Oh, my coach was telling me about that book.” I think that’s good.