How To Write An Author Press Release
by Scott Nicholson

First off, don't use funky foNTs. Stick with Times New Roman or Courier. Here is a sample of the press release I'm using to promote my new collection. This one is mostly geared toward book store owners to entice them to carry the book. I will use one or more variations of this to send to newspapers in areas where I will be signing or to media that might be reviewing the book.

Try to keep it to one page, especially for radio and television markets. For newspapers, I suggest sending a brief version such as this one, and a longer, more comprehensive version. For newspapers, you can also include interviews (canned or otherwise, but be sure there are no copyright problems), photos, postcards, etc, and a review copy of the book if you can afford it. A second sample press release follows this one. Farther below is a third, designed for radio broadcast.

For immediate release

Your name
Your address
Your phone #

Thank You For The Flowers
Enters A Literary Shadow Land

What happens when a star Little League player is a vampire, a city has secrets to protect, or a man's love for his wife is more powerful than death?

Award-winning author Scott Nicholson answers these questions and more in Thank You For The Flowers (200 pp., tpb, $14.95), a collection of thirteen stories of suspense and imagination. Nicholson won the Hubbard Gold Award in 1999, the top prize in the international Writers of the Future contest. He was also First Runner-Up for the 1999 Darrell Award, and his stories have been recommended for the Stoker and Nebula Awards.

Sharyn McCrumb, author of the best-selling Ballad books, says, "Scott Nicholson is a wonderful creature, rarer than a vampire shortstop: a gifted writer with wisdom and imagination. He has moved into that literary shadow land between Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury. Send out the Welcome Wagon!"

Thank You For The Flowers covers a range of territory from a Civil War ghost story called "The Three-Dollar Corpse" to "Dead Air," where a late-night deejay has an open line to a female serial killer. A high school girl has a crush on her best friend's guy, but so does her best friend's ghost in "In The Heart of November." In "Thirst," a girl's tears are the key to ending a long drought. In the afterwords, the author gives some background on the development of each story.

Author Kevin J. Anderson says of Nicholson's mix of mysteries, ghost stories, and fantasy: "Scott Nicholson's stories have their own heart (sometimes a warm, fuzzy heart, sometimes a twisted, black, and rotten heart). He has a fresh and true voice that will affect you, disturb you, enrage you, or make you laugh. He will not, however, leave you cold."

Scott Nicholson works as a journalist for The Mountain Times in Boone, NC. He studied Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina and Appalachian State University. He is currently marketing several novels and working on a screenplay. Nicholson operates a writer's website at www.hauntedcomputer.com.

ISBN 1-887905-24-3

To place orders for the book, contact:
Parkway Publishers, Inc.
PO Box 3678
Boone NC 28607
Toll-free: (800)821-9155
Phone & Fax: (828) 265-3993
e-mail: parkwaypub@hotmail.com
URL: www.parkwaypublishers.com

To arrange a book signing or interview, contact Scott Nicholson at XXXX or nicholsonATemailaddress

Here is a sample of the press release I used to promote my Writers of the Future signings. In my packets, I included a longer press release about my winning the WotF contest, which you can read here. This release or parts of it ended up in about ten newspapers.

For more information or an interview, contact:
Your info

For a review copy of Writers of the Future Vol. XV, contact:
Mary Tinat, Bridge Publications, 1-800-722-1733

Award-Winning Author Scott Nicholson Coming To High Point

What does a Little League coach do when his best player is a vampire?

That’s the question that Scott Nicholson answers in his story "The Vampire Shortstop," which won the Hubbard Gold Award in the international Writers of the Future contest. The story appears in the anthology Writers of the Future Vol. XV alongside the works of other exciting new voices in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. Nicholson will be in High Point to sign copies of the book on Saturday, June 3rd.

The Writers of the Future contest receives thousands of entries from across the world, and the stories are judged by best-selling writers such as Anne McCaffrey, Jerry Pournelle, Frederik Pohl, and Robert Silverberg. Nicholson received the $6,000 grand prize at a ceremony held last September in Hollywood. Contest winners have gone on to publish over 150 novels and 2,000 short stories.

"I woke up one morning with the words ‘vampire shortstop’ in my head," Nicholson says. "I didn’t know what it meant. I suppose it’s one of those puns the subconscious makes, a play on the words ‘umpire’ and ‘vampire.’ I went straight to the keyboard and wrote most of the story in one sitting."

The story was also picked up by W. P. Kinsella, author of the novel Shoeless Joe, which later became the movie "Field of Dreams." Kinsella is reprinting the story in a collection called Baseball Fantastic.

Nicholson has sold more than twenty stories. His work has been recommended for the Nebula and Stoker Awards, and he was First Runner-Up for the Darrell Award in 1999. Nicholson’s first story collection, Thank You For The Flowers, will be released in October by Parkway Publishers.

Sharyn McCrumb, acclaimed author of the Appalachian Ballad books, says, "Scott Nicholson is that rare creature, even rarer than a vampire shortstop: a writer with wisdom and imagination. He has entered that literary shadow land between Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury. Send out the Welcome Wagon!"

Nicholson currently works as a journalist in Boone, NC. He’s marketing several novels, and is working on his first screenplay. He operates a writer’s website, The Haunted Computer, at www.hauntedcomputer.com.

The book signing begins at 4:00 PM on June 3rd at Books-A-Million, located at 265 Eastchester Drive. For more information on the event, call (336) 889-5112.

For a high-resolution JPEG color photograph of Scott Nicholson or the book cover, please e-mail XXXX with the request.

And here's a press release for radio. Note its brevity. Numbers are spelled out (i.e., "ninth" instead of "9th"). Leave a contact number in case you're lucky enough to be asked for a voicer, sound bite, or interview.

Special to Jeremy Batten, WATA News
For immediate release
For more information, contact Scott Nicholson
Phone #

Boone Writer Wins Hubbard Gold Award

A local man has won the grand prize in an international writing contest.

Scott Nicholson received the Hubbard Gold Award at a ceremony held in Hollywood last week. Nicholson's winning story is called "The Vampire Shortstop," and was named the best story of the year in the Writers of the Future contest. The contest was judged by best-selling science fiction and fantasy writers. Nicholson, who lives in Boone, won six thousand dollars in prize and publication money plus a week-long trip to Hollywood.

His winning story is published in the anthology Writers of the Future volume fifteen. Nicholson will be signing copies of the book at the Book Warehouse in Boone on Saturday afternoon, October ninth.

Wow, this is so easy I should have been world-famous long ago! All right, kiddies, now you know how to outsell Stephen King. Good luck!

--copyright 2000 by Scott Nicholson. Contact for reprint permission.

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