Non-fiction books in the self-help, business, travel, and cooking genres are among the most media-friendly, as anyone with expertise in book marketing services can tell you. Their newsworthiness is never in doubt, and their authors are frequently sought-after interview guests. The real-life information in non-fiction books is excellent as topics for TV shows, podcasts, and inclusion in web and print stories. To earn coverage, you need a well-crafted pitch to the appropriate media and a list of contacts to reach the right editors and producers -- if budgets allow, consider a book publicist. 

Optimal media targets for a non-fiction book marketing campaign include TV, radio, and podcast producers, editors and feature writers, and bloggers. It's common for authors to want to go for large national outlets, and it's okay to try, but most often, a niche audience will include more book buyers. It's why podcasts and blogs have become sought after because they deliver audiences highly interested in a topic. If you've written a book on European travel and find a blogger or podcaster covering the subject, you'll reach a highly interested audience. It's those connections that spark book sales.

It's hard to overstate the importance of planning before launching a book promotion campaign. You'll undoubtedly make adjustments along the way, but you need to begin with an organized approach. Identifying target readers and creative ways to reach them is vital, as are developing the key messages about your book. The only way to succeed is to reach potentially interested readers with the news of your book's publication. It may take more than one to interest someone in buying a book, so you need to be present in media where the target readers are in the audience reading or watching. 

First-time authors need to get used to the idea that they need to take the lead role in promoting their books. Becoming more visible on social media is helpful, along with being covered by the media. No one can interview a book, so it takes the author's direct involvement to earn the needed publicity. Most book industry veterans agree that online coverage alone isn't sufficient, and it's still essential to support your launch with a traditional media campaign. Also, anything that begins with TV or a print publication ends up online, where it serves an expanded purpose. Things on the internet last in perpetuity.