The promotion of my book began with submitting a press release (PR) to one of major PR services on internet. They tracked how many click throughs received, and I began to think, if so many eyes are looking at PR on this site and web crawlers (whatever those are?) are picking up PR for other sites; what would limit me from submitting as many PRs as possible? This was not only site that provided this wonderful FREE service and more places I had PR, greater my chances of being picked up by “big” media. My imagination began to go wild, conjuring up that lone journalist who was itching to break story on next bestseller. You chuckle! With this PR service, I placed needle in haystack but I could improve my chances if many needles were placed. A technique I learned from my days of online sweeping. What is that you ask? If allowed, more you entered a particular sweepstakes better your chances of winning as was one man’s story where he would send out literally thousands of entries and had won valuable prizes. My odds with sweeping were not that stellar but I do have a few trinkets to show for limited efforts. Hopefully, with my quadrupled book promotion efforts I could have stellar results—dreaming again. Tip 1: There are auto-fill internet form software available and some even designate a few empty fields for your own personal use. A lifesaver when you have to input PR summary line more than a few times. Tip 2: Don’t input your social security number and credit card information because I have read of mistakes made because of ease of auto-fill. Okay, I have deviated. So I proceed to use my internet service provider and searched for “submit press release” and was in heaven when it responded with 2 million sites to upload my PR. I would spend hours determining which sites were free; which maybe more receptive; and which needed me to tweak PR. Then just as quickly, my dream was shattered. I couldn’t go any further than 250 links, Why can’t I see or go to other sites? I contacted my internet service provider to complain and they “allegedly” helped me to fix browser. That didn’t work, so I moved on to next major internet service provider, and again was limited to how many links I could access.

Contact your local newspapers, and chances are, depending on what business you are in, they may be interested in giving you your own column. Most small or medium-sized media markets will have at least one daily serving communities and probably at least one weekly newspaper. Offer to supply a weekly or even a monthly column for free. They are always looking for editorial content and "free" is always attractive. Be careful about a daily commitment, this can get overly demanding in a hurry.

It may be a little more difficult to approach Los Angeles Times or New York Times, but in major media markets there are any number of regional weeklies that can be approached.

Other considerations may be regional or even national trade publications, Chamber of Commerce newsletter or other professional associations and organizations you may belong to.

If you can’t get column for free, don’t be afraid to pay for it. But make sure layout is designed to look as much as possible like a regular story or editorial content. The paper will probably require that you put some sort of disclaimer on your column like word "advertising", but this is not a big deal.

Have a professional photo taken and include it in you articles whenever possible. Don’t use your high school photo or one that is touched up to make you look totally different than you actually do. You are trying to build recognition and credibility. After your column has run for some time, you will be surprised how many people will easily recognize you. People like to do business with people they know.

Okay, so now you have own column; make good use of it. Give it value. Do not make it a blatant advertisement and/or sales pitch. In fact, except in extremely rare occasions you probably don’t want to sell anything directly in your column at all. You want to write real content, stories that are either of real value or entertaining. I had a friend once that owned a restaurant. He paid to have his own column in our local newspaper. He never once wrote a story about his own restaurant. Instead he wrote about his world travels, famous chefs, and wonderful restaurants he had enjoyed.