PR pitches vs. queries

AprilBoo · May 2, 2005

If there's a magazine editor floating around here, perhaps you can answer this. I didn't check the freelancing board first, so if there's an answer already over there, many thanks to the person who points it out to me.

The university I work for hired a PR firm that specializes in placing articles about higher education in publications that are willing to run higher ed news. I looked at a pitch that the PR guy sent to a local magazine and it isn't exactly a query, there's no offer for us to write the article, it's just a "hey, look at this great thing, maybe you want to feature it."

Is this kind of pitch competing with freelancer queries? Does this kind of pitch get first consideration?

Lauri B · May 2, 2005

Hi AprilBoo,
This isn't going to answer your quesion, necessarily, but I wanted to chime in and say that one way we get a good amount of targeted press coverage for some of our books (and definitely in the education field) is to pitch excerpts from our books or essays from our authors in much the same way the PR person at your university is doing. We usually offer the excerpts free of charge, and request only that they credit the author and the book. In certain markets it is very effective, and I can directly track sales spikes in those markets as a result of the exposure.
I would assume that pitches like the ones we make are definitely getting pretty high consideration, since the publication can get them for free, they don't need to edit them, and they don't have to chase down anything to get them into print.

I would be really interested to hear from magazine editors about this topic, too.

PR pitches vs. queries

AprilBoo

Good to be back

Lauri B

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