If there are brands or media that you feel your audience knows and respects, don’t think of them as publicity channels for your work. Look at them as people with a shared passion. Stop pitching blindly to “entities” and start understanding these organizations as real groups of multifaceted people, who are just like you.

To do this, here are a few pointers:

  • Learn how the organization is structured, how many people are within it, and where they are located. For your specific field, see if there is a subgroup that specializes in it.
  • If you want to have a better sense of how marketing works within a big publisher, look up people working in them on LinkedIn.
  • Do research to see what these people and their departments truly look like.
  • You can also go to bookstores and befriend people working there.

References

Blank, Dan. Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience. WeGrowMedia, 2017.