“Do you think my story could appear in People magazine?”

“Would AARP magazine be interested?”

These are questions our publishing house team hears as we brainstorm media outreach with our authors and, of course, we always try to reach for the skies in our marketing. But most of the giant publications have brick walls almost impervious to outside appeals. 

Sometimes our authors do wind up in national publications and we all celebrate. But options in traditional media are so limited that we also are pleased to see a lot of media entrepreneurs opening new doors in colorful, trendy, online magazines all the time. And that’s the point of this column: It’s easy to Google the handful of America’s biggest magazines and newspapers—but we don’t want authors to limit themselves to long shots.

Authors should not ignore the potential of these newer magazines. Our Marketing Director Susan Stitt often finds emerging magazines that are not household names, but that welcome impressive placements of our authors’ stories—and build our authors’ online presence.

The example this week is Canvas Rebel, a relatively new online magazine spotted by entrepreneur and author Howard Brown, author of Shining Brightly. 

Canvas Rebel is the brainchild of tech entrepreneurs Mayank Bhandari and Sid Reddy, who originally dreamed up an online magazine called Voyage LA. For their launch of that Los Angeles magazine, they built a semi-automated publishing pipeline for stories about fun and trendy things happening in the LA area. When that was a success, they branched out by establishing magazines for other regions and themes, including Canvas Rebel.

Howard was invited by the Canvas Rebel staff to write answers to several questions that would summarize some of his inspiring story, then to add a photo illustration. This week, his feature was added into Canvas Rebel’s section on “Stories & Insights” that features hundreds of fascinating men and women who are creatively pursuing everything from music and the fine arts to cooking, environmental activism and starting their own small businesses.

Now, this inspiring Canvas Rebel profile of Howard is spreading across social media. Will that magazine appearance alone tip the balance on book sales? Well, we always hope someone will decide to buy a copy of Shining Brightly after reading such an inspiring article—but the point of this column is: Book marketing is amplifying our authors’ messages and their public presence in many ways. It’s a broad, collective effort that involves lots of media appearances to build awareness.

And, no, we had never heard of this magazine before Howard got his invitation—but we thank the editors of Canvas Rebel for the opportunity this week. 

 

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Care to learn more?

This is a perfect moment to become one of Howard’s growing global community of friends by ordering your copy of his book. 

You’ll also enjoy Howard’s weekly series of podcasts, which are featured at his website, ShiningBrightly.com 

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