Remember the biggest thing you can do to improve your odds is to be a story worth talking about. Seek out and approach places where the audience will more naturally consider your app newsworthy. When you find these places you’ll reduce the number of apps you’re competing against for attention by orders of magnitude, while also reaching people that other app developers are likely not reaching.
Yes, but…
In this article, indie developer Curtis Herbert discusses how small companies should approach the press. The biggest problem with the way developers of all sizes contact journalists is that they buy lists, and spam people. I don’t use that term lightly; most of the pitches I get are spam. The people sending them know nothing about me or my website, and they don’t know what types of apps I cover, either here at Kirkville, or at Macworld, where I am senior contributor.
Every now and then, I get a personalized email, which shows that the sender has at least browsed my website to see if I might be interested in their app. And in these cases, I do read the emails. In most of the others, I just delete them. But first, I reply:
Please remove me from your list.
I have a TextExpander snippet for the above text; it’s the one I use most. That, alone, should tell you a lot about the way developers pitch apps…
Source: An Indie’s Guide to the Press