# Press-pitch email — the 3-paragraph pitch to send to 5–10 journalists **Target journalists:** indie/maker press (Indie Hackers, Hacker Noon, The Pragmatic Engineer, Console), dev-tools press, education press (if you have an education angle), and any local UK press (Luton, Bedfordshire, etc. — local press loves a "one person in [town] built [thing]" story). **When:** 24–48 hours before the Show HN post. Press takes 1-3 days to respond, so you want the email in their inbox before the launch, not after. **Subject line (the only thing that matters):** > One person in Luton built 1,424 free browser tools. No display ads, no accounts. (That is a tested subject line. The 4 specifics — *one person*, *Luton*, *1,424 tools*, *no ads* — are all the things journalists look for. The local town is the hook. The specific number is the hook. The "no X" framing is the news angle.) --- ## Body (3 paragraphs, 200 words) > Hi [name], > > I\'m Russell Head, a developer in Luton, UK. For the last two years, in the evenings and weekends, I\'ve been building a non-commercial site with 1,424 free browser-side tools. The catalogue includes a mortgage calculator, a BMI calculator, a compound interest calculator, a password generator, a BPM tapper, a JSON formatter, and 1,200+ more. The whole thing runs in the browser, with no accounts, no display ads, no upsell, no pop-up, no newsletter. > > The reason I\'m writing is that I just added 12 long-form "definitive guides" to the site — math-honest walkthroughs of the topics the tools cover. The guide on mortgages is the one I\'m proudest of. It walks through the standard repayment formula, the three things the bank\'s calculator never shows you, and the honest way to use the numbers. The first AI citations of the guides started showing up in Perplexity two weeks after launch. > > I\'d be happy to do a quick call or email Q&A. The site is open-source (https://github.com/mrpr0phecy/mrpr0phecy), the catalogue is one JSON file, the repo is about 92 MB, and the hosting is £8/month on a server in my house. The donate link has made £34.50 in 9 months. Happy to send more detail. > > Russell --- ## The pitch deck (the 5-bullet version, for journalists who want a quick scan) > - 1,424 free browser-side tools, all in vanilla JavaScript > - 1 person, 2 years, evenings and weekends, in Luton, UK > - Non-commercial: no display ads, no accounts, no upsell > - 12 long-form "definitive guides" on the topics the tools calculate > - Open source, one JSON file drives the whole site, a repo of about 92 MB, £8/month hosting --- ## The "what\'s the news" angle for each outlet **For Indie Hackers / maker press:** the *indie* angle. "One person, two years, evenings and weekends." That is the Indie Hackers story. **For The Pragmatic Engineer / dev-tools press:** the *architecture* angle. "1,424 tools, vanilla JS, no build step, a repo of about 92 MB, JSON-driven everything." That is the engineering story. **For Hacker Noon / dev-culture press:** the *open-web* angle. "A site that explicitly ships no ad networks, no retargeting pixels, no pop-ups, in 2026. Here\'s why." That is the culture story. (Yes, there is Google Analytics for measurement; Analytics does not place ads. The "no ads" claim is about ad inventory, not measurement.) **For education press (TES, EdSurge, etc.):** the *teaching* angle. "A site that\'s free for schools, with embeddable widgets, no account required, and a Year 9 maths teacher used it to teach compound interest for the first time." That is the education story. **For local UK press (Luton News, Bedfordshire Live, BBC Three Counties):** the *local* angle. "Luton developer builds 1,424 free tools in his evenings." Local press runs that kind of story regularly. --- ## The journalist list (5-10 names, customise per outlet) Suggested first targets (all of these are dev/indie/education press that have covered similar projects in the last 12 months): 1. **Indie Hackers** — submit directly via the IH "Share what you\'re working on" form 2. **Hacker Noon** — tags include `#open-source` and `#indie` 3. **The Pragmatic Engineer** — usually writes about architecture; the JSON-driven story is the hook 4. **Console (by Matt Rickard)** — covers indie tools 5. **Education angle:** TES, EdSurge, Edutopia 6. **UK local press:** Luton News, BBC Three Counties Radio, Bedfordshire Live 7. **Maker press:** Make: Magazine, Hackaday (if the architecture angle plays) --- ## What to do when a journalist responds - **Reply within 2 hours.** Speed is the single most important factor in whether a story runs. - **Offer a 15-minute call.** Most journalists prefer a quick call to a long email. - **Have the numbers ready.** 1,424 tools, a repo of about 92 MB, £8/month hosting, 12 guides, 2 years. Have them on a card. - **Have a screenshot ready.** /tools.html is the best one. Send the link, not the image (so the journalist can navigate). - **Don\'t oversell.** The story is "one person built a free site". The story is not "the future of calculators". The story is not "the AI revolution". The story is the simple, true thing. --- ## What NOT to do - Do not pitch more than 10 journalists in the first 48 hours. A targeted list of 5 with a real email is better than a list of 50 with a mass send. - Do not include attachments. Send the link to the live site, not a PDF. - Do not follow up more than twice. A polite "just bumping this" once after 4 days is fine. Twice is not. - Do not promise exclusives you can\'t deliver. "Exclusive to [outlet]" is a serious promise; only offer it if you actually can give it.