Author Media Kit Creation Tips

Author media kits are an important tool in your book marketing toolbox. Sometimes they're called a press kit, but it's typically an electronic document that gets emailed or downloaded from your website and can be printed as well. And it has information about you and your book and the topics you can be interviewed about. You'll use them to get attention during your book launch and well beyond. But what should go in a media kit and how do you create one? If that's what you're wondering, then you're in the right place. This video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad. I'm an Amazon Overall Number 1 Best Selling Author and the founder of a fabulous company called Book Launchers. Our superpower is caring more about you and your book than anybody else as we help you write, publish and sell a nonfiction book that will boost your brand and make you money. One of the things we do at Book Launchers to help prepare our authors for their book launch is create a media kit. This is one of the many things that I think we absolutely rock at. Check out a few of these beauties right here. Now, our first generation media kits didn't look this good. It was an evolution. But you don't need to evolve to greatness. You can start right here if you follow my tips. Number one, Know the essential content. Every media kit we do is a little different as we tailor it to the author's strengths, goals and the project. Some things are gonna be different for each media kit, but every single media kit has the following information about your book with pictures, your metadata data. Like this right here on Tony LeBlanc's book Doorpreneur. This has ISBN format. It's available in pricing, page numbers and publication date. Underneath we put the book description with the selling copy. Number two, contact information for you, including where to connect with you on social media and your website. To be specific, I'm talking about email address, phone number, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you are. Number three, a short author bio with your picture. Need tips on getting a great author photo? I'll link to that video at the end. When I say short, I mean let's do it in less than 100 words if you can. And this is the key details that are relevant to your book and the area of expertise you're showcasing. I spent 16 years of my life in real estate and real estate investing. When my new book on self publishing comes out, that fact is not going to be in my bio. Neither will my MBA in real estate and finance. My bio will have details about my author awards, my number one overall Amazon Best selling book and running book launchers because those details are relevant to my self publishing book. Number four Interview Topics or Interview Questions if you're looking for media attention, you need to give them some ideas of what is a good fit and what you should be asked. And ideally hit questions or topics that will be of interest to larger audiences. For example, my real estate book we didn't create interview topics that were specific to real estate investors because when I'm on the morning news that topic speaks to less than 10% of the population watching. We created questions to be specific to the real estate market conditions, things to watch out for as a buyer, and even tips for maximizing the value of a property. Those are much more universal than specific real estate investing tips. Check out Leslie Quincy's questions for her media kit ready to hand over the Family Business Start with these three steps to get organized family matters, how to have the wealth talk with the next generation and why you need a roadmap to navigate succession planning and five mistakes most families make when it comes to estate planning. Now these are different than what you would put on a speaker's one sheet or a podcaster's one sheet because those kind of topics are going to be very niche focused on your media kit. It needs to be things that will appeal to a wider audience. Number five Include testimonials or endorsements if you have them. Number six A book excerpt or an article that is a summary or a sales piece of sorts of your book. Number seven A link where the pictures of your book cover and your author photos can be downloaded easily. We say download here on these media kits, but if you know you're going to be printing them out a lot then you should put an actual URL so that's what to include. And we have videos to help you craft a book description, the author bio, and one of these days soon I'll talk further about interview topics and book excerpts. So make sure you've subscribed to the channel and subscribed to our launch letter over@book launchers.com so you catch those important videos too. But now that you've got the content you need to get this designed. We've perfected the art and the system here as part of our clients book publishing and pre launch work. But what I would recommend is finding a template that you like and then go to Upwork or Guru or even Fiverr and find someone with great graphics design experience doing brochures and pamphlet and hire them to take all of the above elements and put them into your desired design and make your own media kit. You should have your brand or book colors available for them when you do this. Now, a few other tips just to help you out with this. First, make sure the file isn't enormous when it's done because you're going to be emailing it out, so try to get your designer to compress it to one megabyte or less. Number two, this is not a press release. That's a different tool. You can kind of think of the Media Kit as your multi headed screwdriver and the press release is the hammer or something like that. I think that analogy works. See, the press release has a very specific purpose. It has a specific hook and angle in the hopes of appealing to media in a very specific way. Whereas the Media kit is more of an all purpose tool. It's a general informational piece that you need for your kit. Number three, when it's done, don't mass mail it out. It should have a place to live on your website and it will be used after you have a press release or a pitch that gets a nibble of interest. Then that's when you follow it up with the Media kit or post. Sometimes include it with the press release. Number four get it proofread before you start using it. Number five if you hire someone on fiverr.com, there's an option to get the source file for an extra fee. I highly recommend you do that. And when you hire on other sites like Upwork and Guru, ask for that source file because you're probably going to want to change this in the future. Number six finally, take a look at what you've put together. Does what you've drafted showcase who you are and make you and your book look different than others in your field? You it really should. And when it does that, it's going to answer so many questions media and others will have about you. Your Author Media Kit is pretty important. It makes it easier for media to feel comfortable that you're an expert because a lot of the work they have to do in researching you is done for them in this package. It also shows you're a professional. And while we focused on its purpose for media, it really is an informational brochure that helps anyone interested in you or your book learn more about you. Do you have an Author Media Kit or do you have an Author Media Kit? Tip. Go ahead and share that in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noteboringbookswag this oh so soft journal to write all your amazing ideas in. I have two videos you really must watch next. The one on book descriptions and the other one on author bio. But before you do that, smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead. It feels so good for you and for me. And subscribe to the channel so we can become YouTube besties.