I talk about media kits all the time. They are essential for a book launch, for book promotion, for event promotion, for interviews, everything to do with public relations, publicity, and even for your own marketing convenience. They are essential to be able to maximize your virtual book tour, which is why I spend a whole lesson on how to create your own media kit for your tour and give you a template to build in the course. (If you are interested in being on the waiting list to know as soon as Maximize Your Virtual Book Tour Masterclass relaunches, please sign up for my newsletter and select that you’re interested in Angell’s 4 Authors. )
I talk about it briefly in 5 Inexpensive Ways to Skyrocket Book Event Success.
And I stressed the importance of having it when I talked about How to Get Free Publicity.
What is a Media Kit?
The generic answer is that a media kit is a grab bag with the most important information that you can share with journalists (or whoever) to create consistent content and branding. You can read a bit more about what publicists include in media kits in CP Communications publicity tips guide.
I have so many media kits for me and my books that I actually created templates of them under OWS to make it easier for the marketing managers for the books we were publishing were able to ensure that each author had everything needed for their annual marketing campaigns. (If you would like a copy of this template format to customize for your own work, I would be happy to provide it for $50. The template kit includes an author media kit, a book launch media kit, a book tour kit and an event media kit. Or you can piece it together from this post.)
What do I have in my Author Media Kit?
I have pictures. In my kit, I include my most recent headshot, my book covers, photos from my most recent events, awards I’ve earned. Each picture is the highest quality png I have available to reduce the risk of grainy images that don’t scale properly since most of my media work is online.
Next, I have a one-sheet that includes: my bio, awards I’ve won, references to the images in the kit (For example, Heidi Angell speaks to a room of 10,000 at SLC ComicCon 2013 where she was part of the momentous largest 1st-time ComicCon in history), Lists of the awards and their significance, a few quotes about me as an author, links to my website, my book shop pages on my site, my e-newsletter sign up link, my social media links, and links to my most recent media appearances.
Lastly, I have a “commonly asked questions” page. This page consists of all the most commonly asked questions I get and the answers I have carefully prepared.
What do I have in my Book Media Kit?
Images- all the images that have been created for the book in the same quality as in my author kit. Book quote images, review quote images, book ads, everything. I rarely send the book media kit to anyone. But I can pull the items that are appropriate for each event quickly and easily as I have everything in one place on my drive.
I create a book one-sheet with a lot of the same information that is on my author one-sheet except specifically for my book. The Hook, the blurb, review quotes, pricing, links to all the sales pages (starting with my storefront page.) and links to all the recent publicity.
I include a “Most common questions” about the book sheet. With, you guessed it, my carefully prepared answers. When I do tours or events for the book, if a clever new piece comes to light, I will add it to this kit. I try to keep the common questions doc down to 2 pages and curate only the best questions and answers.
I also create series media kits for the same purpose.
What Goes into a Launch Tour Kit?
Images: I will add my most recent headshot, the book covers, the launch tour banners, and then 2-3 promo images (typically 1 quote, 1 review quote, and 1 ad image.)
The Tour Launch One Sheeter actually becomes quite long because it will have the tour dates, the hook, a sales copy description (NOT your blurb, how boring.) the pricing for e-book and paperback with links to my shop pages and Draft2Digital so the contact can choose the bookstore link that works best for them.
If I am doing any kind of giveaway, I will provide the link and the HTML and the rules of the giveaway.
I will then list each stop in the tour and the location information.
I also include a “commonly asked questions” page with the questions from my author, book, and if this is the next book in a series I will add the series questions as well.
What is in an event kit?
The event kit is the template I use for creating a signing kit, a sales tour kit, a festival kit or con kit, and an awards announcement kit.
The event kit is for any one-off event. It will pull heavily from the author, book, and series kit.
For images, I include the headshot, book cover if for a single signing, the series cover if for the series, or if I am doing an event where I am repping all my books, then the scalable version of my social media covers which has all my books in a row based on the order of publication. If it is a convention or festival, I will include their custom content. If it is a signing or an event I am running myself then I will create custom media for it including banners, ads, and flyers.
I have a one-sheet that provides key details about the event. Dates, times, locations, purpose. The one-sheet will also have my bio, my key links, and some pull quotes. If I am doing a giveaway then the details of the giveaway and how to enter will be included.
I will have a commonly asked questions sheet tied around whatever the event is about.
I will also include a marketing plan in this media kit, though it won’t be sent to my publicity lists. I may use it to curry favor with the event location or organizers though. See, I build these kits in advance. Showing I am prepared to promote the event may be the difference between my getting a signing or my needing to find four other authors to attend if I want the location to say yes. It could be the difference between me just having a booth at the convention, or being able to get on a panel or two or three. It could get me higher billing on the event venue’s promotional content.
So there you have it, my top tips on how to create effective media kits and how to reuse your templates to make it easier to recreate next time.
A note about Design
These media kits are going out to the public. Literally, some of the people you send it to may simply copy and paste what you provide them. It is essential that you take some time to make it clean and polished. Add in some branding. If you use a specific font on your cover, use the same as the headers in your kit pages. If you use a specific font in your book for chapters, use the same font for your section headers in your media kit.
If you have a special image header for your social media pages, use that in your author media kit header. You can even incorporate colors.
Take as much time with these kits as you do with everything else in your book publishing process. This is literally the icing on the cake that is your book. It needs to look and taste and feel as good as the cake itself.
If this sounds like a lot of work and you would rather have my templates, you can order them here:
Is that still more work than you care for?
I am available for hire. Email me at heidi.angell@outlook.com with “free 1/2 hr publicity consultation” and let me know what event you have planned, when it is, and I will reach out to schedule a half-hour appointment with you to discuss a proposed plan and cost.
Until next time,
Keep Writing!