The thought of creating a media kit can be a scary one. How do I start? What do I include? Who will want to read it?

Well…a media kit, can be at the heart of your marketing and PR campaign and should be one of the first things you put together. A media kit should include all the important details about you and your books.

It is a good idea to have a kit that is about you as an author, then create individual ones for each book being released. Media kits can be extensive but they don’t need to be—it’s up to you how much information you want to include. If you set up a template per book then it’ll be easier for you to construct the media kit each time you wish to create one.

If you are looking for promotional opportunities, reviews, setting up advertising or blogging it can be useful to pass along the media kit to the person you are working with as

this will enable them to get a feel for your author brand and your new release.

It’s also a handy tool for you – if someone asks you for the ISBN or a quote about your book you can go straight to the media kit and grab the information as you already have it stored.

In this ‘How to’ we are going to detail below those things we think you should include in your media kits.

It is a good idea to have a kit that is about you as an author.

How to

Create a Media Kit

· The aim of your media kit is toprovide essential informationto those that you wish towork with, in a marketingcapacity, for your book. Itdoesn’t need to be anythingfancy and could be as simpleas a word document. You canadd design to the documentand we would suggest savingthe documents as a PDF andapplying security to it prior tosending the media kit out. Thiswill prevent any changes beingmade to your media kit.

· Always put the book titleand book cover at the top ofthe media kit along with yourauthor name.

· Include the basic bookinformation such as; ISBNnumber/s, release dates,price, retailers and links ifyou have them, word count,genres, pairing/s (if relevant),whether it’s a new or re-release edition. If the bookwill be in paperback as wellas eBook include the relevantdetails but specify that they

are for paperback where appropriate.

· Share some promotional artwork—you can use the artwork we provide you with pre-order, coming soon & out now on it. Copy these images into your doc and make a note that they can be used to aid promotion.

· After your basic information insert the tag line and blurb for your book—you can always grab this from your book product page on Totally Bound Publishing or Pride Publishing so that it is exactly the same.

· You can expand on the blurb if you wish and give a brief overview of the story, but this isn’t necessary.

· You could also include a short excerpt—possibly the one we have provided on the website, or choose your own, but we suggest that you only include300-400 words, just enough for someone to ask for more!

· Think of some hashtags thatcan be used across socialmedia to promote you andyour book/s and include thosein the media kit. Examplesare: #eroticromance #bdsm#lgbt #paranormalromance#authorname #seriestitle#booktitle #hotdiscount

· Create some basic posts forsocial media and list those.You could have posts for acover reveal, pre-order date,out-now etc. Write the postsin a way that will entice andtease your reader into wantingto click on the link.

· Once your book is releasedand you start seeing reviewsadd those to your mediakit under a section such as‘Review Quotes’. Take snippetsfrom the review but make sureyou credit the review site and/or reviewer. If you share iton social media or any otherplatform you are saying wherethe review came from.

Always put the book title and book cover at the top of the media kit along with your author name.

Share some promotional artwork

· Insert your author bio and aphoto, along with how peoplecan get in touch with you.Insert your website or blog link,your email address, your socialmedia profiles—the morereaders journalists, bloggers,or reviewers can get in touchthe better.

· If you’d like to expand yourmedia kit further you couldwrite some blog posts—such as‘Inspiration for my new release’,

‘Why I wanted to become a writer’, ‘Character profiles’ and more. Showcase your new release in this section.

· You can also include links toour publisher websites andretail stores to tell peoplewhere to find you.

All of the above are ideas that you could include – have a think about how your media kit might look and just start

gathering some of the info mentioned above. It won’t be as scary as you first thought.

As always if you need any help or have any questions just get in touch!

If you’d like to expand your media kit further you could write some blog posts.

Showcase your new release