I’m handing over my blog this week to my friend Melissa Snark. Melissa has published four titles, and has two scheduled for release this year. You can find her at MelissaSnark.com.
-Sheryl
As an active book blogger, I’m always excited to work with authors to promote their books. Often, new authors don’t really understand what is expected of them or what they need to provide for a blogger to be able to create a successful post showcasing their book to its best advantage.
The list varies from blog to blog, but commonly requested pieces of information include:
- The book’s title, author name, publisher, date published, genre and word count
- A high quality cover image
- The book’s blurb, an excerpt and buy links
- A high quality author photo
- An author bio and author links
Sometimes, new authors provide this information in the body of an email, which can create a bevy of formatting issues and also be difficult to retain. In other instances, authors have sent me separate documents for each piece of information.
You can imagine the headache associated with trying to keep track of multiple documents within the Word processor while attempting to transfer everything to the blog post. I have chunks of hair missing on parts of my skull…
I’ve found I can always tell an author with multiple titles or who has some experience under their belt. When asked for their promotional info, those authors provide a single Word or RTF file that contains everything with plain formatting for easy copying and pasting.
These promotional packets have a variety of names. I’ve heard them referred to as media kits and tear sheets. No matter what it is called, a promotional packet is an invaluable tool for authors and book bloggers.
What should tear sheets look like? Below is a sample of what one might look like. There’s a lot of wiggle room, but what matters is that all of the information is contained in one place.
Below are screen shots of the media kit I’ll be providing to Sheryl Hayes for inclusion at the end of this post. I hope she’ll find it helpful.
Here’s a screen shot of the first page of my media kit for THE CHILD THIEF:
Pages two contains the excerpt and buy links:
Page three has my author information:
I hope the information here is useful for authors in their future promotional efforts. I’m sure you’ll discover that you save both time and effort once all of your book’s information is assembled in one easy grab-and-go place.
Sheryl, thank you for having me as your guest today!
Melissa Snark is a paranormal and romance author with a particular interest in werewolf and Norse mythology. Her Loki’s Wolves series combines elements of both in a contemporary fantasy setting. She lives in Northern California with her husband, three children and glaring of cats.
Connect with Melissa
Email: melissasnark at gmail dot com
Twitter: @MelissaSnark
Sheryl,
Thank you for having me here today! The layout of the post looks great. 🙂
Great info, Melissa… I’ve done my share of book tours (I’ve published 5 novels, 1 novella and a short story) and have hosted a few on my own blog and I’ve always created an easy to cut/paste media kit. But as for receiving them from other authors— you are right the newer the author, the more frustrating it is to pull all the info from the docs sent to me. Sometimes I’ve even had to hunt for the info on the author’s web page or Amazon because they didn’t send everything I’d requested.
Great info.
Great information. Thank you for sharing.
You’re welcome. And thank you for writing an informative post. I’m sure I’ll be using the information someday. 😉
Just as soon as you figure out the title for your WiP! 😉
Thanks, Sarah. And you brought up a point I didn’t even mention–blog tours. I’ve been in the same position with trying to hunt down info on the Internet. 🙂
Lynne, thank you for dropping by and commenting! 🙂
As a newbie author, I am saving this post for future reference. Thank you! 🙂
Thanks for posting this, Melissa. I had no idea I should have done this. Fortunately, the majority of my blog visits haven’t taken place, so I can resend the material to the blog host using your format.
Hi Monica,
No one told me about media kits when I started out. It wasn’t until I had a guest and saw one that I was like, “Oh, wow! What a great idea.”
Anyway, I hope this helps. 🙂
Mary, thank you. I’m so happy you found it useful. 🙂
Great post! Something all new authors need to learn, and it never hurts to be reminded!
Great post Melissa! I’m a host for Bewitching Tours and I’ve learned a lot hosting other authors – this is GREAT info for everyone to have – great post!!!
Thanks, Katie. I know it was the case with me. I hope other authors find this info useful. 🙂
Hi Kat,
I’m also a host for Bewitching. I absolutely agree. I’ve learned a lot by watching how other authors do their promo. 🙂
I must be the odd ball because I prefer everything EXCEPT photos in the word doc. and have often asked my bloggers to resend everything with the photos attached to the email and not in the kit pages. I always have issues transferring the photo or book image to my blog. What is the secret of convenience for that?
Other than that, it is hair-pulling when authors send a post with everything (interview/post, bio, book info) in separate word docs. 🙂 I usually ask the author to compile it and resend in one word doc.
Great tips, Melissa. Thanks.
Hi Calisa,
I’m happy with images either way. When they’re inserted into the document then I just copy/paste into Paint and save as a JPG file. When they’re attached to an email then I just save to a folder and do an insert picture. Both work fine for me.
Thanks for dropping by and commenting! 🙂
I wondered how to get the pictures out of a word doc to use. Thanks! I always do the save and insert because it was the only way I knew to. 🙂