Whether you’re traditionally published or self-published (or both), you are always going to be your best marketer. And make no mistake, you’re going to have to be because there is no one more motivated for your book to sell than you are and very possibly no one else to do it (yes, even if you’re trad published). A media kit, or a press kit, is something that you’ll want to have on hand when you’re getting ready for a promotional push to make sure that everything needed to sell your book effectively is right at your fingertips.
A media kit contains all the information that anyone will need about you and your book when they’re interviewing you, reviewing your book, or simply promoting it for you. Even if you’re not expecting massive coverage of your book, a media kit comes in handy for blog tours, for sharing with influencers and authors who want to support you, for your hometown paper, or for any other media outlet, big or small, that might want to feature you for whatever reason.
Having a media kit makes your message more cohesive because you’re giving people ways to talk about the book—they’ll have their own opinions and put their own spin on it, of course, but you have a bit more control over the narrative this way. And it helps you build relationships with those people for future promotion down the line—you made it easy for them once before, and they’ll remember that and want to work with you again later.
What’s in a media kit?
Your book title
High-res cover image
What the book’s about: This could be your back cover blurb, and/or longer or shorter versions of the blurb to highlight different things in the story. You could also talk here about the larger issues or themes of the story to help your media contact write their piece around that idea or figure out how you could be featured in a round-up post of new releases, for example.
Book info: You’ll want to include the basics, such as the release date, buy links for all the platforms that the book will be on (use Amazon universal links!), what formats it will be in (paperback, ebook, audio), and the prices for each. If you have a specific hashtag for your book, definitely have that in too. I’d also love if you’d include content/trigger warnings, just because I think that should be a regular, automatic thing that we do now.
Reviews/praise: If you have early ARC reviews for the book before it comes out, pull some quotes from them to have here. As reviews come in after the book is released, update your media kit with them.
Previous books: Include a list of your previous works; if you have a huge backlist, maybe just include your most recent or most well-known ones. If your new book is part of a series, make sure you highlight the other books and how this new book fits in the series. This is also a good place for praise, reviews, awards, etc., that you’ve gotten from previous books, especially if you don’t have reviews yet for the current book when you’re prepping your media kit.
Marketing images: Create a number of eye-catching and intriguing marketing images that media people can use on social media. (You can do this in Canva if you’re DIYing, or you can use templates from services like Book Brush.) You can pull quotes from your book and lay them over a background, or create mockups of with your book cover in flat-lays, for example. Make sure all of the images are consistent with your branding for the book so they all look like they go together. (It takes seeing something at least seven times before people will make the decision to buy—so if a prospective reader sees these different marketing images all over the internet, it should be easy to identify that it’s for the same product to tally up to seven quickly!). You’ll want to have these images formatted for different social media platforms (square works for both IG and FB).
Bio: You don’t need to get into your life story here. Keep it short and sweet—about 200 words or so. Your name, what you’ve written before, any awards and accolades (if you’ve hit a list before, for example), and a couple of interesting facts about you, especially as they relate to this book.
Headshot: These don’t have to be pro photos or anything. Just include a couple of well-lit photos that you like of yourself where we clearly can see your face. If you remember back when everything went down with RWA early last year, Courtney Milan was everywhere—in articles in high-profile media sites around the world—and she tweeted this:
Obviously, you would hope to not be in as difficult a situation as Courtney was, but if you happen to go viral for any reason, you want to make sure media have a good picture of you rather than ganking something from your Instagram that may not be as flattering.
Contact info: These are the basics again: your writer email, your website, and your social media links. If you’re repped by an agent or your publisher has a marketing contact, you will want to check to see if either of them want to handle any media inquiries instead and if you should put their contacts in there.
Other non-essential things you can include in your media kit: 1) A press release that explains who you are, what the book is about, why it’s important/interesting, and where and when it’s available. 2) A list of potential interview questions that will help guide the media in creating their stories/posts about your book. 3) An excerpt from the book (keep it short and tantalizing!). 4) Book trailer (only if you have one).
(If you’re trad published, sometimes the publisher will prepare the media kit and arrange all the promo for you, and that obviously makes your life a whole lot easier. But if they’re not doing much promo for you, make sure you’re not stepping on any toes if you create and use your own kit.)
Put it all together
There are a couple of ways to put all of this together. Your written info can go into a PDF or a document that you put in a shared Dropbox or Google Drive folder, or you can create a dedicated media kit page on your website. (It doesn’t have to be directly linked on your website—just send the link to the media contact, or email them the PDF.) Likewise, all your images can go into Dropbox or Google Drive, or you can host them all on your website.
You do not have to get super fancy and create a whole beautifully designed, brand-new website for each book. Just keeping everything neatly organized and up-to-date is great. You want this to be easy access for anyone who needs it. (That includes you! Use all of this stuff for your own promo in your newsletter, on social media, anywhere. And then everything will be good to go for release week and you won’t have to scramble to do it.)
I’ve had a couple of clients who’ve create their own media kits before, and I so appreciate that. I like to promote my clients’ work on my social media for their release days, and I usually make my own images in Canva for them that (I hope) speak to the book. (I like doing it and I’ve gotten better at creating the images, but I’m perfectly willing to admit that my graphic design skills may leave something to be desired.) But the clients who had a media kit all ready just linked me to their Google Drives, I chose an image they’d already created, used some of their language to write my caption, popped in the hashtag, and boom, my post was ready to go and perfectly in line with their own branding.
So, will you prep your own media kit for your next book release? I know it seems like a ton of extra work, but a lot of this you’ll already have at hand or will need to do anyway. And then it’s so much easier to sell books and have others sell them for you! It’s well worth the time.