Two veteran magazine editors discuss their experiences fielding media requests. Lindsay Williams, a freelance writer, is a former editor of CCM Magazine, and also worked in the marketing department for book publisher Thomas Nelson. Chris Well, editor of DIYauthor.com and host of the DIY Author podcast, is a 30-year veteran of the media, with practical experience as an editor and contributor in print media, broadcasting, and digital media. In this conversation, the two share their expectations when hearing from authors, musicians, artists, and others who want to be covered in the media.
SIX ESSENTIAL PIECES OF AN AUTHOR’S PRESS KIT
This episode features the second half of Chris Well’s conversation with former magazine editor Lindsay Williams. In this episode, they break down six of the most important components of a press kit–and how each piece is used by members of the media.
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW
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THREE KINDS OF AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Chris: All right, let’s talk about the components of the DIY author media kit. Whether an author chooses to make this kind of kit on his or her own, or chooses to hire somebody else, or chooses to hire us– these are important pieces for the author’s media kit, and that’s why we built it this way.
Lindsay, why don’t we go through the individual components, explain what they are, how they’re used by members of the media, and why they are important. We have three kinds of biographies–we have a one-sentence bio, a 50-word bio, and a 100-word bio.
Let’s start with the one sentence bio. In your experience in the media, how often was that kind of thing important to you?
The One-Sentence Biography
Lindsay: In the music world, bios are a little different than in the book world–you’re normally given a two-page bio on an artist for an album, the same kinds of bios that record labels generally hire me to write. But in the book world, you have many more instances where publications may not do a full review of your product, but they’ll run the cover of your book and a short synopsis. You might be on a page or on a website with 10 other authors—but it’s still a touch point for you. That’s definitely where the one-sentence bio can come in handy.
Also, if you’re guest blogging or doing any kind of writing for a print publication, they often run a shorter bio at the end of the piece to give the reader some context. It’s also a great place to plug your work. It gives credibility, and lets the reader know instantly who you are and what you’ve written.
Chris: The shorter the bio is, the more important that all those words are focused on the right thing. At a previous company, I built a website where we were doing a database of novelists; we needed a lot of very short biographies very quickly, within a matter of weeks. We were building a project that had hundreds of authors. The way the website was designed, there was a photo of the author that was 100 x 100 pixels, and then there was the stripe for the bio next to the picture. There was not a lot of room for verbiage.
You don’t want the author bio to be about where you went to college, unless where you went to college has a very significant impact on why you wrote whatever the book is. If you’re a chef, and your book is a cookbook, and the college was a chef college–fine. But if you’re writing thrillers, the fact that you have a PhD in something completely unrelated to your thrillers is not the thing that goes in this very short bio.
And then the bio of course works for social media accounts. The 50-word bio might work in some of these places, but there are places where it’s going to be handy to be able to plug in that one sentence that is pared down. This is who you are, and this is what sets you apart from other authors.
Lindsay: A tweet is 140 characters. It’s really, really short. It doesn’t give you a lot of room. You have to make every word count.
The 50-Word Biography
Chris: The 50-word bio is the second tier. It works out to be about three sentences, right? Those places where you have room for two or three sentences–your Facebook profile; your Twitter profile; your Pinterest profile. If you do a guest blog, this could be the bio that goes at the end. This might be the description that would be on your book jacket.
It’s important to bring up that many people in the media are on a deadline of some kind. “I’ve got to find something, it’s 11 o’clock at night, I don’t have time to contact somebody and hope that they get back to me. I need something that is ready to go right now.”
The reason authors needs these things to be ready before the media hears about them is so that it can be on their websites and available. So, all the pieces in this kit are things that are ready to go right now and a person in the media can grab whichever of these six things that fits the thing they’re looking for. They can grab it, they can plug it in–and you as the author, you’re going to probably hear about this after the fact.
Lindsay: Right. The reality is that if there’s someone at a media company who has been tasked with building a large database of authors on their website, if he can’t easily find a short bio like the ones we’re describing, he’s going to write one himself. Why not supply something that you know matches your brand and communicates exactly what you want to communicate?
Chris: Exactly. Now, the 100-word bio is the third tier.
The 100-Word Biography
Lindsay: It’s a little longer, three or four really short sentences. It’s still pretty concise. You’re going to use it in some of the same instances as you would some of the other bios, it’s just you have a little bit more room.
Chris: With the three types of short bios, it comes down to the media are going to have specific holes where they’re trying to put that information. If they’ve gone from media school, then they’ve been taught to cut from the bottom—so, what is really happening with your one-sentence, your 50 words, and your 100 words, you start with the super-focused, “This is the brand of the author,” and then, as you have a little more breathing room, you’re able to bring in a little more personality.
The hundred-word bio is the one where, if you really want to tell people the college you went to, maybe you can work that in. If you really want to tell people you have a dog, this might be where you work it in. But it comes after you’ve made sure that you’ve worked in all the things that have to do with your brand, the kind of book that you do, and the parts of your experience that are salient to the kind of book you do.
Lindsay: That first sentence is key, because that’s the hook.
TWO KINDS OF INTERVIEW ARTICLES
Chris: The next piece of the kit we are calling an interview article–it’s a two-page bio. You and I, with our experience in the music industry, we know it’s very normal to get a two-page bio, and it’s written like an article. It is shaped in such a way that there is there is a news hook, there are quotes, and it’s got the ebb-and-flow of being an article. The media person can just run this, and it works as an article.
The Interview Article
Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. Coming from being an editor, the best thing in the world is to get a great piece of content that’s ready to run. It saves time, the editors aren’t having to hire someone else to write it, and they’re not having to do the leg work of having to get an interview.
This type of article is an interesting and very necessary piece of the press kit—because, even if people don’t run it, it gives the media person who is about to interview you more background and context on your book and on you. Then they can frame some intelligent questions to ask you. The more you can prepare the person who is going to interview you, the better the interview will go.
Chris: The author creating this helps the person in the media. And if you don’t have this, you are asking them to do that much more work–some of them are going to say, “I don’t have to do this. I have somebody else that did create a bio. I have somebody else that did create an article. I don’t need you because somebody else can fill that space.”
Lindsay: The reality is that people in the media don’t have a lot of time to prep for interviews. I mean, I never have as much time as I would like.
If I have things sent to me by the publicist like this interview article that I can read in five minutes, and then form some questions out of that, you have no idea how grateful these media people are and how much time it saves to have all of this compact information at your fingertips, so that you’re not floundering around for an interview.
As the author, if you provide these assets to a media person, you are able to control the direction the interview takes. You’re able to better control your brand, and make sure that your brand stays consistent throughout every interview, because you’re handpicking the information that you’re giving the media people ahead of time.
Chris: The more that you help the media and give them useful and interesting information, the less likely there gonna fall back on the same questions they just asked the last person.
Lindsay: It makes it more interesting for everyone involved.
The Q&A Article
Chris: The next piece is very similar to the interview article–it’s the Q&A article. When you receive a media kit from a really good publicist, you’re going to have both the article and the Q&A.
Lindsay: Absolutely. If a journalist has very little time to prepare, the Q&A is probably the first place they’re going to go, because it’s concise and straightforward. It normally pulls out the most foundational questions for your interview. It also keeps a media person from asking questions that are ridiculous.
There are a lot of websites and even print magazines that run straight Q&A interviews, and so it’s just one more piece of content you can offer as a finished, complete package that they can run if they want.
Chris: Even though the interview article and the Q&A article are the same interview, they’re packaged differently. The article is a whole unit, but the Q&A article is modular. News columns and blogs might just need a quote, and that’s all. This format makes it so much easier to go right to the quotes. That may be the only thing in the kit that ends up on that blog, but that is you in another place—and when you multiply that by all of the possible places that may see that and may have used that–
Lindsay: That’s a lot of touch points.
Chris: Some journalist that read this Q&A article may not ask the same questions–they may see these answers and then build off them and go in a different direction. What’s happening is you’re arming the journalist, you’re helping the journalist be more intelligent in the way he or she approaches the interview.
Lindsay: Absolutely.
ONE PRESS RELEASE
Chris: The last piece of the kit is a press release. How do you approach writing a press release?
Lindsay: The press release is a very informative part of the media kit–it’s not artsy, it’s not flowery, it’s concise and to the point. It’s a clear picture of something that’s newsworthy.
Generally press releases work in a pyramid style–you have the headline, then your most important paragraph is going to be your first paragraph, then no more than probably two to four paragraphs. At the bottom you’re going to have a boilerplate, which is essentially a mini bio–that’s where something like your 100-word bio can come in handy. Then you’re going to have some contact information at the bottom.
That headline and first paragraph have to sort of be the clincher of what you’re wanting to communicate with the release. Media’s inboxes are flooded with press releases–among other emails about projects that they’re working on—nine times out of ten, they’re not going to read a full release. You have to communicate what you want them to know up front.
The great thing about press releases is that websites with a news section run press releases verbatim. It’s really good to include links to your website and your social sites in your press releases.
Chris: In a way, the bios and the press release are almost like bookends to the kit–the bios are about the “who” and the press release is more about the “what.” They’re pointed in different directions.
Lindsay: right. Right. I think it’s important to to note that when you send out a press release you want to make sure that you do have something to say kind of touching on what we were talking about earlier because you don’t want to get a reputation as sending out releases just for the sake of sending something out if you really don’t have anything newsworthy to talk about. Because then I think media people will ignore your releases altogether. So I think you have to make sure that every time you do send something out that it’s significant in that it points back to your product and that it is newsworthy.
RELATED: How to Write a Press Release: 8 Tips for Authors
OH, YEAH–AND DO *NOT* SEND ATTACHMENTS!
Chris: So, for authors who understand they do need a media kit–you’ve either hired someone to make one, or you’ve made your own–I beg you not to send large attachments to the media. Make sure that you put your kit on your website. What you’re doing is sending the editor or the media person links to these materials. Especially do not attach large image files to emails.
Lindsay: Drop Box is a great free place for you to store assets, and an easy way to send a link. You can put all your assets there, and just have one place where you send all your media.
Chris: Anyone wondering, “Why can’t I send large attachments? We’re in the age of fast downloads”– if you’re emailing somebody at a media company, that company is probably going to block any emails that have large files. They don’t know where they’re from. They don’t know what it is. They’re just going to block it, and the editor will never see that email.
In other cases, you may end up choking the server. There were cases where I received an email and I had a large number of emails I was waiting to download–because a person in the media gets lots of emails–and there was this giant email that was blocking it. So, I saw this giant number of emails that were supposed to be downloading, because it was waiting to download this enormous file somebody had sent me.
Another example is when an author we wanted to put on the cover of our magazine, and instead of sending us links to his high resolution photos on the website, he kept trying to email them to us. Somewhere in the process, either his email service or our email service was shrinking them. We kept saying, “We need a larger photo,” and he was like, “What are you talking about? It’s a huge photo.” Eventually, after many emails back and forth, we figured out that the thing he was sending was not the thing we were receiving.
Lindsay: If you’re sending large files over email, it really shows media people that you don’t know any better. It’s just a more professional way to interact with the media to make sure you’re just sending a link and not attaching huge files.
If you’re being interviewed by a freelancer, they don’t work for the publication. The art director needs the photos. The freelancer doesn’t need to photos. So, many times you’re sending someone something they don’t need, it’s taking up space in their inbox, or space on their computer.
For the most part, in my work I don’t deal with the photos. The editor or the art director at the publication or the website, they’re the ones who are requesting those types of things.
So, it just makes it easier for everyone involved if you have one place where you’re curating all these assets. Then you have a link and people can pick and choose what they need to use out of your press kit.
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