After you’ve written a book that is supposed to change someone’s life, help someone understand something or entertain them, you can’t do this unless you get people to know about your book…yes introverts, I’m talking to you too.

You need to get your book out into the spotlight in order to get readers and followers to know about you.

I know that a lot of writers hate networking and marketing and would rather just sit in front of their laptop and write, but alas, you cannot just do that. You need to get yourself known out there in the big world…scary, I know but necessary for success.

In order to get yourself known and not disappear in the sea of books on Amazon you have to have a great press kit. All this will take is a little bit of knowledge and you will need to come out of that comfort zone of yours…don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right.

Please don’t break out into a panic induced cold sweat now, I am going to give you a few steps to help you create your very own press kit and those steps are as follows:

#1 Creating a press kit

A press kit is how you would share your and your books information with the media world out there. The best way to stay organized and know where everything is, is to create a folder on your computer and name it ‘Press Kits’. You can then have separate folders inside that folder for the press kit of each book that you release.

For the book that you busy with now, place a nice-looking head-shot of yourself in the folder (no, you can’t use someone else’s). This head-shot should be mostly of your face, shoulders and down to your elbows…not further than that. Your photo shouldn’t be more than 1 MB in size or it could be too problematic. It needs to be a posed photo where you are smiling at the camera or looking away into the far distance or looking at a book, or whatever you feel like doing (within reason).

You then need to write your bio. You can do this in any ‘Word’ type document. It needs to be between 75 and 100 words and should be written in the third person. It should embody a message to your ideal audience about how you serve them. A good way to write this (because it can be daunting) is to imagine that someone is saying it about you before they’re about to welcome you on stage. A few tips:

# Keep it short

# Don’t add a whole lot of achievements and accolades to it

# Keep it relevant to your book and the message of our book

# This is not where you’re going to give personal information about your food

habits, pets, or children.

# It should just have your name, what your book will do for people, the title of

said book and short sentence describing your book.

You then need to write your blurb on a different document. Your blurb should also only be between 75 and 100 words long. The blurb is the most difficult thing for most authors to write and most of us think they were sent from hell itself, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The blurb needs to be written as if the reader is describing the book to a friend. For example, you shouldn’t write, “In this book I’ve written about love and loss of passion and drive.” Instead, you should say something like, “In this book, Matthew shares his story on love and his loss of passion and drive.” You need to tell the reader what’s in it for them.

If you can get all of this information on a one-sheet, then that will be even better. (A one-sheet is the term used for a single PDF sheet used by an interviewer which contains all that they would need in order to interview you. That information is as follows:

# Your name

# Your head-shot

# Your bio

# Your blurb

# Your sample interview questions that they can ask

# Your contact info

(I found an example for you and you can click here to find it)

That’s all that a press kit basically has in it. It also has to be easily accessible for when you want to send it via Dropbox or email.

#2 You need to make a list of 5 to 10 people that you would like to chat to about your book

One way that you could do it is to find bloggers with a similar audience to yours and write out an interview that you can give to them for their blog. You can also find radio shows or podcasters that do author interviews or book reviews. You can even search YouTube channels or TV shows that you would like to appear on.

Don’t be disappointed if some of them do not come back to you, just keep trying. You can contact your list with a short email about how you think you can deliver content to their audience that they may enjoy and then attach your press kit to your email. In this way, they already have the information before even answering you.

#3 Follow up with the people on your list

People are very busy and may forget to answer their emails sometimes. If they haven’t come back to you in a week, then follow up with them. After another week, if they still haven’t come back to you, then you can follow up again. Don’t feel bad to follow up with them or that you’re bothering them.

If after that they still haven’t come back to you, then move on to another person.

#4 In order to get your book to sell better, contact at least 3 to 4 new people every month from there on out

I’m afraid that means exactly what it says…you need to contact new blogs or podcasters or YouTubers, etc. every month. You might not be successful with all of them, but at least one a month will be a good thing. If you want even better results, then get hold of more people (I can literally feel the introverts cringing at this).

It’s not a very complicated process, but it is a lot of work and will take persistence. You will also need to learn to take criticism and rejection in your stride. Don’t allow fear to hold you back from making your book a raging success by stepping out and making your circle bigger. How does that song go again? Oh yes…what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Become a boss at sharing your press kit out there and your books will take off. Don’t give up! Take a deep breath and step out of that comfort zone of yours…it’s only holding you back.

That’s it from me for now…

Please show me some love and comment below. If you enjoy what you see, please follow me for more features.

Enjoy the moments