Media Centers Essential for Authors on VBT (Virtual Book Tour)

Media Centers Essential for Authors on VBT (Virtual Book Tour)
By Angela Wilson

One of the most frustrating things about being a virtual book tour host for Pop Syndicate’s Book Addict blog is searching numerous Web sites for author information.

When I book authors for tour spots, I give them a brief paragraph of what we need and attach a PDF with more detailed information. Some authors read it thoroughly and follow through. Other authors are lucky to make their tour stop deadline.

When I pull together Q&As, photographs and book trailers for posts, I have to visit a variety of sites to get the information. It takes a lot of time, effort, and frustrates me when I cannot find what I'm looking for. What makes it even more infuriating is that the authors didn't bother to include that information with their completed Q&A or guest blog.

This is why every author who is serious about their work should have a media center on their Web site.

Your media center should be a one-stop shop of details about you. It should include anything anyone would need to do an interview with you, host you at their blog, write an article about you, include in reviews of your work, pass along to fans and link to from blogs and other sites.

Media centers also make it easy on you. When people ask for details about you, all you have to do is refer them to your media center.

Want to add a media center, but don’t know where to begin? Here is a quick checklist of items to get you started:

▪ Photographs of yourself in JPEG
▪ Cover art in JPEG
▪ News release archive (PDF)
▪ Guest blog appearance list (PDF or links list)
▪ Book tour and virtual book tour stops (PDF or links list)
▪ Links to your social networks
▪ Biography (include one short and one long bio) (PDF)
▪ Publicist contact information
▪ Excerpts (PDF)
▪ Downloadable audio clips
▪ Videos with EMBED codes

Your Web designer can help if you want to add this to your current site. If you don’t have a big budget, consider using a free blog like WordPress or Typepad, which allow you to add pages of information - not just blog posts.

Angela Wilson is an author, freelance author publicist and professional blogger and podcaster. She requests ARCs and manages the book blog for Pop Syndicate, where she hosts authors on virtual book tours. If you have a question about promotions, visit www.askangelawilson.com and fill out the contact form. Your question may be used on that site or in a future newsletter column.

Find Ms. Wilson at:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/angelawilson

http://www.facebook.com/people/Angela_Wilson/775118823

http://www.myspace.com/angelawilson

http://twitter.com/angelawilson