Tag: order

The Author Media Kit: How it Helps Me to Stay Organized

Since I got my butt kicked editing the hard-copy of my author media kit yesterday (the longer one I print out, not the one in the sidebar) I figure it will be the topic of today’s discussion. IT owes me that much!

I have slowed down my writing articles a lot lately so I figure we were due for one. I’ll discuss why I’ve slowed down at a later time. Anywho, the author media kit…

Though “It is always worth it” (See my most recent guest post here), that doesn’t mean it’s not important to focus on putting energy toward the right things (balance is seriously everything!) Energy and time spent directed toward the wrong thing is just as ineffective as no energy toward the work at all. Running into a wall will produce the same thing as standing still. It is insanity, repeating the same thing and expecting a different result. Posting everyday on your blog will not bring more views if you aren’t also networking with others or people can’t even find a follow button on your blog at which to follow your blog (my most serious blog pet peeve!) That is why I have shifted my perspective and started to focus on activities that will give me a return on my time. It is about growth.

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Partial snapshot of the office and my unorganized work-space. Yes, I work from two computers. One is responsible for holding my sticky notes lol

At some point in your writing life, you are going to have to get a bit organized. Whether that is posting sticky notes on your computer as reminders (guilty), keeping a notebook filled with notes you may or may not be able to read (guilty again), or having an author media kit.

I’ve been updating my writing life in more ways than one and have found that being able to go to my author media kit for links has been a great help in getting things done. What is an author media kit anyway?

An Author Media Kit is a collection of marketing material that anyone wishing to know more about you as an author can access and use for articles they may want to write on you, interviews, and other forms of publicity. It is a collection of branded hype-free marketing materials and collateral material for journalists.

The media kit is always a work-in-progress. It is something that must be revisited and added to as you gain more exposure for your work and should be both electronic and hard-copy. (You can find my e-copy on the sidebar of this blog HERE. It’s a little bootleg but I’m working on it). It doesn’t matter where you are in your career, every writer can use a media kit. This means that your “status” as a writer has nothing to do with it. Whether you have twenty book reviews or none, whether you are a Best Seller or novice, whether you’re a Self-Publishing “Pro” or not, whether you are visible in the community or not. All of this has nothing to do with the Author Media Kit. Easy to put together if you invest the time, you do not need any special skill set, training, or experience. In fact, the author media kit can be bought if you have the money and is not something you send out to people in the form of a “Buy my Book” Ad.

“Luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity.” – Oprah Winfrey

Look at it as an opportunity to prepare. When the door opens for you to appear on someone’s radio show or your article to be featured in a magazine or whatever you consider “doing it big”, the media kit will come in handy. In fact, the interviewer will refer to the kit for basic information on you as his form of preparation and research.

The Author Media Kit is:

  • A major marketing package
  • Anyone should be able to access it through your website/blog
  • Journalist expect it
  • Ensures accuracy in news stories
  • Helps people to promote you and your book
  • Free publicity – Free publicity beats paid Ads

7 Key Audiences Who Will Access Your Media Kit

  1. Journalist – Broadcasters, Talk Show Hosts
  2. Bloggers – Easy access to photos bloggers can use, social media handles
  3. Reviewers— Amazon reviews in your kit
  4. Retailers
  5. Individual Buyers
  6. Event Planners
  7. Anyone Who Wants to Promote you or Your Book

The primary goal of the media Kit is to make all these people’s job easier. By making their job easy, they are going to promote you and your book.

Caution.
The Author Media Kit is not something you send out to people as a “Buy My Book” Ad. It is something that is offered in the event someone needs more information on you. It is also there in the event someone happens to organically come across your website. All the information they need to know about you is right there. It is not even for you, but for others.

Personally, it helps me to stay organized and cut down on a lot of time. It helps me to:

  • Easily access social media links and photos for guest blog posts
  • Easily update my author website or anything else that may require such info as contact emails and links
  • Copy and paste needed info into emails of inquiry
  • Share across social media in the event someone is looking for more information about me.

I can go on but you get the point. It even helps in the case of Book Reviews! Are you tired of having to send your social media handles out? Author photos? Send the reviewer to your Author Media Kit. There, they can find author photos, social media links, and anything else that they need and so can you.

Not only does the Author Media Kit help others to find you but it helps you too.  My online Media Kit (which needs work itself but that’s the kit for you. It will always need an upgrade!) is working for me right now. I can go to it for my social media links and my bios for the website, cutting down on time I can now spend doing something else.

(Speaking of Bio, it is good to have at least 3 different sized bios in case someone wants to write something on you and they may not have a lot of time. They can copy and paste the short one or the extended one according to their schedule. It is good to have a short bio, a medium length bio, and an extended bio.)

It’s about taking the steps needed so that you do not drown in this sea that is Indie Publishing by making yourself easier to find. Just like genuinely supporting others, by making the job of others easier you naturally become better. (Also, write your bio in 3rd person so people can cut and paste it. Again, the job of the Author Media Kit is to make the job easier for whoever is reaching out to you.)

Yecheilyah Ysrayl is the author of The Stella Trilogy, Blogger, and Poet. She is currently working to release two books in “The Nora White Story” this year–about a young woman who dreams of taking part in The Harlem Renaissance movement and her parents struggle to accept their traumatic past in the Jim Crow south. “Renaissance: The Nora White Story (Book One)” is due for release July 15, 2017. For updates on this and other projects be sure to follow this blog and to subscribe to Yecheilyah’s email list HERE.

A Bone to Pick with The Feminist Movement

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The world as we see it, and as we know it, is a Feminine world. It is a place where women are first in everything. A place where strong men are constantly emasculated; any sign of strength taken and softened to fit the approval of clean faces and man bags. To qualify as a “good man” he must do everything for her, but she is not expected to give anything back. A man does not have the right to defend himself when his life is threatened if it includes women; yet, women are allowed to fight alongside men in brutal and violent wars. A woman cannot naturally produce seed without the sperm of a man, yet, she can abort a baby without him because it’s her body. No one will inquire of his opinion. No one will seek his feelings and beliefs. No one will bother to search out his heart about what he helped create because women do in fact, run the world. Lady Liberty is a Queen. She stands unmoved in the middle of the New York Harbor as the symbol of the world’s leading country, the United States of America; her head is covered with a crown and her arms are raised to shine the light of illumination on mankind. Even in marriage, when the two become one the man must propose on one knee; he must bow in submission of his queen.

Indeed, I have a bone to pick with the feminist movement…

Young man proposing to a woman.

As is my custom, I don’t like making these articles extremely long so we’ll cut to the chase here. I’m going to purposely skip past some information because contrary to popular belief, the feminist movement is not about innocently advocating for the rights of women in the context that we should be treated with love and respect. It is not simply a movement to help women to understand their worth as human beings and to understand the signs of abusive situations with men. Truly I wish it was that simple. But this is not what the feminist movement is about.

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In truth, The Feminist Movement in general has to do with authority and role reversal. Whether we are talking about a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence, all of which fall under the label of feminism, at its core is the desire for women to be equal in authority with men. It is women who believe they are deserving of the same level of authority as a man.

The problem however, is that when man was initially created he was given a level of authority that was not given to the woman. It does not suggest she does not possess authority, it does not mean she is inferior, and it does not mean she has no place, it just means her place does not surpass that of the man’s. He, the man, was created first, and she is his helpmate. For this reason, because he was created first, it is impossible for her to lead him. Despite whether or not his masculinity has been compromised, a woman cannot be a man and a man cannot be a woman.

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The line that separates the role of men and women have been blurred, twisted, and manipulated by members of the Feminist Movement for quite some time. It is a misunderstanding of submission and authority. It is taking abusive men and saying that men cannot be heads of households because of him. It is taking the abused woman, and saying that she is the embodiment of submission. It is giving of movies, TV shows, magazines, speeches, advertisements, music etc., and creating an image of the woman’s role of submission to that of weakness, and a form of slavery. But it wasn’t until the Feminist Movement and its portrayal of certain images and definitions of words that men and women started to take on the mindset that if a woman does not have the same exact role as the man that she’s somehow inferior. While  before these images women, especially the so called Black woman, understood the power of being on one accord and establishing order within the household.

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A great misunderstanding of a woman’s role and it’s confusion with household chores also took root and became mainstream. We were taught that submissive women stayed at home, raised the children, and cooked dinner while the man worked outside the home, came home and did nothing. While there’s nothing wrong with a woman who stays at home full time to care for her family (it is a great responsibility that should not be looked down upon), as the ad suggests, it was as if a man who ruled his household like the days of old didn’t cook; it was as if he didn’t clean and had no say so in the raising of his children. As such women gravitated toward the notion of feminism because we were taught that for a woman to work outside the home it made her independent and free. The truth is however, that where a woman chooses to be of service does not define her submission. Men can cook dinner, raise the children and wash dishes and still be the head of his household. Under the same token, a woman can work outside the home and still fall under submission to her husband. It is not where she is of service, it is her attitude while of service. But, by outlining these erroneous differences, something as simple as household chores were applied to men and women’s roles. In this way, Feminist were able to craftily defend their position that if a woman is not given the same authority as a man she is being abused. Words like Obedience and Submissive got changed into images like Slavery and Fool and what woman wanted to be a fool? What woman wants to be someone’s slave? And so therefore we have women latching on to the FM under the simple understanding of equality and freedom. But what they didn’t tell us was that this freedom is to release the woman from her natural position in life as helper and counterpart to the man until she now despises this very prestigious position. She thinks she is a queen, but she has been reduced to a fool. Ironically, she has become in her disobedience the same slave she thinks being obedient to her man  makes her.

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I will soon come back to this topic when I have more time. But at the end of the day, whether we’re talking about role, duty, clothing, etc., the purpose of The Feminist Movement is to supply the woman with the same level of authority as the man. This seems innocent enough in terms of rights, but it’s deeper than that. Of course men are to respect women, but women are also to respect men. No matter how we look at this, what The Feminist Movement sets out to do is to disrupt the natural order of things.