Profiles And Press Kits

Press kits are important to an author. It is your marketing file that gets sent to the press, meeting and event organizers, podcast hosts, etc. The Zebra Ink is dedicated to championing the needs of indie authors and has been showing authors how to set up and use press kits for over eight years. Our directory of indie authors, The Zi List, is constructed to act as a press kit for independent authors that don’t currently have one. We will dish about what goes into a press kit, how to have your Zi List profile reflect that, and how to utilize it to your advantage. Let’s get you seen, heard, and hired!

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Profiles And Press Kits

Positioning

Welcome to the show. We have another fantastic training for authors by Sheila Kennedy. I will introduce her in a moment and let her take the reins. Before we get started, I want to remind you all that our monthly training will be 90 minutes. It’s platform planning. There are forms. I’m going to go through a lot of things. We’re going to go through a workbook, and then I’m giving you some forms so you can understand how to break your platform down into bite-size pieces. How many get really overwhelmed when I tell you to do things? All of you, so we’re going to figure out what you need to do and how to break it down into bite-sized pieces so you get it done.

If you’re interested, go over to PlatformPlanning.com and register. You can get all the materials. Hopefully, it’ll be a really beneficial training for everybody. I’m super excited to share it all with you because it is the way I work this time of year to make sure that my goals for 2025 can be reached. It’ll be beneficial for all of you.

This episode’s trainer is Sheila Kennedy. She is the Editor and Publisher of The Zebra Ink Magazine. She has spent over a decade immersed in the world of publishing. She’s a two-time solo author, a co-author of the best-selling memoir of Justice Joseph D. Valentine who has retired, and a publisher of 21 other authored books.

Sheila has not only mastered the technicalities of the industry, but she has also championed the emotional depth that storytelling demands. She understands passion, vulnerability, resilience, creativity, and the emotional currency that fuels the author’s journey from conception to publication. If you’ve ever read her magazine, you know that’s true because it’s a storytelling magazine. It’s not like the magazine that we have.

Through her mentorship and coaching, Sheila has guided countless aspiring authors, helping them to draw upon this emotional wealth to craft stories that deeply resonate with readers. She created The Zi List, which I hope all of you guys will sign up for when she talks about it at the end. It is a directory of independent authors, publishing service providers, and independent bookstores. That’s the part all of you, if you are already published, should be really excited about. She also showcases the bravery, brilliance, and boldness of the indie author community.

Sheila, take it away. 

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, everybody, for being here. We are going to have quick and easy information. When I first started in the publishing arena, when I was doing my first solo book in 2013, somebody said to me, “Sheila, you need to have a press kit.” I was like, “You’re ridiculous. I am not going to be that important. I do not need a press kit there. The press is not going to be calling me and saying, “I need a quote,” or whatever.” She’s like, “Trust me. You need to have it. I was like, “No. I really don’t.” She persisted and we put one together. It is the most used tool I have.

I can’t recommend everyone enough that they should have one. If you don’t have one, I’m going to show you how to put it together. Since I feel so strongly about authors having one, I created The Zi List so that they have a press kit that is already built. They don’t have to do anything different but fill out their profile. Everything that we have in The Zi List is in a press kit and can be used as such. We’re going to cover all of that here.

There’s a difference between a press kit and a media kit. That’s something that a lot of people don’t quite understand. The reason that I am making that distinction is so that you know the difference. In this episode, we’re talking about press kits, which are about you, your individual press or fax marketing collateral, and things like that.

A media kit is something that I have for the magazine. That includes who your demographic is, what your topics are, and all of those kinds of things. That’s really important because it has your social media numbers and things like that. You are going to present a media kit to people who want to advertise for you or with you who may want to be writing for you and those kinds of things.

There’s a difference between a press kit and a media kit. Some people use them interchangeably. They’re different in my mind. They may not be in everybody’s mind, but I want you to be aware of what I’m talking about. We’re not talking about media kits. We’re talking about press kits. That is for you to be getting more press, if that makes sense. How many of you have a press kit or what you would consider to be a press kit? Anybody?

Linda does.

That’s very good. We’re going to talk about positioning first. You can use your press kit to position yourself. With positioning, if you are one of a million people who are doing the same thing, how do you stand out? Typically, how you stand out is how you encounter your expertise. A lot of us are experts in the same field but we all bring something different to the field. All of our businesses are going to be different. How do you set that up? That is going to be your position statement for your press kit. If you haven’t done that work about how to differentiate yourself, that’s going to be super important. That’s the first thing.

Secondly, when you are talking about positioning, we want to avoid words like, “I’m amazing. I’m the best,” and things that are subjective. We want concrete things. Everybody can say they’re the best or they’re the only. All of you are not the only ones, I promise you. I hate to say that but it’s so true. There are only so many universal truths in the world. What is unique to us is how we encounter those universal truths. What we write our books about and what we do our business for, those skills are not necessarily unique. How we create them or put them out into the world may be unique. That’s something important to think about.

My business used to be a confidence coach. There are a million people who are teaching confidence. There are a million confidence coaches out there. What did I do? I was the confidence coach. Why? It is not because I’m cocky or because I’m arrogant. It’s because I knew that I had other skills to bring to the table than other people did.

I wasn’t worried about confidence necessarily in yourself. It was in your messaging, your branding, the outcomes that you provide, and things like that. It was a difference. I’m asking you to think about those kinds of things. What is it that you bring that’s different to the marketplace? That’s what you put in your press kit. That’s going to be important when you’re doing your bios.

What Goes Into A Press Kit

The second thing is that I want to talk about what goes into a press kit. First, you’re going to start with your headshot, then your contact information, then your social media handles, and then your bio. You’re going to have a short bio. I used to have people do long bios, short bios, and speaker bios. I now ask them to do short bios and speaker bios.

Why a speaker bio? Juliet was reading my short bio, not my speaker bio because it’s long. What happens is we need to grab a couple of sentences that indicate the main points. You don’t have to give your entire life history or your business history. Hit the highlights.

Try to find something that is going to be interesting to the people that is going to be like, “I need to listen to her.” You are going to be talking to them for the next however long, so you don’t have to hit all of those. They’re going to see your expertise in your presentation. They don’t necessarily have to hear about it in your speaker bio. The other part of that is that when you read a regular bio, you read differently than you speak. If you are not speaking it out loud, it sounds fine. Usually, our bios are rather stiff and they don’t roll off the tongue. We want it to be easy to introduce you.

That’s why I asked for two because most of the time, your press kit is going to be used when you are sending it to meeting planners and event planners but also to press who are going to interview on podcasts or TV. We need something short and sweet so that they can very effectively communicate about you. You’re going to have a speaker bio and a short bio.

If you’ve written a book about your business, whatever that may be, you can have your book profile, you can have your book covers, and you can put the description in there. You can put it where you can find it to buy it if you want to. I go back and forth with that. Sometimes, it’s tacky. I’m like, “Why would you want to do that?” At the same time, I’m like, “If they’re going to go find out if it’s for real, if it’s really published, if they want to read the reviews, and things like that, then it makes it easier. That’s fine.” You can do that.

You’re then going to have interview questions. When you’re talking about your interview questions, here’s the thing. I want you to use your soundbites. How many of you have ever put together soundbites for your business or your book? The history of sound bites is that they were headlines. They were easily repeatable phrases that piqued the curiosity. It’s repeatable so they can easily be shared with other people.

Most of us have these value statements, mission statements, and all of these things. That’s amazing. I’m not saying not to have those, but at the same time, if you want people to be an external sales force for you, you have to give them material that is easily repeatable and memorable so that they’re going to remember it. I want you to be seen, heard, and hired. I want it easy to remember that they’re like, “Sheila’s that girl who does that.” Those are the things that you want to turn into your questions. 

An easy exercise to do is to list five qualities that you want to be remembered for and you want to be associated with when people are talking about you. What are those five things? Then, turn those into sentences. From those sentences, you whittle it down to about a ten-word phrase or less. Less is better. 5, 6, or 7 words is usually max. If you do ten words, no more than that. These are going to be things that are repeatable, rolling off the tongue, and very interesting things.

You’re then going to turn those into questions. Those are going to be the start of your interview questions. You’re going to provide 10 interview questions. Some people don’t know what to ask and they’re not going to read your book. We want them to have as much good information as possible. You are going to have really good answers for all of those things that you are going to know and you are going to have practiced so that you can sound as professional as possible.

The goal of the next part of your press kit is going to be your media appearances and what publications you’ve been published in. That’s going to be super important because when you are approaching the press especially, they’re going to want to know you can handle an interview. If you haven’t yet, you want to get on at least one podcast or get some kind of radio or TV interview going because they want to see that you can handle an interview, that there’s not going to be dead air, that you’re going to have things to talk about, and that you’re going to be interesting.

We’ve all listened to those podcasts and interviews where the people are like, “It was great. I loved it.” That’s not helping anybody. That’s not endearing people to you. Your media is going to be important, so have those links to podcasts that you’ve been on, training you’ve done, and those kinds of things. If you have a sizzle reel, put that on there. If you have anything like that, that’s going to be helpful to put up there.

For publications, they want to know that you can write outside of what your book is. They want to know that you are a decent communicator. They want to see what publications you have, what your industry is, and who you’re influencing. Those are important as well. If you don’t have those kinds of things, that’s why we have publications like The Zebra Ink. You get to tell that story. You get to be part of that story. They get to see that you’ve been published in other places. It’s not necessarily when you’re doing these interviews that people have to be there live. That link is going to be more beneficial to you than the audience is live because that lives on. You’re going to put on your media appearances and publications.

I’m not big on putting testimonials in there only because I don’t know that that’s going to sway anybody. People fight me about that, and that’s cool. If you want to put your testimonials in there, that’s awesome. I’m not going to say not to, but however you want to work that. If you won awards and things like that, there’s room there for that.

We wrap it up with fun facts. Why would we want to put fun facts in? The reason why we put fun facts in is because sometimes, interviewers aren’t always adept at pulling out good information to ask. They run through your first 10 questions rather quickly and they don’t have anything else to say but they still have 10 minutes to finish, or they have dead time. If you have those, then they can at least ask some questions about those things.

When you’re compiling your fun facts, they should be items that are separate but will point back to what your sound bites would be. I’m a champion for indie authors. One of my fun facts would be I was a Division I cheerleader in college. I started cheerleading when I was in fifth grade. I have been a cheerleader until now because that’s exactly what I do for my clients. I am their biggest cheerleader. What started as a fun extracurricular when I was a kid, I now do it for a living. One of my other ones is that I lived in 19 different houses over 25 years, so I am really good at resilience. I’m good at adapting to change because I’ve had to do that.

I get to take authors from being people who are in their own little world and help them change to be somebody who influences a bigger world. I help them with that resilience. I help them build up that resilience so that they can adapt to changes that are coming their way after they publish their book. You see how that works. They were interesting little facts about me but they always pointed back to what my platform is all about. Does anybody have any questions? Linda?

You mentioned the interview questions and the soundbites. Can you give us an example of a soundbite and a sentence that becomes a question?

Sure. Let’s say one of my soundbites is I want you to be seen, heard, and hired. I would turn that into a question as why is it important for authors to be seen, heard, and hired? I would flip that around, or I could say something like, “If you’re the champion, why do authors need a champion?” I then can get into, “It’s hard because they’re usually doing all of the things all by themselves, for self-published authors anyway. They’re doing the writing, the marketing, the promoting, and the relationship-building. They’re doing all those things.” I can talk about all of those things. That’s what I’m talking about. Does that help you?

It helps. Thank you very much. 

My pleasure. Does anybody else have a question? Juliet?

When you’re in the media and you’ve had a great interview, is that something you want to include? As a host, I always try, because I got burned once really badly, to go over and see if people have a reel or something I can look at. I ended up with a 23-year-old YouTube expert who was my son’s age. I was pulling teeth trying to get answers out of him. Is that something you would recommend so that people can see that you will be a good guest?

100%. That’s why we include if you have a YouTube channel or TikTok channel. Your socials are on there. If you don’t have podcasts or interview experience, then you will want to share that because they’re going to want to know what they are getting into. That is really important. What we do for our own socials is not always going to be indicative of how we handle an interview because some people freeze, like Juliet’s experience. One of the best ways for you to get promotion and publicity for whatever it is that you’re doing is the use of traditional media. I know that that sounds counterintuitive because, for the last couple of years, we have been so social media-focused that because of that, it has become what traditional media used to be.

Most of us are shouting into the wind on socials. I’m not saying it’s not important to have it, and I’m not saying not to have a presence and not to be consistent in all of the things. It’s a tool, but by utilizing and harnessing the power of traditional media, I can give 1 interview and I can reach 1 million people potentially if they all are watching that radio show, that TV show, or that podcast. I’m going to include podcasting on there because that has taken the same track as radio. It is because of that that if you have not yet been on a podcast, a radio show, or a television slot, that’s a primary source for you to get a promotion. That should be a part of the strategy when you’re using your press kit. Juliet?

I  want to draw a line in the sand with these. If you’re going to be on a traditional channel, like ABC and NBC, that’s soundbite time because you don’t want to get on and just talk about your book. That’s not what you’re there for. It’s usually short sentences. If you are on podcast or radio, I call them alternative media because they’re a different format. They’re long-form media.

Linda Marsanico has a show starting, A Train to Sedona, in October 2024. She’s going to be doing long form because it’s a radio show. I want to put the difference out because when you interview or pitch for TV, you’re going to be doing sound bites. When you pitch for radio and podcasts, it’s more long form. That’s where your video comes in with the get-to-know-you part. Would you agree with that?

Yes. This is a hard pill for a lot of authors to swallow. I realize that not all of us here are authors or have an aspiration to be and that we work with them. The story that you’re going to pitch is never that you have a new book out. That is not newsworthy. That is only important to you. I don’t mean that with any disrespect. I’m an author myself. You have to create a story that your book fits into that is also newsworthy.

Having a new book out, unless you’re James Patterson maybe, most of us are not newsworthy. You have to create a storyline or pitch a story that is something interesting. You pull from current events and things like that. How does your book fit into that? Maybe you had a meaningful experience that you’ve written about in your book that has to do with whatever the current event is. Maybe you’re talking about a trip that you went to the Ukraine a few years ago before the war and you want to talk about how devastating it is. That’s a story. That’s something that people would want to hear about.

Using Your Press Kit

That’s going to be the next thing. How do you use the press kit? First of all, where do you house it? Some people will put all of this information together, put it in a PDF, and send it as an attachment when they are pitching a story. When you’re pitching a story to some place, it’s no different than putting in a speaker request or request to speak for an event that’s happening. It’s that same process.

Whether you’re speaking, doing interviews, pitching, or whatever, you’re going to include your press kit link. You are going to include that with the information so that they can read all about you and they know about who you are. You can do it as a standalone with your branding and the whole thing. A press kit as a PDF attachment is not my favorite. The reason is that a lot of people don’t bother to open the attachments. Sometimes, they don’t get through some. Especially if you’re doing press and sending it to media outlets, they don’t open them. I hesitate to tell you to do it that way. It’s an option. Sometimes, it’s the only option.

When I did a book for Justice Valentino, he had no desire whatsoever to have a website. He had no desire whatsoever to be doing all of those things. He wanted to write a book about the funny things that he did when he was on the bench. He needed a press kit. I created one and then housed it on my website because I wrote the book with him. I didn’t feel bad about putting it on my website.

That’s what I’m going to say to you. I encourage you to use it as a back page of your website. It does not have to be a public-facing page. It doesn’t have to be on your menu. If you have it as a backend web page, all of your branding is there and all of your menu tab is there. All they have to do is click to see your testimonials, read your blog, and do your thing. They don’t have to go anywhere else.

You’re sending out a URL. They are much more likely to click on a URL that’s going to take them to a webpage and read all about you. A lot of people get confused when I say it needs to be a backend page. If you are creating your website, you’re going to create a new page and publish that page but it is not going to be on your menu. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about backend pages. Juliet?

I’m going to interject here because we have several clients that have books and we have two different press kits too. I want to bring this to your attention. There’s a very divided media environment. There is a left media and a right media. There seems to be nobody in the middle. We had a feminist book. This is something I want you guys to take to heart. Hold your nose and watch the other media whether you want to or not because it makes no sense for you to knock half of society out of reading your book.

Here’s an example. We had a book on feminism. She desperately wanted to be put on liberal media because she felt that’s where feminism was. Every time liberal media was pushed, nobody knew her. They took the Maureen Dowd of the world. Everybody knows who Maureen Dowd is. They took those people who were icons in that area.

What was interesting about it is we had a separate press kit for the more conservative. The more conservatives were the ones that stepped up. FOX wanted to interview her. Newsmax wanted to interview her. She was like, “I can’t stand those networks,” yet those were the ones that wanted to book her. I’m going to tell you this as someone who cares about your book selling. Hold your nose and do the work. You might learn something watching another side of the aisle. That’s what you have to do. We created two different press kits in that situation so that when we pitched, we had more to get in the door. You have to prove that what you’re doing is relevant when you pitch, right, Sheila?

Absolutely.

It has to be relevant. That might be something you consider as well. Do you need a separate press kit if you’re going to be pitching different things?

I would beg to say that if you don’t want to do two press kits, you can do the same press kit but your pitch is going to be very different. That email is going to be worded differently than to the right and left thing. Your basic information isn’t going to change. That’s what you’re putting out in your “press kit”. The pitch is going to be different. I do see where you would want to alter or shift some of your languaging in your press kit depending on where you’re sending it. 2 might be beneficial to you, but if you don’t have any, start with 1.

The other thing is this isn’t about pitching. Controversy is the best marketing you can do if you are strong enough to be on the side of a controversial marketing campaign. I say that with respect because not everybody is up for being able to be the center of controversy. You want people to feel like you do. You want to convince them. If you are okay with people having their own opinions, then it’s okay. Embrace the controversy because people are going to be talking about you and going to want to read your book. They’re going to want to see what’s behind all of this. That’s a fabulous marketing move if you have the guts to do it because it’s not for everybody. I’m not saying that everybody should do that. I’m saying that is one of the best things you could do.

Somebody told me after we had the training that he wanted to do something controversial. He wanted to be canceled and trolled because then, he would sell books. I was appalled. I was like, “I would never want to be canceled and trolled.”

You have to remember. As authors, our job is to move our audience. If you imagine your audience on a fence and your job is to move them, sometimes, they’re going to move on the side of the fence that you’re not on. That’s okay because your job is not to convince them to think like you. Your job is to help them decide how they feel about something. Maybe they’re going to feel differently about it, but that’s okay. At least they’re doing it. In the meantime, they read your book. It’s okay to be a little bit controversial because you can get great results with that, but I’m not saying to go pick fights and things like that.

One of the reasons I made The Zi List was to provide a platform where people who did not have websites or press kits had to create a digital profile or a digital press kit so that they could send out a link that has their own URL and their own QR code. They can send those out that have the parts of a press kit. That’s a tool I feel strongly that authors need to have.

They go through these trainings and are like, “I’m not going to do that.” This is really easy. This is filling in the information. There are templates on how to do all of these things. Doing the positioning, the sound bites, the press kit pieces, and all of that is in a library. I am going to talk about what that looks like because I want you to know how easy it is.

The Zi List

If you go to The Zebra Ink, you will find a profile in The Zi List – Member Directory. This is how you would complete it. I want you to know how easy it is. The first thing you would do is do your basic information. That is what type of listing it is. We’ll say personal. You’re an independent author. There’s also if you’re an author in progress, a bookstore, or a publishing provider. You put your name and all the things.

I took out the address part because most business people at this point in the game are working from home. I don’t want anybody to find their home because of this website. If you want to put that on your Google My Business or whatever, that’s on you, but I don’t want anybody to find where somebody else lives because of the information they found on this website.

I disabled all of the address pieces, but you can put your company name, your position, and a short description of yourself. You can put where you’re located but it doesn’t come up on the maps. You can enter your own website if you have your own website. You can enter your calendar link if you have a calendar link, and then all of your different socials.

You can put your profile picture and your logo. You can also put a cover photo. You can do whatever you want. That’s great real estate on your cover photo. You can brand it to the hilt. You can put a call to action. You can do all of the things. That’s up to you. Your photo goes in there, your logo if you have one, and all of that. It’s completely branded to you.

There are all of these different specialties that you can have. Let’s say your main category is independent author and you’re a mystery writer. You’re going to put that down. If you’re also a photographer, a coach, or a marketing person, you can also put all of those things in there as well because that’s all searchable on the website. You can upload a biography, a brochure, a CV, documents, and whatever you want.

You can put your personal quote. You can put your information as far as your business information if you want to. Your credentials are where you graduated, whether you graduated, whether you went through any training programs and all of those kinds of things. You can also put honors, awards, media publications, interview questions, and then fun facts. 

I’m also going to include, and I haven’t put it up yet but I will, your keynote topics because I want you to be able to use this as a tool to send to meeting planners, people who are calling for speakers, and things like that. All of that can be there. You can hyperlink your speaker sheets for each one of the topics that you talk about on your keynotes in your profile. If there’s anything else that you want to write, you get to do that. That’s available to you.

You can put up website articles that will go up on the website or you can do community articles that will show up on your profile and be available on your profile. You’ll have another tab. You can do a photo album. You can sell your book, and you can sell it right off the website. The product doesn’t have to be a book. It can be a program, a course, an event, or whatever you want. You have to have a URL. I do not process any payment. You have to have an outside payment source so it will go right to you, but it goes there.

If it is an event, in The Zi List, they’re not allowed to publish events. They are publishing providers, service providers, and in the self-publishing roadmap membership. The events will go up on the homepage in the event calendar. You can put videos up. All of those things are something that you can take advantage of. It is super easy. Does anybody have any questions about that piece?

How do we get there? How do we sign up for The Zi List?

You should go to The Zi List. There is a Join Today tab. Juliet is a publishing provider. She gets an ad on our website. The Zi List is only $21 a year. That’s all the things that come with it. You have your publishing provider and membership. That is what comes with it. There’s the self-publishing author level which is for authors looking to self-publish. I have a backend that has a page for them which has all kinds of templates and things like that on there.

We have monthly meetings and things like that. It’s a little bit of a more robust membership. You can sign up and get to be a part of The Zi List so that you can then send out your URL at the top when your page comes up and your QR code if you want to put it on your print materials. It makes it easy. It’s a super easy way for you to send your press kit out to all your people. We’ve covered it all.

The Importance Of A Press Kit

I’m going to tell you why this is so important from a post standpoint. Many years ago, I had a show before the one I have now called Ask Juliet. It was about publishing, and I used to highlight new authors. It drove me crazy. I stopped the show after about a year because all I got was piecemeal. It was like, “I’d love to be on your show. Here’s my headshot,” three days later. It was like, “Here’s my bio that I didn’t write before.” It drove me crazy, so now, I have a form that you have to fill out to be on my show unless you’re one of my clients and you’ve been invited, and I already have your stuff where you’re going to put all that in. If you were filling out my form, you would cut and paste it right out of Sheila’s and then book.

Also, a host will drop you, and the problem that you have if a host drops you is that we all talk to the other hosts because we’re always looking for good guests. I might call the host of another show, and I do this with Tracy Hazzard all the time, and say, “I heard so-and-so on your show. Do you think they’d be a good guest for me?” She’ll tell me, “Yeah,” or, “Don’t bother because this is what happened.” That’s why you have to have it organized and together because we are a chatty, clicky little bunch. At every opportunity, we’ll drop you.

One of my favorite stories to tell about press kits is that I was teaching this class several years ago. It was for entrepreneurs. It wasn’t for authors. I wasn’t in the publishing space at that point. I was a confidence coach. I did Marketing Mondays, I had these classes that I gave, and I was talking about press kits. There was this one woman in the group. She had a business that was helping college kids or high school seniors get into college. She was a college admissions advisor or whatever.

She looked at me and was like, “I don’t need any of that. I am an entrepreneur. Nobody’s going to be calling me. I don’t need this. This is ridiculous.” I was like, “Rock on. You do you. I’m telling you that what we put energy into expands. If we’re putting in the time and energy to put in a press kit, we’re going to need it. You’re going to have instances that are going to come up where you’re going to use it, but you do you.”

About four days later, she called me and she said, “You cursed me.” I go, “Excuse me?” She said, “I got home from that class and I got an email from the newspaper. They were doing a story on college admissions and things like that and they wanted to quote me. They needed a headshot and a bio for their byline and the whole thing. I had nothing to give them. I didn’t even have a headshot.

She goes, “Can I give you a couple of days?” They were like, “We’re trying to write this today.” She was like, “I don’t have all that stuff.” She scrambled. She went to someplace that afternoon, had a friend take a headshot of her, and scrambled to put together a bio for them to have that. As soon as that was all done, she went, “I sat down and put together this stupid press kit because I needed it. I will never doubt you again.” I’m saying to all of you that it’s worth having.

The other part of it is that you need to keep it updated. As you are on more media, you need to put it on there. Whatever it is that you’re doing that’s new or different, you need to update and make sure that you’ve got all that material on there. That’s a cautionary tale. The woman that did that or the entrepreneur that did that, and I still laugh about that, is like, “Do you remember?” I’m like, “Yes. I tell your story all the time because it matters.” There you go.

When we do the intake for publishing, only about 50% of the people are at intake time. Think about that. We’re getting ready to publish your book. Unless you’re someone who has really planned and you’ve been doing author platform-building with us, you, all of a sudden in the midst of publishing your book, have to scramble to get a good headshot. You have to go do a photo shoot right after you put out money for a publishing package. Photoshoots are not cheap. The last one I did, the shoot was $800 and the actual images were almost $2,000 when I bought them.

You need at least three bios. You want a long, short, and then the very short one that Sheila talked about. On the flip side of that, you need to be prepared to promote when that person has you on the show. Remember that clicky host thing I told you about? Do you know how many times I’ll say, “Was she a good guest?” and they come back and go, “She didn’t promote at all.” That’s a taker, so be sure that you ask, “Can I get permission? Do I have your permission?” That is because it is their intellectual property to use this in any way you need to promote. You might want to run it through Opus clips.

You must have a list. You have to send that interview out to your list. Is your email up and running? Do you have social media that’s being consumed where you can take those Opus clips? Make sure that you, in addition to the press kits, are in a position to be a great marketer as well because the more people see you promoting, the more opportunity somebody might say, “She’s really promoting this podcast well. I wonder if she’d be a good guest for me.” You might trip into, and Linda’s about to learn this for A Train to Sedona, who’s a good list and who’s not. You’re going to be calling her and saying, “Is that a good guest?”

We got to wrap this up because we’re at our mark. Does anybody have any questions before we go? Sheila, thank you very much for being on. Everybody should be signed up for The Zi List. At that price point for a year, that is amazing. Also, don’t forget to go to PlatformPlanning.com. This is a course that I do every year for $1,500 but I’m doing it for free this 2024 because I know a lot of people are out there struggling with their finances. Let’s get your plan for 2025 done and create a good revenue year for you as well. Thank you so much for showing up. We will see you again.

Thank you, Sheila, for the very informative presentation.

Thank you.

Important Links

• The Zebra Ink Magazine
• The Zi List – Member Directory
• Join Today – The Zebra Ink
• PlatformPlanning.com

About Sheila Kennedy

PROFILES AND PRESS KITS with Sheila Kennedy of The Zebra Ink Sheila Kennedy Owner of The Zebra Ink www.thezebraink.com publisher@thezebraink.com Home of Zebra Ink Magazine Sheila Kennedy is a two-time solo author, co-author of the best-selling memoir of Justice Joseph D. Valentino (RET), and publisher of over 20 other-authored books, Sheila has been a part of the publishing industry since 2013.

Beyond mastering the technical aspects of the industry, she provides mentorship and coaching to aspiring authors and storytellers worldwide.

Her creation of The Zi List, a directory of independent authors, service providers, and independent bookstores, showcases the bravery, brilliance, and boldness of the indie author community. Follow @thezebraink