Latino Book into Movies Promotion Sheet

Welcome to this webinar for all ISLA Members.

 

This webinar was hosted by Kirk Whisler, Empowering Latino Futures Board Member and Co-founder of ISLA.

 

This webinars’ focus was for everyone to know a little more on the creation of Promotion pieces for marketing their books. In this case, it was specific to the winners of Latino Book into Movie Awards and targeting those in the entertainment industry, but the information provided on the promotion sheets apply for all kinds of books.

 

Promotion pieces are great tools to get the information of your book out there. It takes work, but don’t get discourage because it’ll pay off.

 

 

14 Ways to Create a Winning Promotion Sheet

Here is the complementary article on the creation of promotion sheets for marketing books. In this case, we are more specific to the winners of Latino Book into Movie Awards and targeting those in the entertainment industry, but the information provided applies to all kinds of books and to more targets.

Promotion pieces are great tools to get the information of your book out there.

 

14 Ways to Create a Winning Promotion Sheet

Once we have all the books and promo sheets we will start delivering them to key people within TV networks and studios. We will typically delivering the packages to Presidents and Senior VPs within their operations. This distribution will occur over the next few months. From there the books typically will go to different departments within their operations. We have no control or input from that step on. These entities have staffs that will review possible items.
 
 
Background items:
  1. Audience you are writing for. The promo piece is the most important thing to get them to read the book. If in 30 to 90 seconds your piece doesn’t tell a motivating story to get them to open the book your book will not get read. Please send the time writing and re–writing this promo piece so it will hit home.
  2. Fonts. For headlines and shorter spots of text, use sans serif fonts, not serif ones. This tends to make them more readable. Use no more than 3 fonts in total.
  3. Design. Keep it clean and easy to read. Often two columns works: One wider and one narrower. Don’t feel like you have to cram things. Use both pages. Items for the two-page Promo sheet
  4. Logo. The Latino Books into Movies Awards logo needs to be at the top of each page. Place the logo on the upper right-hand corner and have it be roughly an inch across.
  5. Winning Category. On the first page top right list the CATEGORY that you won in 18 point type, and the prize (ie: First Place) in 14 point type.
  6. Book Cover. A picture of your book cover. Size should be at least six square inches.
  7. Author photo. A picture of the author. Please make sure this is a sharp photo. Size should be at least four square inches.
  8. The Book. A 200 to 250-word synopsis of the book. Please put hooks in here on why this should make a good TV series or movie. Don’t use your normal marketing piece – consider whom you are writing for. Be sure to call yourself an Award Winning Author, because you all are.
  9. Audience. This would be a short paragraph on the potential or target TV or movie audience for this book. Is it women 18-34, young adults, people who love history, or who? Most writers have a target audience they are writing for (I know I always have that in my mind before I begin a book or project) and often that target audience would be the same for the show or movie.
  10. Award Background: These words need to be at the bottom of the first page: The Latino Books into Movies Awards are conducted by Empowering Latino Futures(ELF), a 501c3 nonprofit co-founded in 1997 by Edward James Olmos and Kirk Whisler. The judges for these awards are screenwriters, directors, producers, and others in the entertainment industry. They have deemed these books worthy of consideration for future television and movie production. For more info about ELF, please contact Kirk Whisler at kirk@whisler.com or 760-579-1696.
  11. Quotes. An appropriate quote from the press and others. Two to four would be great.
  12. Character Descriptions. A brief description of the main characters. Ages, personal characteristics that are key to the story, insights that might help a producer start thinking about specific actors they might want to see in that role.
  13. Contact Information. The appropriate contact info for any interested entities to contact whomever. Please remember they will need to know who controls the film rights for the book. If you have an agent, please list them and only their contact info. You must list a phone number and an email.
  14. Copies to be sent. Please print the 10 copies that you will be sending in color print two sided. Created by Kirk Whisler, Latino Literacy Now, 760-579-1696, kirk@whisler.com