The DIY Guide to Building Your Own Press Kit

 
Yes, you can (and should) have your own press kit.   It’s show season, and if you are an exhibitor, you probably have received this advice about self-promotion and publicity:   “Make personal contact with one member of the media. Send out pre-show press releases to targeted trade media (“Sue Smith Debuts New Ceramic Work at Buyers Market in February”). Put press kits in the show’s Press Office.”  

 But what exactly is a press kit? What should a press release say? Do you need to invest in help from a publicist or agency to create these?

You can do it yourself! Last month, we finished a three-part series showing you how to blog. (January 08 Market Insider)This month’s Market Insider dissects a press kit for you. “But I’m an artist, not a writer,” you say? If the prospect of drafting your own press materials makes your knees knock, don’t despair. We’ll give you some simple guidelines, a template, and tips to help you create a professional package. 

What is a press release?

A press release is a business letter that announces news to the public through the media.

• Good press releases are written like short news stories: They are succinct and based on facts. The better press releases make an editor’s job easy: who, what, when, where and why are included. The best press releases are kept to a single page. Use your letterhead, and don’t get fancy – no clip art or smiley faces, please!
• In the age of the Internet, make your press release entirely quotable: If you design handbags, for example, you can send your press release to a handbag blog, and expect that sections of your text may appear online exactly as you wrote them. (At most newspapers and magazines, on the other hand, a reporter or editor will probably rewrite your information, or use it as the basis for a story.)
• Make two versions:  You’ll need a nice, clean, hard copy on letterhead for snail-mailing. You’ll also want to have a nice, clean, Internet copy for e-mailing and for posting on your Web site. Test mail the e-mail to yourself, to see whether the text garbles or shifts, then adjust your formatting based on what you see. Whenever possible, send your press release in the body of the e-mail instead of using an attachment.
• Press releases have a special format. It is recognizable throughout all media. The format is so common that you can find templates to use at Microsoft Office Online, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/results.aspx?qu=press+release.

What is a press kit?

A press kit is a package of materials assembled to inform the media about you and your work, with the goal of inspiring a story about you.

Here are the basic building blocks:

•  A press release
•  A brief and quotable artist’s statement or a brief (one-page) biography or a resume
•  Publishable pictures. Include product descriptions or captions. See more on this below!* (Optional, but very desirable)
•  A list of galleries and retailers carrying your work, including addresses and phone numbers. Also list honors or awards that you’ve won. (Optional) 
• Neatly photocopied stories that have been written about you or your work. One or two would be enough. (Optional) 

Ready, get set, write! 
 

• Just the facts, please.  We know an editor who used to lecture, “I’d rather read a plain and simply worded, straightforward sentence any day than to stumble over tortured and flowery prose.  Please just write it the way you would say it.”   

• If you DIY, please make sure that two friends who spell well proofread your materials befpre they go out – oops, see what we mean?  Even the best writers benefit from eagle-eyed editors. Do not trust the computer spellchecker, which does not know the difference between “there” and “their” and “they’re.”

 Worth 1,000 words:  A few tips about photographs
For a printed press release, include at least one image of a product in your newest line.  That’s what sells it! Photography is one place where an investment can really pay off. Make sure the image is in focus, centered, not grainy or shadowy, well-lighted, etc. You can also include, if you want, an image of the artist at work – action shots are great. Mug shots are OK, too. These images have to be in focus and reproducible – not homey snapshots. You want possible retailers and customers to see your fine work at its best.
You don’t have to send actual prints. (It’s a nice touch but an expensive one.) You can have the good pictures taken, and then stored on a disk or in an electronic picture folder. Then make good-quality color photocopies or printouts off your computer to enclose in the printed kit. Attach a typed note to the image, providing the product description or caption and a promise that camera-ready images can be e-mailed upon request. And if you get a call for the pictures, don’t delay about sending them!
For e-mailing images to the media: Make sure you have formatted the images as jpegs in 300 dpi that are sized to 3 inches by 3 inches or larger. Try to put each image (with captions) in its own e-mail. (Why? Here at Market Insider, for example, our computer cannot receive any picture file bigger than 6 megabytes.)    
Who gets your press release?
Professional p.r. people use e-mailing services and buy expensive mailing lists.  You can too, but you don’t have to: You keep your own business mailing list, holiday greetings list and birthday card list. So you can build and keep an exclusive media list, based on contacts you make at shows and calls you make from home.

• HOME is where the heart is. Start with local media, newspapers, event listings,  etc. Don’t forget the magazines that are distributed to tourists in your area. Whenever you can, send your release or press kit to a warm body, not “To Whom it May Concern.”  Call to get the names of the Events/Calendars/Listings Editor.  Get the names of the Features/Arts Editors.  Get also, in case you need it, the name of the reporter who covers Small Business (a nice in, sometimes). Ask your local merchant’s association, small business group and convention bureau if they will share, for free, their lists of media contacts.
• Add trade magazines and journals in your art discipline. (Get the name of the CALENDAR editor, and also the name of the editor in chief. Yes, that’s two press kits or e-mails for one publication. See, they don’t share their mail with each other!) Don’t forget our sister publications, AmericanStyle and NICHE magazine.
• Add Web sites and blogs that cover your art discipline, the gift retail world, etc.
• Add any publications that you subscribe to or regularly read. (You remember what it was like to have time to read, don’t you?)
• Add television shows that focus on gift products, shelter, housewares, gifts – whatever categories help sell your creations.
• Add the names and addresses of reporters who have written about your work in the past (make new friends but keep the old).
• Are you a craft show or trade show exhibitor? Ask each show’s publicity director for media contacts: The show press office is probably small, and cannot shoulder the job of promoting every individual exhibitor, but it can be your partner as you build your own promotions.

For the faint of heart:
Here is an easy-to-use template to draft your first press release. It will get easier every time you do it, we promise!
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (optional: add a start date and a stop date)
CONTACT:  
COMPANY NAME:
ADDRESS:
TELEPHONES:  (be careful what you list, it will be published)
WEB SITE:
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  (be careful what you list, it will be published)  

YOUR TOWN (Month, day, year)  --  The latest designs from NAME OF YOUR COMPANY, featuring SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT YOUR WORK, will be unveiled on NAME THE DATE, at NAME THE SHOW, in NAME THE CITY. 
NAME OF YOUR COMPANY and NAME OF THE ARTIST specializes in SAY WHAT that are handmade to the highest standards in our studio in NAME THE CITY/STATE. 
(OPTIONAL:  ADD A SENTENCE  ABOUT THE SPECIAL LINE, FORM, DESIGN, TECHNIQUE OR PROCESSES – OR SAY WHAT MAKES YOUR WORK SPECIAL AS A GIFT OR COLLECTOR ITEM, ETC.)   THE ARTIST’s work can be purchased through NAME ONE or TWO GALLERIES and other craft retailers nationwide.
 “ONE-SENTENCE QUOTATION FROM THE ARTIST DESCRIBING HIS or HER INSPIRATIONS OR APPROACH TO ART,  OR SOMETHING THAT EXCITES THE ARTIST ABOUT THE NEW LINE, ”  said NAME OF ARTIST.   HE/SHE won the NAME OF AWARD in YEAR, and has been exhibited at NAME OF MUSEUM, SHOW, ETC., in YEAR.  HE/SHE teaches WHAT at NAME OF SCHOOL.
For more information, commissions or custom orders, please contact the studio at PUBLISHABLE TELEPHONE NUMBER and E-MAIL ADDRESS.
-end-

 OPPORTUNITIES KNOCKING
 Nominations open February 15 for the 2008 Top Retailer Awards.

Who do you think deserves to be among NICHE magazine’s 2008 Top Retailers?
Artists can nominate their favorite retailer, gallery, arts non-profit or guild for the 2008 NICHE Top Retailer Awards competition by completing a paper ballot, downloading a form or voting online. Nomination ballots can be downloaded at www.AmericanCraft.com through the Top Retailer Awards link.  Nominations open February 15 and close March 31.  The winners will be announced at the Summer Buyers Market of American Craft.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“ A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.”
-- Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist, editor, orator, statesman and reformer