Our goal at Bookphoria is to entice more authors, speakers and experts to explore the world of multimedia as a gateway to more dynamic and engaging presentations, growing readership and audience, greater impact and multiple income streams for your business. We want to give you practical tips and tools to start using multimedia in your book promotions and your business.

Bookphoria is all about learning and implementing your ideas.  To infuse your multimedia journey with some extra motivation, we are introducing a game (and reward) element to our Bookphoria blog series.  Watch the video and stay tuned to find out more.

First, let me ask you: “How do you buy books?” Chances are that you go online or to your local book store already with a book title in mind because somebody told you about the book or you read and enjoyed other books by the same author.  Fewer people nowadays have the luxury of wondering into a bookstore, browsing the shelves and finding something new to read.  Most people buy when they already have their next book in mind.  What does it mean to you as an author? You want to be that author that other people heard about from their friends and colleagues, in radio and TV interviews, on social media. In other words, you want to stand out from the crowd of other authors in similar genres and industries. You want your future readers know who you are, what books you have written and why. Before they learn from you, they need to learn about you.

This brings me to the topic of today’s video: the author bio (and if you are a speaker, it also applies to your speaker bio or speaker reel.)  Where do you usually find an author bio? On the book cover, that’s where! I am holding the book “Golden Climate in Distance Learning” co-authored by Dr. Marina Kostina and see her bio on the cover. But didn’t I just say a few seconds ago that your prospective readers should already know about you before they even see your book cover? If you are a speaker, you bio is typically read by event organizers, and as you probably agree, it rarely has en effect of a red carpet introduction.  So, what do you do? I challenge you to think about creating your own unique, exciting, dynamic, multimedia author or speaker bio in the video format. Your multimedia bio can include:

• Video and audio clips from your book signings and speaking engagements;
• Video testimonials from your readers;
• You own narration of your bio and your mission;
• Photos from various events;
• Slides with pertinent information about your business.

Before you start pulling all these pieces of information together, however, I want you to come up with the main theme of your bio.

• How do you want your readers to remember you?
• What are the main attributes of you brand that you want to convey to your readership and audience?
• Why should people care to read your books or listen to your presentations?
• What do you stand for as an author or speaker?

As you ponder these questions, distill your ideas into a crisp and catchy statement that is memorable and shareable. It can become a theme for your video bio that will help you create a compelling story in in a digital format.

For example, as The Brain Alchemist and a certified World Class Speaking coach, I show presenters how to “Link and sync brains through storytelling.”  This is one of my themes. I also use the metaphor “Melt the ICE” to create Impact, Connection and Engagement (ICE is an acronym that is easy to remember).

It is now your turn to come up with your multimedia author bio theme. Share your ideas in the comments below. As promised, here is the game plan. Your catchy theme submissions will qualify you to receive our Bookphoria reward points, otherwise known as “bookmarks.” 1 theme submission = 1 bookmark. You have to email your submissions to info@bookphoria.com. As you accumulate your bookmarks for doing the fun work (more challenges to come in our future blog posts), you become eligible to get special discounts and gifts from Bookphoria, and most importantly, you start developing your own invaluable content for your bright multimedia future. Are you game?