Creating a Sell Sheet for your novel

Although my novel was published by a mid-size trade publisher, I had little way of knowing  what their publicity arm was sending out about the novel. And I know my novel best; the stories it has, the issues it brings up, the talking points.

After discussing with the publisher, who encouraged me, I  put together a sell sheet for the books to use and to share with Sunbury Press & their publicist company, CISION. I had lots of early reviews, some of which I included. Because we were short of space for this, (it is a one-sheet!) I tried to get important reviews that also included some info on the plot & characters in the story. Luckily my partner is an accomplished visual artist who has been co-creating visual publicity pieces with Photo Shop throughout our creative lives together. He gets the design credit for these two covers! And these painstaking ‘sell sheets’, full of copy, plentiful with words.

In terms of Sunbury Press, now we are working together: as a Canadian author, whose books are published by a traditional trade publisher from the US and distributed in both the US and Canada, I am not supported by Canadian and provincial programmes, contests, subsidies in place to bolster British Columbia and Canadian publishers. The publisher himself, Lawrence Knorr, is an accomplished, smart man who wants to get it right and I am confident he sees my two books (THEORY and KENNEDY GIRL) as assets to his bottom line.

As an author, I  need publisher support when interfacing with news outlets, literary festivals, libraries and contest/prizes. It’s just a fact that an author is taken more seriously when represented by her publisher.

A sell sheet provides the basic information about your book on one page, including the ISBN# and the literary genre of your novel, and a flash-synopsis.  Send this to libraries, bookstores, writer’s festivals and book clubs to keep the buzz going about your new release.