Making an Indie Press Pack

The Press Package “One Sheet”

A One Sheet is sort of an industry term for a document with pertinent information. The One Sheet is often sent along with media such CDs, film footage, or other piece of media. The term is somewhat misleading, because many one sheets have MORE than one sheet of paper. And I’ve heard it loosely used to mean all sorts of different things (for instance, in movies it often refers to main photo or graphic to be used in posters, minus any writing or tagline).

Some people also use the term to encompass the entire press kit. For our purposes, it’s just the informational paper that you send in with your CD.

You can basically think of a one sheet as the equivalent of your resume.

For a lot of people receiving your material, the most important thing about the sheet is that it be short, well-organized and to the point. After all if this was a resume, would you want all sorts of strange information on it, or have 20 attached pages full of pictures of you at your last job? Probably not.

The information that goes on it can also vary depending on where you are going to send the press kit. For that reason, it may be good to make up separate One Sheets to send to reviewers, radio, labels and distributors for example. But no matter where it’s going it should probably contain:

Band Name (in official font and colors if you have it)
Title of CD (in official font and colors if you have it)
Thumbnail pic of the CD (if you have it)
Related Genres (optional)
Band Website(s)
Band Member(s) (and the instruments played)
Email (at least 2, in case one stops working)
Label Information (if you are currently on a label)
Physical Address and Phone # (optional)
SHORT bio (no more than 2-3 paragraphs)
2-3 SHORT press quotes (from previous albums)

The bio can be particularly troublesome; the tendency is to try to write a novel abouty your band’s entire life story. Trust me, most people are going to skim it whether or not it’s long. You want to use bold face type judiciously to break up the bio as well as shorter sentences. I’m not going to get into WHAT exactly you should talk about in the bio because that is highly open to interpretation and depends on you and your music.

I’d seriously consider trying to fit the one sheet on one page. Remember, more pages add extra weight which can increase postage. Believe it or not adding a single piece of paper can make the difference between 2 postal rates!

If you have the room, add 2-3 excerpts of your best reviews from previous album or works. It’s also a good idea to try and choose review quotes from more popular publications and sites (if you have that many to choose from). They should be between one and three sentences long… or even simple phrases.

It is a really good idea to include the track listing at the bottom of the page with “stars” by the songs to indicate which ones you think are the most playable or “singles”. You definitely want to do this for press packages meant to go to radio, but you may want to include this for reviewers and press too.

Many people like to print in color, but I don’t feel it’s necessary. Including a picture of the band on the page may also not be necessary; you may want to insert your band’s “headshot” separately if you have it.

Whatever you do, don’t make the one sheet difficult to read.

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