A cover letter is sent with your manuscript, or at the very least the first couple of chapters, to hopefully convince the editor to read your manuscript or sample.

A pitch letter is sent to an agent, sometimes an editor, to pitch your idea for a book.  This can be a bit hazardous because you cannot copyright ideas, see what is copyright when it comes to ebooks, it is probably best to also include some thing which looks like part of your new book.

A direct mail sales letter is just that, something which has been crafted to get the recipient to respond.

I keep returning to the marketing world when I am talking about writing and selling your work because they are the masters at getting a response from their readers.  Isn’t that what you want to do with your readers?

I know that getting a response from my readers is what I am constantly trying to do.  It is always gratifying when that works and I do get a response.

I believe that a cover letter, a pitch letter and a direct sales letter have the same function and should be written in a similar manner.  That doesn’t mean that I think you should write them exactly the same way, that could possibly work against you, but if you are not getting the response you want why not?  What have you got to lose?

So what does a cover/pitch letter look like if it is written like a direct sales letter?

It will have a title, a killer opening paragraph and then a full flow of subsequent paragraphs leading the reader to the most wanted response, to read your manuscript or sample chapters.

As much as I would like to provide you with a full-blown sample right here and go through it step by step I just don’t have the space in this post and I really don’t want to write the next 10 posts providing and in-depth tutorial so I have dug up a couple of ebooks for you to download.

Aparently I need to put a disclaimer here:  These ebooks contain links that, should you follow them and make a purchase, I may gain a financial benefit from.

Having said that, the downloads are totally obligation free.  They are links to another website so you don’t even have to be a member here to gain access as you would if I had hosted them here.

I chose this site and these materials because I believe that this is the very best training available online.  Please do read these books, they will help you write better in your books and in your cover/pitch letters.  They will also help you write better content if you want to build your own web site or contribute to this one.

Make Your Content Pre-sell.  This one also covers making your words sell, which is what you are trying to do.

Make Your Knowlege Sell.  This is about putting your knowlege into a book for sale.

Make Your Price Sell.  You might be interested in how to price your book as well.

I have other resources but I need to confirm from the product owner that I can give them to you so they may or may not be added later.