How To Write a Compelling Query Letter

March 04, 2011 | kellermedia | Comments 3

The most impor­tant step in get­ting pub­lished is get the atten­tion of the cru­cial first gate­keep­ers – the lit­er­ary agents. That’s done with a query let­ter – a let­ter inquir­ing about our level of inter­est in your pro­posed book.

Now the bad news: most agents see hun­dreds of queries a week by mail and email.

How do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from this avalanche of queries?

It’s not by send­ing roses, money, bal­loons, choco­late or silly gim­micks, although they’ve all been tried. (But thanks for that Godiva last year, Jim).  It’s not fancy paper or a glitzy pack­age that you hope will impress an agent. It’s by hav­ing com­pelling, sal­able con­tent and a strong author plat­form. A “plat­form” means that you are speak­ing, blog­ging, pro­mot­ing, an expert, teach­ing, writ­ing arti­cles, what­ever on your topic. and that other peo­ple in the world (who are not your blood rel­a­tives) are respond­ing to you and what you have to say.

For agen­cies like mine that han­dle exclu­sively non­fic­tion, your best approach is to alert us to the size of your mar­ket. (NOT the same as how many books sold in your cat­e­gory last year.  We need to know how many indi­vid­u­als are out there who need what you’ve got).  If the open­ing para­graph reads “650,000 Amer­i­cans will strug­gle with [this prob­lem] this year and my pro­posed book is the first to address it from this per­spec­tive” it will get us to keep reading.  Of course, it really helps if you are the lead­ing expert/researcher in your sub­ject area, a celebrity or have some extremely unusual story related to your topic. If so, men­tion that promptly, iden­tify your plat­form, and finally, tell us a bit about your con­tent.  A rule of thumb is “Audi­ence Size, Your Cre­den­tials & Plat­form, then Your Pro­posed Con­tent.”  Spell check it…twice. Ewe niver knoe wat weel creap intwo yor wrieting.

I’d be much more excited about a query that opens with “I have 42,817 peo­ple fol­low­ing my blog on “Find­ing Romance on the Inter­net” and I am writ­ing to pro­pose a book on this topic” than “I had a bunch of really bad dates on Match.com and they were so funny my friends said I should write a book about them.”  The for­mer, I’ll keep read­ing.  The lat­ter, it’s already rejected — no one in pub­lish­ing will even read the sec­ond sen­tence.  By the way, the con­tent could be identical, but one will sell and the other will not. Nobody ever said life is fair.  Start a blog if it hurts your feelings.

If you email it to us, don’t show all the other agents to whom you’re also send­ing it in the cc: field!  And NEVER com­plain about how many rejec­tions you’ve already got­ten — it just makes us think “Mil­lions can’t be wrong” and becomes an instant rejec­tion.  Agents scram­ble for the few great projects that show up via cold queries each year. Agents also fig­ure, “If many think it’s lousy, it prob­a­bly is.”

How many agents should you approach before you start to won­der a lit­tle about your work? Select thirty lit­er­ary agents who have sold and are cur­rently sell­ing projects like yours.  Address each one of us by name, not “Dear Madam/Sir”.  Get right to the point (as shown above), don’t try to be cute, never be threat­en­ing (it hap­pens!) and don’t promise it’s the next NY Times best seller (chances are, you’re wrong — and if you ARE right, we’ll know it before you do).  Please don’t men­tion that your mom, your friends or the guy you drink beer with after work all think it will be a big suc­cess, unless your mom is a C-level exec­u­tive at a major US pub­lish­ing house.  Be clear about your con­tent and whom it will serve.  Tell us how many peo­ple you are cur­rently impress­ing with this con­tent — your plat­form size.  Most agen­cies employ well-trained assis­tants who exist exclu­sively to fil­ter out any­one use­less to the agency.

Allow time for all thirty agents to respond. If after two weeks (by email) or six weeks (by snail mail) you haven’t heard from some­one, assume they are too busy or not inter­ested.  Let it go.  It’s like pick­ing out the per­fect peach at the super­mar­ket — some are ripe, some are mushy, some are too hard.  If you’ve writ­ten a great query, and you seem to have a good plat­form, some agents might request your pro­posal.  Send it along, but never agree to an “exclu­sive look” – this is an archaic prac­tice that serves the agents but not the writers. Believe me, we know in less than five min­utes if you’ve got a prayer of sell­ing your book.

If an agent offers you a con­tract, it is in your best inter­ests to call any other agen­cies who are still con­sid­er­ing your project before sign­ing.  (This is the ONLY time it’s OK to call agents before you are their client.) Give the strag­glers a few days or a week to get back to you — men­tion you have an agency inter­ested, but you don’t need to name names.  (But never lie!)  Inter­view those who want to han­dle you. Ask what kinds of improve­ments you should  make to it before he or she will send it out, what expec­ta­tions she has for the book — hard­cover? big advance?  30 city book tour?  (PS — lis­ten to what they say — real agents will all pretty much say the same things). Most of all, ask what you should do to grow your plat­form between now and pub­li­ca­tion, and what mar­ket­ing guid­ance the agent will per­son­ally give you before, dur­ing and after publication.

Lit­er­ary agents are an extremely diverse group of ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als and we offer a wide range of ser­vices and ben­e­fits.  We have extremely dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties and work styles.  You will be work­ing with this per­son for many years to come if the book sells. Make sure you have a good fit so the rela­tion­ship between you and your agent will be a long and happy one. Sign the con­tract and let them sell your book for you.

Good luck!

The infor­ma­tion above is meant to help you attract a lit­er­ary agent to help you sell your book to a publisher.

Filed Under: For Authors • KM

Tags: pitching books to agents • query letter writing • query letters • writing good query letters • writing query letters • writing to agents