HOW TO WRITE A QUERY LETTER

Howdy Friends! Since so many of my friends here are authors, want to become authors, or are writing their first manuscript (or twentieth) WE all get faced with creating that dreaded QUERY LETTER. I was too!

You’d think since authors are writers, they could write . . . a query letter, but by golly that ain’t so.

The first task in that is of course research, “Who do I contact?”

Then after you’ve decided that, comes the contact. The dreaded “Query Letter!” A very intimidating prospect indeed! Haha, I remember my first venture into writing query letters – NO I’ll not share any of those!

But what I will do, is share a little formula I came up with to help friends.

First rule, “Keep it simple!”

Agents and their staff are very busy. Good ones (and you don’t want any other kind, right?) receive dozens to hundreds of query letters a day. Holy Cow!

Here’s my advice on how to generate a simple, effective query letter.

1) Keep it under 300 words! AND in this exact order.

2) You have the 1st sentence – That’s all you get. Then maybe more, one sentence at a time. Agents get perhaps hundreds of queries a day – And many have interns read them. That first sentence might be “I chose to submit to you because of your interest in (genre) and because (tidbit of agent personalized info, ((this is big!)))

3) Brief synopsis of your novel. A few sentences ONLY. (EXTRA NOTE: Be sure you’ve studied the agent you are querying. What they want to see will sometime be in their website. Some want a chapter or two attached. Do NOT send chapters if not requested, this’ll cause instant discard of query letter.

4) Title, word count, genre, and author credits if applicable.

5) Thank You and close.