7 Things Every Query Letter Must Have

I’m no agent, but I do see a lot of queries, and I’ve noticed that many of them tend to be missing some very basic, yet necessary information.

So I made a list of the seven most important things I often see left out. Some of these items will only relate to queries for fiction, but if you write non-fiction most of them will still apply.


1. Genre 
You have to let the agent know the genre of your book. Be precise. Calling it a “time-travel mystery with horror, erotica and western elements for women” only tells the agent that you don’t really know what you’ve written. Pick the one genre that most accurately describes your book and stick with it.


2. Word Count 
This detail is important because it can tell the agent if your book is it too long or too short for the genre. Make sure your word count is within standard lengths for your genre.

Word count refers to the WORD count given by Microsoft Word or whatever word processor you’re writing in. Do not include PAGE count. You should also round the word count to the nearest thousands. For instance, if your book is 87,872 words then call it 88,000 words.


3. Title 
This one is simple enough. Don’t forget the title of your book.


4. A Hook 
I know, coming up with a great hook is easier said than done. But there must be something about your book that makes it different and intriguing. Now all you have to do is wrestle it down to one or two sentences. Simple.


5. Summary 
This is the most important part of your query, yet you’d be amazed by how many query letters are sent without a real description of the story. You don’t have to be precise and cover the entire story arc. In fact, you shouldn’t. But you need to give some idea as to what your story is about. What is the conflict? Who is your protagonist and who or what stands in his way?

Think of it as the description you’d like to see on the back of the book jacket.


6. Brevity 
Your query should be one page long, single spaced. That’s about 300-400 words. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions where much longer or shorter queries were successful, but this is a recommended guideline for a reason. Don’t break the rules unless you absolutely have to.


7. A Target
Maker sure you’re targeting the right agent(s).  Don’t waste time (yours and theirs) querying agents who don’t represent your genre or aren’t even open to queries.

Do your research and always address the agent by name, so they know you didn’t just mass email your query to 200 agents.

If at all possible, state why you are querying a specific agent. Maybe she posted somewhere that she is looking for a particular type of book and yours fits perfectly. Or maybe she represents other books that are similar to yours, but not too similar.

Don’t just say, “I saw your name listed on [some agent list].” That’s not a real reason to query, and if that’s all you have to say then don’t say anything at all.

[Shameless plug] And of course, you can research literary agents using QueryTracker.


8. Biography 
I know, the title of this post is “7 Things Every Query Letter Must Have,” so what’s with number 8? You can include number 8 only if it matters. A bio isn’t necessary because not everyone will have something worthwhile to say.

If you have past publishing credits or have won some writing contests, then you can include those in your bio.

If your novel is about a man on trial for a crime he did not commit and you happen to be a trial lawyer, then it is worth mentioning. But if you’ve written that same book, but have never worked in the law field or even stepped into a courtroom there is no reason to point that out.

In short, it’s okay to leave the bio off if you have nothing to say that is related to writing or your book. And don’t apologize for not having writing credits or other experience, just leave the bio off. If nothing else, it leaves more room for your story summary.

Sell it to me!

Last month I posted something along these lines in the QueryTracker forums, and apparently it was helpful. Now you get to enjoy it too. (Of course, if you were to join the QueryTracker forums, you could see all the other amazing advice we share routinely, but that's another matter.)


One of our members complained (accurately) that it's impossible to summarize an entire novel in 250 words. Which is the absolute truth: any novel that could be summarized in 250 words wouldn't be a novel worth reading. But this member was upset at how many unique and intriguing aspects of the novel's worldbuilding were going to get glossed or omitted. No doubt when writing your own query you got frustrated by the limits of the form, the character shading that got stripped down to stereotypes, the careful setup that got reduced to a trope.


Take a deep breath and play a game of pretend: your next door neighbor called you, frantic, begging you to take her to the emergency room. You grabbed a copy of your novel off the shelf, where it was magically just sitting there bound and printed and with a cover, and drove her there. When you got there, you realized you didn't have your wallet, and the ER staff told you it would be five hours. You're hungry. There are vending machines, but you don't have any money. 

You start re-reading your book and loving it. While you're doing that, I come sit down in the waiting area. Finally I say, "Are you reading a book?"

Instead of telling me, "No, I'm sewing buttons on pickles," you humor me and say, "Yes."

I say, "Is it any good?"

That's when you have a wicked idea: if you can SELL me your book, you'll have money for the vending machines and you won't be so hungry. You have a stack more books at home, so it's not a big deal to sell me this copy. The only thing you'll need to do is convince me to buy it.

Now, given that, how are you going to pitch me the book?  Well, first you'll want to get me excited about it, and then you'll want to slip in the idea that I'll want to read it, and then you'll make the generous offer that well you could let this copy go...  

But what you're not going to do is something like this: "Middle Earth is the home to five major races, each of which explores a different iteration of the human spirit."  And you're not going to say, "The underlying theme of my novel is death, but it's explored slantwise by showing the nuanced ways in which individuals respond to the lure of power." 

This stuff may be vital to the story (and in fact, it is vital to the novel I'm talking about) but it's not vital to the pitch. The pitch needs to be a separate entity. Because queries are not synopses or Cliffs Notes. They're sales letters. 

With that in mind, I think you would say, "It's about an ordinary guy who just wants to live his life, but instead he's forced to protect, and ultimately destroy, the one artifact an evil wizard wants most in the world."

I'd probably sit up and and say, "How'd that happen?"

You'd say, "Well, he had no idea what this ring was when he accepted it, but it was forged three thousand years ago by the Dark Lord in order to enslave the different races that live in Middle Earth, only now this guy Frodo has it. It will give him a really long life, but it's going to turn him into a horrible person if he tries to use it. And the only way to destroy The One Ring is to carry it right into the kingdom where that Dark Lord is. And he knows Frodo is coming."

It's not about giving an accurate portrait of the story. It's about teasing us and making us just as hungry as you are. You don't really care about conveying the nuances of Frodo's relationship with Sam as much as you care about making me shell over five bucks so you can get a sandwich.

Make yourself feel better: look on your bookshelf at your favorite books. Re-read their back cover copy. Think about how much it leaves out. But those few paragraphs still interested you enough to get you reading, right? Even if they didn't convey the subtleties of the character's growth?

It's okay. Take a deep breath. Sell your book.

---

Jane Lebak's first novel The Guardian will be re-released this September by MuseItUp Publishing! She is also the author of Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. If you want to make her unfathomably rich, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells.

Why should I care?

 Back in college I took a close-reading class, and since then I haven't viewed prose in quite the same way. The right single word can propel a poem to greatness -- or as Mark Twain said, the right word versus the wrong word is the same as the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. 

At the Muse Online Conference last month, I taught a query-writing class. Students posted their queries for critique, and a few times I found myself rearranging their sentences without knowing why. This is fine for my own work, but a student is going to want a reason, or at least a reason more than "It just works better this way, trust me."

This is a generic example of something I saw in the queries, and I want you to sit up because you're about to learn some verbal sleight of hand.

The original query would say something like this:

Jane thought her worst problem was going to be writing next week's QueryTracker blog entry until the day she discovered she was a Hedger, one of only seven women who could destroy the Earth.

Okay, we've got stakes and a person and maybe a shred of personality, but do you notice what's missing? An emotional reaction. Time and again, I'd rearrange that kind of sentence to something more like this:

Jane thought her worst problem was going to be writing next week's QueryTracker blog entry until the day she discovered the existence of the Hedgers, seven women who could destroy the world. And she is one of them.

Now why would you do that?, you're asking me. And I realized after a while that until we know the meaning of the made-up word, we don't know why we should care.

Let's boil it right down to its simplest: Look at the following two examples:

• Fritz died last night. He was my puppy. 
• Fritz was my puppy. He died last night.

In the first example, you the reader delay feeling anything until you know to what degree you should care about Fritz's death. You can't wail, "Oh, how awful! Who was Fritz?" so you need my verbal cue to indicate whether you should be devastated for me, whether you should shrug, or whether you should laugh out loud and say that was a long time coming. 

In the second example, I telegraphed the expected reaction by establishing the relationship between me and Fritz, and you can backfill with your own understanding of what it means to own a puppy. Then when I tell you he died, you know what degree of response is appropriate.  

Now replace "puppy" with "my neighbor's ex husband" or "the guy who shot my parents." See how giving you the information up-front changes your reaction? As readers and listeners, we guard our emotions until we know how we're expected to respond.

Also, we need to know why we're going to care. In the following circumstances, think about how differently you'd listen to a series of instructions on how to deliver a baby:

• reading them on my weblog
• attending a class for certification as an EMT
• hearing them from the 9-1-1 operator

As a writer, you need to slip in the necessary information first, and then follow up with the cause for emotion.

Mind you, those initial examples about Jane discovering her powers -- they're awful and you wouldn't want them in your query anyhow. In your final draft, you'd do something more like, "While clearing her grandmother's papers out of the attic, Jane discovers a crumbling journal describing the seven women --Hedgers -- who can destroy the earth. Oh, geez -- maybe Grandma's mind was failing three decades before the Alzheimer's took her. But then Grandma's journal describes the birthmark that will appear on the wrist of the seventh Hedger. The birthmark Jane was born with ten years after the date on that entry."

Your query is short compared to your book. It would be short even as the setup of a short story. Two hundred fifty words: hit your reader hard. Tell us first why we need to care about the impending revelation, and then give us the revelation. Tell us the importance of what your MC is going to discover before she discovers it. 

Agents are receiving a hundred queries a day, and while it's a fair bet that they recognize terms like vampire, mermaid and demon, it gets tougher when you're inventing your own paranormal elements. Tell me that your main character is a Hedger or a Silter, and without excitement I say, "Okay, what's that?" Tell me that your main character cancels out entropy and occasionally clusters (totally by accident) all the oxygen at one end of a room, and now I'm saying, "Tell me more."

Remember that "Tell me more!" is the reaction you want to get to your query. The query's only purpose is to get the agent to say "There had better be pages pasted into this email," and the purpose of those pages is to get the agent to hate the subway tunnel that prevents her from sending an email demanding the rest of that manuscript right this minute. The prelude to "Tell me more" is showing me why I'm about to care.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Marianne Strong Literary Agency.

How to Grab an Agent's Attention in a Query

First, how important is a query letter?

The query letter is the first thing I look at, so it should accurately reflect your project.  I think some authors think query letters are just a formality, but so much of being an author is also being able to market your work - and if you can’t take that first step to write a query, you’re in trouble.

 Literary Agent Katie Grimm of Don Congdon and Associates,

from an interview on WordHustler.

Now, tips from twenty agents to make your query shine:

Only about once a year does something immediately grab me from a query. If that happens, I immediately get in touch with the author to ask for the manuscript as soon as possible. Those very rare moments happen when the story sounds fresh and interesting, the tone of the letter expresses the tone of the book, and in those three or four very simple paragraphs, there is a preponderance of evidence that the author is a great writer.

Jim McCarthy of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, on The League of Reluctant Adults blog.

A great hook. Even if the rest of the query isn’t as stellar as it should be, if you have a great hook, I’m requesting pages. I totally get that some people just have issues with queries and that’s ok with me. But you have to grab me somehow. 

Kathleen Ortiz of Lowenstein Associates, on YA Highway.

I see queries all the time that capture my interest. The one thing they have in common is compelling voice. They usually have a fresh approach to a plot, or an interesting concept. If it’s non-fiction, it’s generally something that makes me think, “Oh I want to know more about that.”

Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary Management, on the WOW Women on Writing Website.

In short, the perfect query isn’t the most important part; doing your homework on agents (finding which are really a perfect fit), and having good writing and a solid story are. 

Natalie Fischer of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, on the Teens Writing For Teens blog.

I have no patience for query letters that compare the work to a bestseller or literary lion. I’ve seen letters where the author compares their work in a way that makes me sure this person has completely unrealistic expectations. What I do find helpful is for the author to tell me whom they envision being their audience (e.g., readers of so-and-so may enjoy my work). There is a big difference between over-hyping and helping to position the readership.

Wendy Sherman of Wendy Sherman Associates, on WOW, the Women On Writing website.

I am always thankful when someone values and respects my time by gathering information prior to contacting me. I am also a stickler for grammar, so typically, a poorly written query, or one that contains grammatical and/or typographical errors directs my attention elsewhere. 

Adriana Dominguez of Full Circle Literary, on The Examiner.

No need to apologize for yourself—"I'm so sorry to take up your time." Please don't threaten or beg me to "make your dream come true" or try to pump up the project in ways that mean nothing—telling me how your mom or friends loved it, or that you have 150 Facebook friends, all of whom you're sure would buy a copy. Don't get in your own way! Just tell me about the book, and we'll go from there.

Holly Root of the Waxman Agency, on the Guide to Literary Agents blog.

I’d like to see the author summarize their book in a paragraph or less, and be able to point out authors whose work is like theirs. And of course, what makes me hit “delete” are the usual mistakes—addressing the letter “Sir/Madam,” calling me someone else’s name, misspelling my name, lots of typos, a weak command of the English language, etc. etc. 

Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd., on Gretchen McNeil's blog Seanchai.

I don’t want self-aggrandizing statements. (This book is the next bestseller!). All I need is a brief paragraph outlining the plot and characters, and five pages so I can see if you can write. Please only include biographical information that is relevant to the content and sale of the book. And take into account what I’m looking for. It’s just a waste of time to send me material that I do not take on.

Beth Fleisher of The Barry Goldblatt Literary Agency, on the QTblog.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of query letters that don’t tell me anything about the plot. I can’t figure it out. I’m being pitched a story, but the writer won’t tell me what the story is–though he assures me it’ll be a great read!  Baffling. 

Tina Wexler of International Creative Management, on the Teens Writing for Teens blog.

Another pet peeve is what I like to call the Chinese menu query letter. I get query letters that pitch me five projects in three fiction genres, a screenplay and a memoir. Needless to say, I respond with a polite no thank you. Also, I automatically reject any query that has my name improperly spelled.

Barbara Collins Rosenberg of The Rosenberg group, on author Dianna Love's website.

Do take the time to hone and then highlight your one or two sentence pitch or hook. Do take only one paragraph to summarize the rest of your work-following the grab-your-attention style found on the back cover of books. 

Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency, on the WOW Women on Writing website.

The worst thing you can say is “I am unpublished and this manuscript isn’t very good.” If you don’t think it is good or publishable, then don’t waste anyone’s time mentioning it or sending it along. The writer becomes a professional writer the moment they act professionally and being apologetic isn’t being professional. Have confidence and poise.

Stephen Fraser of the Jennifer DiChiara Literary Agency, on The First Novels Club blog.

A crisp and to-the-point letter that lets me know you know your way around words and can tell a good tale. 

Jennifer Flannery of Flannery Literary, on Gumbo Writers.

What if, instead of on impulse sending a pushy email requesting a status update, you wrote to an agent: “I just wanted to let you know that you should feel free to take your time considering my manuscript. I know how busy you are, and I’m just happy you’ve requested the full and are considering – naturally, I want you to have the time to make the right decision here”? What if you made it your goal to be the most professional and pleasant writer to ever approach the agent you’re querying – can you imagine what sort of impact that might have on the results you get?

Stephen Barbara of Foundry Literary + Media, on the blog of Erica Ridley. 

Be honest and open and show some personality. Agents aren’t looking for worker bees, we want to see originality. Talent is primary, but compatibility goes a long way. Make it clear to agents from the start that you are going to be cooperative and will work with an agent for the betterment of your career. 

Rebecca Sherman of Writer's House, on The Career Cookbook.

From an agent’s stand point, the most important part of your query is the story pitch. I need to love the concept above all else. If you have writing credentials or a compelling reason for querying me specifically, great, but if I don’t love the pitch than the rest doesn’t matter.

Mandy Hubbard of D4EO Literary Agency, on Day by Day Writer.

It sparks my interest in the story, tells me more than the title and word count. It's great when a writer can clearly describe the appeal or "hook" of his or her own work and say why I'd be the best representative for it. Sell yourself to me. Professional credentials help, but aren't necessary. You might mention other authors whose work you like or who inspire you. 

Steven Malk of Writer's House, on Hope Vestergaard's blog.

Please don’t be overly friendly or chummy. We’re not looking to be friends (though I certainly like being friends once I’ve signed you on as a client), but to form a business relationship. Keep it cordial and professional.

Caren Johnson Estesen of the Caren Johnson Literary Agency, on Break Into Fiction.

The real key to a successful query letter is to get the point across succinctly. Write a good letter and check it for spelling and grammar. We're nerds! We will judge you for your funky punctuation. And try to capture the spirit of what's exciting about your book. Convey your own passion for the material without egotism. Or, best of all, make me laugh. 

Jim McCarthy of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, on The League of Reluctant Adults blog.

Now, put these tips to use - and let me know the results. 
Go forth, conquer, and dare to be remarkable!