205: All About the Query Letter

 

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ALL ABOUT THE QUERY LETTER

 

Hi friends, welcome back to Your Big Creative Life podcast. Thanks for being here. I'm excited to talk to you about querying, query letters specifically. I wanted to do this episode because I have edited A handful of query letters recently for clients. I use, well, I don't have a query letter edit officially on my website or like a submission package or anything, but I do them occasionally. And sometimes if editing clients are querying, you know, I can look at their query letter for them as sort of like a benefit for being a client. So, I've had, it's interesting because the vast, vast majority of my clients editing and coaching are indie authors. They're planning to self-publish. They're not going the traditional route. But I do have some who are interested in querying. And I feel like I had this long stretch where I had no, like very few authors who were querying. And then all of a sudden I've got like a huge, well, huge, I say huge, it's like 4 people that I've worked with recently who are planning to query. And so, I've looked at their query letters and it's just been, it's been on my mind because of that.

So, I thought it would be helpful to just do a deep dive into like the anatomy of a query letter, what a query letter is, what you need to include with the stuff about the different sections of a query letter to give you some insight into that. And of course, before we get into anything in this episode, I just have to say, y'all, there's so much information about querying online. It's one of those things that does feel or can feel overwhelming when you are a new writer, when you're just looking into all this stuff for the first time. I remember feeling overwhelmed and like there's this big learning curve to learn all the terminology, to learn what the process is for getting an agent. So, I'm not going to get into like the very, very basics of what querying is in this episode. I do have some other episodes about querying you can check out. But really, if you want to get an agent, you have to query. And so we're going to talk about the letter in this episode. Oh, but if you do want some basic, basic, like what is querying kind of information, just go to Google. There's tons of resources out there that can walk you through the process and how to find agents and all that stuff. But like I said, I wanted to talk about the query letter specifically because it's difficult to write a In some ways it's very simple, but in some ways it's hard, particularly the description part where you have to like tell the agent about your book. That is challenging. That is extremely challenging for people to do.

And I think there are a lot of like potential pitfalls with a query letter. It's almost like some writers just don't believe that it needs to be They don't believe it's simple. They want to overcomplicate it. They want to do something interesting with it. They want to like stand out and switch it up. And it's like, this is not the place to do that. The query letter is very cut and dry. It's not the place to showcase your creativity or do like a unique format or anything. Like there's a reason that there's so much information on how to write this and how to kind of follow the formula because agents are flooded with queries every single day, okay, in their inbox, in their query submission tool, whatever they use, they get so many queries and they have to be able to just glance at it and read through it quickly. And so just them being able to see all the relevant information to get an idea of you as a writer, to get an idea of what the book is about, all that needs to be clear. It needs to be easy for them to digest so that they can then get intrigued with it and go to the sample pages, if you do send sample pages, if the agent asks for them, to see more and to look at your actual book. But, okay. So, I'm going to go through the different sections of a query letter first, and we'll talk more about all these different things, all these different components. But there are... different ways to structure a query letter. So, the six sections that we're going to go through are the personalization, the stats slash relevant info, comp titles, story description slash pitch, your bio, and your closing. So, we're going to go through all six of those, but just know that some of these can be rearranged and be in a different order.

So, you might have personalization and then story description and then stats and relevant info and comp titles and bio and closing. So, there is, you can play around with some of these pieces in terms of where they're included. But for purposes of this, is just the format that we're going to go with and the order that we're going to discuss these things. Okay. Reminder about a query letter length. It's very short. It's like a one page on a, if you were to pull it up on a Microsoft Word doc, it's less than a page. Okay. Your story descriptor or pitch should be 300 words at most. The whole query letter might be 450 words, maybe 500. Don't quote me in the exact word count, but it's less than a page. I know it looks different when you're in e-mail and you're typing an e-mail to someone, but it's very short. So, let's talk about personalization first. Of course you have your opening. Hi, agent name. Dear agent name. That's all you need to do. Personalization is if there's something you want to, if there's something you want to include to tell the agent why you are querying them specifically. This can be if you feel like they have clients that you admire and specific titles you think would be good comps for yours, mention that. If you saw on Twitter that they had posted, oh, here's what I want. I have a manuscript wish list and this is what I really want to see in my inbox is this very particular kind of story.

And then that's the story that you've written, mention that. If you saw them speak at a conference on querying or being an agent and they mentioned something that really resonated with you, mention that. This can be a good way to just help your query stand out, but it's not essential. If you truly don't have anything and you're like, I just found this person on Publishers Marketplace, I don't know, it's fine. You do not have to spend 2 weeks looking at every corner of the internet to try to find some kind of thing you can mention in the query letter to make it personalized. When I queried, Both times. I've queried twice. I guess I should, I probably should have mentioned that at the beginning, just in case someone is new to the podcast. If you're a new listener and you don't know my story, I have an agent right now, but this is actually my second agent. So, I have gone through this process twice. I signed with my first agent in 2019, and then I left that agent and queried and found my second agent in 2022. Yes, 22. So I've gone through this process twice, and probably 50% of the agents I queried overall, I did some personalization for, and 50% I didn't. So, it's not absolutely essential for you to do it. And with Molly, my agent that I have now, I don't think I put any personalization in the letter. It's not absolutely essential. So don't kill yourself trying to figure out like some way to personalize it. It's just a nice touch if you can. Okay, so that can be, you know, I'm querying you because of X, Y, Z. I noticed you're looking for X, Y, Z, that kind of thing. But if you don't have that, that's fine. Next up, section 2, is I call this like the stats slash relevant info. This is like the general just What's the title of your book? What's the genre? And how many words is your book? No matter what genre you're writing, no matter who you're querying, you have to have those components in there, right? The agent has to know what's the title of your book. You don't need to mention it's a tentative title, even if it is tentative. There's just that understanding that every title is tentative. So, title, genre, very important that you know what book, you know what genre your book is. and you tell that to the agent, particularly because a lot of agents represent different, like multiple genres. So that's very important.

And then also the word count. Don't mention pages because that's going to vary depending on the font size, font type, what format you're looking at it in. So always mention the word count. That's important. And yeah, so you always make sure that you have those three things. Next up is comp titles. comp titles are something that is also hard. I think the pitch, the story description part is hard. Like that's like the most difficult part of querying for people, or writing a query letter. But I also think comp titles are really hard. And part of it is because it does take time to research and members, discovering what's out there, but partly because people just misunderstand what comp titles are. So, comp titles is short for comparable titles, and you are signaling to the agent a couple of things when you include two comparable titles in your query letter. Number one, you are saying that you understand the market, you understand publishing, you understand trends you're like, that you read in your genre, right? And #2, it's saying that you have an awareness of the style and kind of like fit of your book with other books. So, you're saying that readers of my book are also, wait, let me back up. Readers of these comp titles will also be interested in my book. Like think you're at a bookstore and there are, you go to the shelf for your genre and there's a display there of like cool titles that all deal with this kind of same thing and all have this like same kind of vibe and feel to them.

What books would be next to yours on that display? If A reader picks up this book by this author over here, like They're also going to be interested in your book. So, what are those titles that are similar to yours? You do not have to find books that have the exact same plot. That's a mistake that a lot of people make is they get way too fixated on the plot. And they try to find comparable titles that match their plot. And then they're like, oh, I can't find any. So, I'm just not, yeah. But then another mistake people make is they comp titles that are too big or too old. So, the ideal kind of bit of comp titles is you want them to be traditionally published books from the last like 3 years, ideally, because again, it's going to show the agent that you read in your genre, you understand the trends and kind of like what's out there. But then it's also just, it's good information for the agent. And yeah, you don't want to pick like massive bestsellers from 20 years ago. You don't want to pick classic literature from the 20th century. Like that's not helpful for an agent. So, you really want to pick titles ideally from the last like three years. And you always mention the title and the author. So comparable titles include this book by this author and this book by this author. You can get specific until the agent Y. So, you could say like readers of this book and this book will also enjoy mine. You could say like comparable titles include Or let me look at how I have mine pulled up here. Let me see how I did it. That's another thing I should mention. I'm going to read y'all my query letter from what I queried in 2022.

Yeah. Sorry, y'all, I headed up and then I went back to my inbox and it deleted it. Who was I looking at? Okay, so I said in mind this novel will appeal to fans of this and this because of the focus on these three things. So, I kind of pulled out like why I chose those as comp titles. And I've even seen where authors are like, it comps to this book because of the sinister vibes, and it comps to this book because of the focus on this topic. So, you can even get specific and tell the agent why a little, a tiny bit about why you're including those two comparable titles. If you truly cannot find any books, which I would really encourage you to do research on this because I bet that you can, but if you truly can't, that's okay. Just don't include the comparable titles then. Just tell the agent the title, the genre, and the word count and move on. There used to be some kind of like prevailing wisdom that it was better to include no comparable titles than bad comparable titles. I don't know how true that is. Obviously, I'm not an agent, but I just, yeah, if you truly can't find them, you can just pull them out. That's fine. Don't include it.

Okay, next up is the score, the story description, the pitch, the hook, the whatever. Real quick, a synopsis is something different. If an agent asks for a synopsis of your novel, that is something different. It's an entire document that's like 500 to 1000 words that outlines what or it goes through your entire book. So, it gives everything away. It's a summary of the novel. That way the agent can see the direction that things go in and get an idea of the full scope of the story without having to read the whole thing. Or maybe in addition to reading the whole thing, it depends how you submit things. Sometimes agents want a synopsis up front, like with the query letter. So that's something different. In the actual query letter, you have 300 words at most to present your story, tell the agent what your book is about. A few things to remember with this. You want to keep the focus on the main character or characters and what's at stake for them and focus on the character as opposed to the plot. So this is not simply just listing out everything that happens in the plot. This is not taking a full paragraph of world building to set the stage for the agent before you get into the story. You are so limited. limited on real estate. Because you have just a few 100 words that you don't want to do all the backstory in the world building, that's not important. Those details don't matter. You really just want to focus on the journey that your character is taking in the novel, what the conflict is, what's at stake. Because that all ties into the plot, but the plot is just not the focus in the sense that, again, you're not listing out this happens, then this happens, and this happens, and then this happens.

With a query letter, you do not give everything away to the agent. You do not tell them, this is the twist, this is how it ends, here's, this character ends up living happily ever after with this character. You don't do that. In a synopsis, a full separate document, you do, because you're out, you're laying out everything that happens in the book, but in the query letter, you don't do that. This is meant to introduce the character and the world and the vibe and everything to the agent and to get them interested so that they want to go and read the sample pages and get an idea of what this story is. But it's very important to kind of like to look at, to make sure that it's well written, because you're representing your writing to an agent. This is the first look that they're getting at your writing ability. Obviously, it's a different kind of writing. You're not telling your story, but everything should be clear and make sense. No typos. Like you really want to polish this as well. Let me think if there's anything else I can mention about a story description.

We talked about characters, we talked about does not plot. Yeah, I think those are the big things. Like I said, max 300 words. And really focus on the character, what's at stake for that character, what they want, and what keeps them from getting the thing that they want. those are all important things to hint at in the query letter so that it's clear what the scope of the book is. Okay. Let's move on and talk about the bio. I remember being very stressed about my bio the first time that I queried because I had nothing to include. I was like, well, I don't know. I've never been published before. I don't have an MFA. I'm like, what do I say? So I think I just included a sentence or two, like, I have a degree in English lit and I live here and I'm on social media. I post books and at the time I was like doing books, bookstagram stuff. So I mentioned that in my query letter for the bio and that was it. You'll see that in this most recent query, when I was able to sign with Molly, I included a bit more. But this doesn't have to be anything major. Of course, if you have degrees, like education that's related to reading or writing or literature, mention that. If you have been published before, definitely mention that. If you have any expertise or credentials that you think will help, that the agent would want to know. But if not, really keep the bio short. You just need a sentence or two.

 

The agent doesn't need to know your whole backstory that, oh, I've been writing since I was six years old and I'm all through grade school. I was writing and I won an award in my 7th grade poetry competition. Then when I, you know, we don't need to, they don't need to know the full thing. Again, the query letter is so short. You want to keep the focus on the story. You want the agent to be interested in the story. They don't need the full backstory of like why you're interested in writing. They don't need to know that you worked with an editor. They don't need to know that you've been querying for six months. They don't need to know like anything else, really. It truly is just like a sentence. If you want to mention where you live, if you want to mention if you're on social media, you can include your social media handles. I think that's a good thing to do, honestly, just to show the agent that you're on social media, even if you don't have a big following. That's it. You can just end it there. Okay, and then the closing. This is where you just say, it could be super simple. Thank you for considering and I look forward to hearing from you. That's it. Not one mistake I've seen, not so much in my inbox, but I've seen examples on social media of query letters, people talking about this mistake, which is where like the author will just close with, promising the agent, like, if we work together, I guarantee this will be a bestseller for you. know, I'm, like, you don't need to, you don't need to gush about your own work. Let the work speak for itself. Just say, just close it, keep it very short, concise, like short and sweet.

Thank you for considering. I look forward to hearing from you. And then your name. That's it. One other little thing I will say, I have noticed this with a lot of query letters and manuscripts where people will include their phone number, their address, like their mailing address. Do not do that. There's no reason for you to be putting your phone number and your address on the internet or emailing it to people. Just don't do that from a security standpoint. Everything will be done via e-mail. If you send your work to an agent through one of those submission management things where like you fill fill out the form and then upload it, they will contact you that way or through your e-mail. And if they're interested in setting up a call, if they want to offer to represent you, they will e-mail you first to ask for your phone number. I think that's a much better way of doing it. There's no need to put that on your query letter. It's a leftover thing from when you actually mailed query letters to agents, but obviously you're not doing that anymore, so just don't do that. You can just put your name. That's it. And obviously they're going to, if you're emailing it to them, they're going to have your e-mail. But okay, so those are the areas of a query letter. If you would like, I'm going to read you my example next, but before we do that, if you would like examples of this, there are so many of them online. When I was querying both times, I found it super helpful to look at examples, particularly in the like story description pitch part, because I wanted to see how people were structuring it and framing it and like what they were including to help me get an idea of how I might do my, write my own in my own query letter, because that was the hardest part for me. Janet Reed has a blog, had. She passed away last year, unfortunately, which I just found out about it recently. I think it was last year. Was it this year? I don't know.

She was an agent who was just, had been around for so long, was very admired in the industry. And she had a blog called Query Shark where she had so many examples. People would send in their letters and she would edit them and give suggestions and sometimes tear them to shreds. But I think Query Shark is still active. Let me just look at that real quick. You can also go to, Eric Smith is another agent who has examples of successful query letters. It's helpful to look at successful ones, right? You want to see like, oh, who's, what letters have worked to get people an offer of representation. Andrea Barts is a thriller author who also has a resource of successful query letters. Jane Friedman has a lot of blog posts that talk about querying. So there are tons of examples and resources if you want to look at more. I just checked Query Shark and it's still up. It's a blog, it's hosted through Blogspot. It just looks like such a throwback to like early 2000s blogs for me. I love it. Okay. So, I'm going to read y'all my letter, not because I think it's perfect. It's not perfect. But it's fine. It's good. You know, it got me some interest. But really, what I want you to remember too is like, you don't get an agent because of a good query letter. You get an agent because of the book. So yes, the query letter is extremely important, but 95% of your effort needs to be on the book, really. Like, you need to make sure you have a solid, like, solid sample pages and a solid book, because that's what gets you the agent. Okay, so this is one, this is my, I didn't, I couldn't find my exact query to Molly, but I don't think I really changed it. too much when I was querying. I think I just kind of like added some personalization for different agents if I wanted to. But yeah, CAA has a form where you submit and I couldn't go back and like look at the, what I sent her. So. Okay, hi agent. This is another agent that I queried. I'm seeking representation for my 86,000 word psychological thriller scoop. wait. This looks like a draft. Hold on.

I was like, where's my, where's my, oh, no, that's right. Okay. Sorry, y'all. Bear with me while I'm pulling this back up. Okay. Oh, and this is one that got me a full request from a different agent that who ended up passing on it, but it did give me a full request. Okay. I'm seeking my, I'm seeking representation for my 86,000 word psychological thriller scoop. Jamie Dyer is the Atlanta-based host of Scoop, a podcast for millennial women. To ensure the show's survival after a stretch of low ratings and to avoid unpleasant memories of her past, she throws herself into work. Ashamed of her affiliation with a notorious Georgia sorority, Jamie's hesitant when the show's producer wants to record an episode on sororities. However, after meeting the enigmatic Madison Rice, president of the same chapter Jamie was a member of 10 years earlier, even Jamie must admit they've struck podcasting gold. Madison is beautiful, confident, and the absolute epitome of a Southern sorority girl. But returning to her old sorority house forces Jamie to confront the life-altering choices she made during her time there, including her involvement with the Pledge's death. And when Madison learns they share more than just a sorority affiliation, their worlds collide in a way that isn't just surprising, it's deadly. With a focus on female friendship, secrets, psychological manipulation, and self-image, this novel will appeal to fans of Andrea Bartz's We Were Never Here and Chandler Baker's Whisper Network. I was previously represented by so-and-so, happy to discuss details if you like.

This manuscript hasn't been on submission. When I'm not focused on my own writing, I work as a freelance editor and writing coach to help other writers with their books. I'm most active on TikTok, but at the Katy Wolf. I've had a few pieces published here, which are linked on my website here. The 1st 10 pages are pasted below. Thank you for considering, Katie Wolf. Okay, so start out, word count, genre, title. I didn't personalize anything for this agent, but I would have included that up top if I did. Oh, let me make sure. I see someone outside of my little pod thing. Let me make sure I have this co-working spot for an hour. I do. Okay. I've made that mistake before where I start a podcast episode and then I realize, oh, I need to leave because someone else needs this little pod that I'm in. Okay, so then I get into talking about the book. And you'll notice the last two sentences are, or I'm sorry, the last sentence is, and when Madison learns they share more than just a sorority affiliation, the worlds collide in a way that just, that isn't just surprising, it's deadly.

So, I'm not telling the agent what the twist is. I'm not telling the agent what happens, how it ends, anything like that. I'm just hinting at what it is. Now, when I look at this, I do see some tweaks I would like to make. Like, I think it's like a little bit too vague there and I would probably include more. But It's fine. It's good enough. And then I have my comp titles and I tell the agent why, like with a focus on these things, this novel will appeal to fans of these other two books. I mentioned that I was previously represented by my agent, but obviously that won't apply if you haven't been represented. And then I have a little bit of a bio. I have two sentences and then I say 1st 10 pages are pasted below because that's what the agent asked for. Thank you for considering. That's it. This whole thing is Let me see how long this is, because it's not long at all. Go to Word. 288 words. My story description pitch part is 152 words, so I could probably even make that a little bit longer, but I didn't. Okay, so That's my query. Again, I don't think it's perfect. I think there's room for improvement, actually, looking at this now three years later. But it's good enough. It got me a ton of full requests. It got me my agent. Well, I shouldn't say that. The book got me my agent, not the query letter. But I really encourage you to go check out examples in those resources that I mentioned or other resources, because it's helpful to see different examples of this. especially for the genre that you're writing in. Not to copy, we never want to do that, but just to give you some idea of the flow. Because you start to notice patterns in how things are written, how things are described, how the stakes are conveyed, because that's what's important. And even thinking about stakes in my pitch, like it could be better. I could really hint at like what will happen if Jamie doesn't get what she wants, but again, it's fine.

So, I hope that was helpful. As you're thinking about your query letter, if you're still writing your book or still editing your book, don't worry about the query letter. Okay, this is something to do down the road. I would really, really encourage you to focus on your book. Focus on getting the draft out, focusing on editing the book as much as you possibly can to where it's as good as it can possibly be. before you switch gears and start thinking about querying. Because again, I will repeat it until I'm blue in the face. That's what gets you full requests. That's what gets you the agent, not the query letter. That is just a starting point to tease the story and get an agent's interest. So that's where your focus needs to be. Okay, thank you for listening. Good luck out there if you're in the trenches or going to be soon. I know it's really tough, but hopefully this helps break it down a little bit. And remember, there's so much information out there online if you are curious about something or just not sure or feel like you're not doing it right. Okay, thanks. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf