Tuesday 24 June 2008

Query Letter, Redux:

Some of you may remember a previous post of mine in which I discussed how work on my query letter was going swimmingly.

You'll be pleased to know that I've pretty much scrapped that query letter entirely, based on one solid principle imparted to me from one of my bosses at work, and my ever-growing experience reading the query letters of others (have I mentioned yet how working in publishing is the best thing an author could ever do for himself?).

Said principle is a sales principle, and it goes a little something like this: "Once they say yes, stop talking."

The corollary to this principle is as follows, "The only other thing they can say is no, and that's not what you want."

Now, this applies to query letters in the following ways:

1.) Keep it short. They will be sold on your writing, not your pitch. The only purpose it serves is to get them to turn the page, and hopefully make them a little excited about what they'll find.

2.) Don't try to summarize your whole novel, or even the main plot arc, in your letter. All it really needs is the hook. That'll be enough to pique their interest, and from there on it's all about what you've written.

3.) You're at a distinct advantage if their guidelines ask for sample chapters with the query letter, because they can just turn the page and start reading, rather than having to respond to you and ask for more. You can use this to your advantage, especially if you're new or bad at writing query letters, by targeting places that ask for sample chapters.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll leave you with this other piece of interesting information: books are published in increments of 16 pages (including back-ads, etc.) because of how they're printed. Crazy, huh?

1 comment:

AC Gaughen said...

Really great advice, especially about the summary not being about the whole novel, but rather just the hook--I had always heard that you should make it like back cover copy (hook like) and yet summarize it completely in two sentences or less! I think focusing on the hook is really wise...and thus I'm off to rewrite my query.

Great Blog!
x AC
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