Tips to Make Your Query Stand Out

If you are a querying writer you may be wondering what the secret is to making your query letter stand out amongst the hundreds sitting in a literary agent’s inbox. Well, wonder no more.

Earlier this week while I was putting the finishing touches on today’s post Five Things The Fiction Query Can Learn From a Nonfiction Query for From The Write Angle what should I come across on Twitter, but a link. A link to the lovely agent Rachelle Gardner’s fantastic list of 13 ways you can impress a literary agent all within your query letter. It’s well worth the read. While we cover a couple of the same points, I think there are most definitely ways the fiction writer can share their platform, marketing expertise, and social media know-how in their fiction query–it’s not just for nonfiction writers anymore. The times are a changin’ and so should our query letters.

Read both and circle back to let me know what you think. Are we right? Are we on the wrong track? What do you put in your query letter?

How to Query Successfully: My Learning Curve

Earlier this week, Cat Woods posted a great post on From the Write Angle about querying prematurely. As in, querying before your query letter and story are ready to be sent out. While she’s got tons of great tips and ways to tell if you are getting out there before you are ready…

I have a confession to make.

My road to agented came with a massive learning curve.

Of course I queried prematurely! Of course I queried before my story was ready! Of course my query was not yet up to snuff!

It happens to us all. Don’t get down on yourself. We’re all human. We’re all learning.

Here are a few things I did to fix my errors.

1. Realizing I was making errors.

While this may seem obvious, it can be difficult to see that what we are doing just isn’t working. My first query wasn’t getting nibbles. Luckily, I think I only sent about 10-30 as I quickly realized that what I was doing–or trying to do–simply wasn’t working. Time to back off. Stop. Think. Take another look. Find another approach. Don’t burn all your bridges.

2. Research

Take a look around. Read agent blogs. Talk with other writers who are querying. Figure out what a good query letter in your genre gets in terms of nibbles (requests for partials or fulls).

3. Look at your first chapter

Your query letter might be stellar, but what about those first ten pages you keep sending out with your query? Maybe your query is fine and your pages aren’t hitting the mark. For me, I didn’t realize this until I read literary agent and author Noah Lukeman’s “The First Five Pages” and did the exercises in his book. I quickly realized I had run out in the literary world with my pants down! Major edits ensued.

4. Get critiques

I found some fabulous people over at agentqueryconnect.com who shared their time with me in terms of critiques for both my query and my story. I learned a TON.

5. Put your ear to the ground

Listen. Listen to who is looking for what. Listen to what agents are telling you. Listen for trends. I made the mistake of continuing to write in a genre that simply wasn’t taking acquisitions. In fact, they were CANCELLING contracts with debut writers. Yipes. I switched genres.

6. Write another book

As writers we get mightily attached to our first attempts at novels. That’s natural. We spend a lot of time, love, and tears with them. But sometimes it is time to move on. Apply what you have learned on a whole new story. Keep writing. Keep perfecting. Keep crafting. Your second story will be better. I guarantee it.

7. Make connections

Never underestimate the value in networking and making connections and being ‘open.’

In the end, after honing my query, honing my craft, and honing all these other tiny skills it was a connection with another writer friend who helped me land my agent. She asked her agent if what I was doing (nonfiction-wise) would be something he’d be interested in. He said he might. The door was open. The next step was mine. I sent my honed query, my honed proposal showcasing my honed writing. I got in.

8. Always keep your chin up and cry in private

All these so-called over-night success stories you hear about are almost always many, many years in the making. Yes, at times they are enough to make you want to lash out and bitch. If you need to vent, do it in private. Always. And don’t let it fester, we can see bitter, jaded aspiring writers a mile away and so can everyone else in the business. It takes time. It takes dedication. You can do this.

What have you learned on your querying path?

By the way, on Friday I will be over at From The Write Angle blogging about what the fiction query can learn from the nonfiction query. Don’t miss it!

Queries… The Truth in Numbers

There comes a time in a writer’s life when they need to send a query to a publisher or agent to help move their published book dreams to reality. This can be an interesting and frightening time, full of angst. How do you write a one sentence hook that accurately summarizes your book and intrigues an editor/agent? How do you make your letter stand out? How do you know which no-nos to avoid? How do you allow your writer’s voice to come out in a business letter? How do you subtly add in the facts that you have garnered in your research of said agent or publisher? How, how, how?

(Four words for you on this one: research, AgentQuery Connect, and critiques.)

Once you figure you have that down in spades, you start sending the letters off. Then you wait. And wait. Your heart skips a beat whenever you open your email or see an envelope in your mailbox from an unfamiliar address. Eeek! Is it rejection or a request for more?

More often than not, it is likely a polite form letter saying ‘no.’ But then sometimes it is a ‘please send more, you’ve got my interest.’ And then you heart does a huge pitty-pitty-boom-boom that makes your heart do all sorts of funky beats and your head spin. Could this be it? Could this be the moment?

Good question. What are your odds? Folks in the industry have said that about 1 in 100 writers land an agent. Of those with an agent, about half of them manage to get their first book published. Gack! You mean it isn’t a sure thing once you’ve landed an agent. Sadly, no.

Back to queries. What is a good request rate on a good query letter? The numbers range from 10-30%. Seems like a lot doesn’t it? It is! (This number *does* vary a bit by genre.) Your query needs to be FABulous.

A little food for thought: The average agent can receive up to 100 queries a day. Every day. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. Of that 100, maybe one or two of those moves them enough to ask for a partial. If that is you, you are in the top percentile, aren’t you? And that feels pretty good.

A little more food for thought: About 70-80% of those queries you’re competing against, aren’t  that good. They aren’t serious, the queries don’t make sense, don’t talk about the book, are full of errors, or commit majorly heinous query faux pas (like bulk sends) and often are quickly and easily discarded.

So… If you aren’t snagging a request it means your query isn’t doing its job, OR your story is lacking something which shows in the query. For example, even if you have a stellar query, if you are late to a trend that is in its death throes… well, good luck and don’t expect a lot of requests.

A tip: Cold queries aren’t the only way to get an agent. Think blog contests where agents are involved, think conferences, think agent chats, think making yourself an online writerly commodity (what does that mean? Think moderator on writing sites, that sort of thing!). Find a way to make a connection with an agent. Think of a way to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Think of a way to show you are a professional. Think, think, think….

When you feel ready to query, there are lots of helpful sites (forums, agent blogs, agency websites, and a whole lot more!) out there to help you figure out how to put your best foot forward–and I urge you to make use of them. Make sure your writing is the absolute best it can be–there is no point using up your queries on the ‘best’ agents if you aren’t ready. Test that query. Do runs of 10 or so at a time. All rejections? Take a second look. Have someone else take another look. (Don’t forget to look at the first chapter you are sending along with it.) Make use of your resources and best of luck!

The Business of Prologues

I was just talking about this over on AgentQuery Connect and thought, “Hey, you know, this is worth repeating on my blog.” And so, here it is. The cold, dirty, hard truth about prologues and querying literary agents.

Click on image to see another viewpoint on prologues

Agents generally “don’t like” prologues because many aspiring writers have given them a bad name. Why? They use them as a crutch (not to say everyone does–sometimes they are a fabulously executed device that is intrinsic to the story) to make up for their failings in areas such as building suspense, creating a good story question, setting up the story, setting, characters, etc. Instead of cutting the first 40 pages of ‘warm-up,’ writers create a prologue that sneaks the reader ahead in the story in hopes that it’ll keep them hooked and maintain them through the ‘getting there’ early stages of the story. Agents also find that, in many cases, prologues can be cut and avoided altogether. <Gasp!>

So, say you are going to query a literary agent and are wondering about your prologue. The submission guidelines say “the first chapter.” Is your prologue truly a chapter? Yes and no. If it is short (I’d say three pages or less) it really doesn’t count as a chapter and should be sent along with “chapter one.” However, if your prologue is regular chapter length (that being around the ten double-spaced pages mark or more) it very much is its own chapter and should be treated accordingly when submitting to agents. Tricky, isn’t it? (And those of you with prologues around 5 pages long are cursing me right now.)

But can you get away with sending off your first chapter without your prologue?

NO! Absolutely not. (And if you are sniffling about how it isn’t your best work, it doesn’t make sense, etc., etc., and you don’t want to send it as you don’t want it to represent your book, then CUT IT.)

You MUST submit your prologue when querying agents. Why? Because it is the beginning of your novel. It is the first thing your reader is going to read and it is going to make the first impression. Say you send in the first three chapters and not the prologue. The agent reads them and asks for more. You send more, plus the prologue. Now they have extra work. They can’t just keep reading from page 49 or 51, or wherever your first submission left off. They have to figure out where this prologue fits in–which involves going back to the beginning of the story and possibly even rereading the first bit in light of this new information.

The cold hard truth: You’ve just wasted their time.

Ask yourself: What sort of impression have I just made?

This is my take on the whole prologue business. Naturally, there are folks who may disagree with this, and that’s fine. There also may be agents who feel differently about this as well. However, I think you can use this advice as a general rule of thumb to keep you ‘out of trouble.’ And if in doubt, check out the agent’s/agency’s blog and submission guidelines–occasionally they will mention what to do about the prologue.

When Not to Query or Pitch

If you have a query letter all ready to go and you are itching to send it off to an agent or have a pitch all sparkly and new for an editor… hold off. According to MediaBistro (this article includes most popular vacation dates) you should wait about another two weeks for the optimal receipt. Why? Folks are still on vacation. And then when they get back… well, they have some catching up to do. So, take a deep breath, move your finger off the send button and spend the next two weeks working on something new.

Enjoy!