Agents have some different ways of looking at things than writers do.
Writers caution each other, “don’t put that in your query letter – it’ll make you look like you’re unprofessional.”
The agents’ response is, “actually, you’ll be revealing you’re unprofessional.”
These are the people who deal with authors day in and out. Listen to those words.
Nobody wants to be unprofessional. Everyone wants to be told they’re easy to work with.
So, be professional and easy to work with.
The writer’s query letter is like a calling card. You wouldn’t hand someone a business card with typos. You wouldn’t put poor grammar or profanity in your company slogan.
So, why do writers insist on putting them in their query letters?
An agent wants that next envelope to have something in it that is perfect. They want an excuse to keep reading the query letter, to WANT that sample 20-50 pages.
The low point in every agent’s day is opening letter after letter of disappointing queries. Just like Script readers. They want a well written script. They want desperately to read it and think, “this would be awesome”, so they can write “recommend” on the script evaluation form.
So why do you have to write and perfect that query letter?
Because you’re a writer. A good writer should write a good query letter. It’s the first sample of you’re writing they’re going to see.
And many agents tell people plainly, “you have thirty seconds to hook me in your query, or it’s in the reject pile.” When you’re getting 500 letters a week, that’s an awful lot of time to put into reading them.
Here’s some tips to write a good query (and at some point I’ll write up an in depth post on how to do it) – read the back covers of every novel you own. Do they get your attention? They must – that’s literally the query letter to the book reader, the person who pays the money for the book!
Keep that in mind. Learn from those back covers.
This is some better advice about writing a query than you think. Do this.
As you do it, ask if they were able to hook your interest, or if they were able to distill the essence of the plot in just a paragraph?
If they did both, study that.
