Here are the most common ways to begin a query: Put your best foot forward, or lead with your strongest selling point. The more you try to explain, the more you’ll squeeze the life out of your story. I recommend brevity, especially if you lack confidence. In its entirety, the query shouldn’t run more than 1 page, single spaced, if printed, or somewhere around 200 to 450 words.
SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS TO PUBLISHERS HOW TO
You can learn how to research your comps in this post. Some agents and publishers require that you mention comparable or competitive titles. I consider personalization or customization of the query optional. Bio note: something about yourself, usually 50-100 words.The hook: the description of your story and the most critical query element 150-300 words is sufficient for most narrative works.The housekeeping: your book’s genre/category, word count, title/subtitle.I recommend your query include these elements, in no particular order (except the closing): That doesn’t mean you have to hire freelance editors or copyeditors or proofreaders, but it does mean fixing or revising anything you know needs attention. To avoid creating a high-pressure or awkward situation, I recommend you wait until you feel the manuscript is totally done-the best you can make it. You may end up rushing your writing or editing process (undesirable to say the least), or admitting to the agent/editor that it will take you X weeks or months to follow up, by which point, their enthusiasm may have waned. Or what if you’re not done in a month? What if you realize your manuscript needs a lot more work? The thinking goes: Well, the agent probably won’t respond any earlier than a month anyway, and I’ll be done by then, so why not get a jump on it?īut what if the agent responds right away? However, some may be tempted to begin early because it can take so long to receive responses from agents and publishers. Novelists and most memoirists should have a finished and polished manuscript before they begin querying.
Nonfiction book queries are addressed here. This post focuses on query letters for novels, although the same advice applies to memoirists, because both novelists and memoirists are selling a story. It helps to have some distance from your work to see its salable qualities. All it requires is a firm grasp of your story premise.įor some writers, the query will represent a completely different way of thinking about their book-because it means thinking about one’s work as a product to be sold. The query letter is so much of a sales piece that it’s quite possible to write one without having written a word of the manuscript. The query letter has one purpose, and one purpose only: to seduce the agent or editor into reading or requesting your work. This post is regularly updated with new information.
0 kommentar(er)
