Hello,
Bar any scheduling delays (possible!) my next novel, How to Write a Love Story, comes out in less than a year. That means I’ll get to start sharing more about it soon, but not now LOL. Isn’t waiting fun?? So much fun. Just the best.
ANYWAY
I did an impromptu Q&A on my Instagram recently, and the Query Letter was the overwhelming choice for me to discuss. In the writing community, a query letter is the email writers use to pitch their book to agents. (Remember #1: in traditional publishing, a writer finishes their manuscript and signs with a literary agent. The agent submits and sells the book to an editor at a publishing house on their behalf.)
Finding an agent can be soul-destroying because this is where you often first face rejection. And rejection is hard. Especially when you think you’ve done everything right. You do the hard thing of actually writing and finishing a novel. You’re proud of it. Maybe a few friends and family have read it. You do your research. You make a list of all the agents you think you’d like to work with. You put a package together and get really nervous and send off the first batch of emails, and then…
Nothing.
Most don’t get back to you. The ones who do send you impersonal copy-and-paste rejections. People tell you no, but they don’t tell you why. And you get upset and angry because while you know this happens to most people, you didn’t think it would actually happen to you.
A lot of writers give up here. Some keep going and write several books before they find an agent. Some find an agent but don’t manage to sell a book to a publisher. Some sign with an agent and are then dropped by that agent and have to start again. Or they part ways for other reasons and don’t talk about it because it’s private and emotional, and there are contracts and things like that.
It’s a hard industry. It’s also a highly competitive industry. And that’s why it’s important to get the stuff you can control right.
This is the advice I give to friends when they’re getting ready to submit to an agent:
Your query letter shows you’re thinking commercially
Your pages show off your writing
Your synopsis shows you know story beats and how to craft a plot
That is why agents usually ask for all three. They are the three aspects of you as a writer. You as a package. Today, let’s focus on the query letter.
I’m going to make one up for Holiday Romance so you can see what one should look like and explain as I go.
Dear Agent Name (spell it right. and this is coming from me, the typo queen)
I’m currently seeking representation for my festive romantic comedy, HOLIDAY ROMANCE. It is complete at 85k words and I would love for you to consider it. (Genre, title, word count. Don’t overthink.)
Molly and Andrew are just trying to get home to Ireland for the holidays, when a freak snowstorm grounds their flight. (This is a hook! A sentence pitch for the book. Always start with your hook.)
Nothing romantic has ever happened between them: they’re friends and that’s all. But once a year, for the last ten years, Molly has spent seven hours and fifteen minutes sitting next to Andrew on the last flight before Christmas from Chicago to Dublin, drinking terrible airplane wine and catching up on each other’s lives. In spite of all the ways the two friends are different, it’s the holiday tradition neither of them has ever wanted to give up. So, instead of doing the sane thing and just celebrating the holidays together in America, she does the stupid thing. The irrational thing. She vows to get him home.
The clock is ticking. But Molly always has a plan. And—as long as the highly-specific combination of taxis, planes, boats, and trains all run on time—it can’t possibly go wrong. What she doesn’t know is that, as the snow falls over the city and over the heads of two friends who are sure they’re not meant to be together, the universe might just have a plan of its own…
(I ripped this from Amazon, but that’s how you should talk about your book in a query letter. Exactly like what you read on the back of books or Amazon. You’re not summarising the whole story here. You don’t need to mention subplots or more than 2-3 characters. This is a lesson you have to learn. For example, I’ve noticed that published friends will be super brief when explaining their ideas to me. They will give me the hook, and that’s it. “Yeah, it’s about a guy who turns into a pigeon on Thursdays and has to save the world.” Cool. Great. Give it to me immediately. My unpublished writer friends, however, will tell me the whole plot and segue about the pigeon’s best friend and why he turns into a pigeon, and there’s a love interest who’s a crow, and then this happens, and this happens, and I will wave my hand in front of them, distraught and dismayed, “No!” I will exclaim. “I don’t care!” Because I don’t. I’m bored because they never hooked me in.
The query letter is what you read on the back of the book. The BACK of the BOOK. NOT THE BOOK ITSELF.
Anyway, let’s keep going. We’ve successfully pitched the book, and now we need to market it. We’re showing the agent here that we are professional and savvy and also doing their jobs for them by telling them exactly where it fits on shelves. Agents and editors love it when you do their jobs for them. This is how you do that: )
A mixture of POPULAR RECENT TITLE x POPULAR RECENT TITLE, HOLIDAY ROMANCE will appeal to fans of POPULAR AUTHOR, POPULAR AUTHOR, and anyone who’s tried to get home for the holidays.
Personally, I’d love to LINE ABOUT WHY YOU’D LIKE TO WORK WITH THEM. (CLIENT LIST, BLOG, SOCIAL MEDIA, SAW THEY WERE LOOKING FOR THIS EXACT BOOK, etc) I worked in publishing for a few years and have a Masters Degree in Popular Literature. I’ve attached EXACTLY WHAT THEY ASKED YOU TO ATTACH. NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS and would be delighted to send you the full manuscript if you’d like to read more.
Thank you in advance for your time,
Catherine
Simple! Too simple? No. Just simple enough. Let’s break it down:
Introduction with key facts
Hook
Enticing paragraph à la the back of a book
What successful books and authors you would compare your work to
Personal note to the agent. Personal bit about yourself (don’t worry so much about this bit if you’ve done nothing. You don’t need to have done anything other than write)
If you craft your query letter like this, you can’t really go wrong. But I did, you say. You lie. Wrong. I never lie. I am too mean to lie. Reasons why you’re not getting any bites? There are lots.
It could be that you haven’t cast the net wide enough. A lot of people give up after a handful of rejections. LOL to them. If you’re writing something popular like crime or romance, you have dozens and dozens of agents to choose from. Keep casting that net.
Maybe your idea isn’t that special. This is not a bad thing. My ideas are not that special! They are average tbh. But I’m funny and have a nice accent, so I get to cheat the system. And it’s hard because you can’t write something completely different. After all, no one will know how to market it. So you might be thinking, ‘Well, everyone else is writing this, so I will write this,’ and… yes, that’s the problem. If there are fifty books out there right now with similar themes and plots, then that trend will probably be gone by the time you get it published. This is what happens when the market gets oversaturated. Super cool if pigeon books are taking off and your pigeon book is ready. Not so cool when it’s been three years of pigeon books and everyone is getting into detective alpacas. The agent might have seen ten pitches that morning that sounded exactly the same, so it’s not enough to just be good. You need to be great. You need a spin. You need some sparkle. Those sample pages need to shine even more.
Or you can have a great idea, and the writing isn’t there yet. People don’t like to hear this, which baffles me. Just because your writing isn’t that great now doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future. It’s a craft. A skill to hone. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. Also, if you, an amateur, don’t like getting told you’re not great yet, you are not ready to be a professional author. We’re told that all the time! Literally every editing process comes down to ‘this is bad. fix it.’ I’ll genuinely send ideas and early chapters to my agent, and she’ll be like “I trust you!” which is nice speak for “not yet. but keep trying”. That’s all any of us can do.
Okay, I don’t know how to end this newsletter, but I hope that’s helpful or interesting or both. If you sell a book and get famous, please remember me. If you have questions, I will do my best to answer them. Please don’t pay people to do this! Knowledge is fun and free!
Happy Querying!!!
Reading
What I’ve been reading and loving coming out in the next few months:
Let’s Make A Scene - Laura Wood
Slow Burn Summer - Josie Silver
Fun at Parties - Jamie Harrow
Ride The Wave - Katherine Reilly
I am behind on my reading, but am catching up slowly and surely on some pretty fantastic stuff. What a gift to have so much to look forward to! I love books!!!
Alright goodbye! No one steal my pigeon idea I will FIND you.
Cx
