#query tips

how 2 blurb without screaming into the void

hello, thank you so much for this question, it's one of the many things i love doing howeverrrr it's kind of evil! but first off: you are NOT ALONE. blurbs are evil. blurbs are mini monsters. blurbs are the one part of writing that's like "okay now summarize your soul in 150 words, no pressure :)" and you're like "cool cool i'll just go walk into the sea"

BUT. we can make this less painful. you can write a blurb that hooks people without spoiling the whole plot, i promise.

what a blurb IS:

a pitch, not a summary

the back-of-book tease

a VIBEY sales hook

your book's tinder bio but if you swipe left i'll cry

basically you're giving us just enough to want more. not the full plot (heavens no!) not every twist. not your worldbuilding thesis. you're selling TONE, CHARACTER, and CONFLICT.

the blurb formula that never fails (unless you ignore pacing!!)

hooky first line (it needs to be snappy, intriguing, usually world or character focused)

MC intro (who are they, what do they want, and what's messing that up?

conflict needs to ESCALATE (give us a taste of the tension, mystery, stakes)

stakes or twist HINT (what goes wrong? why should we care? don't give me the main point of the twist, only a HINT)

the final punchy line (this is optional but great if you can do it, try to hint at the tone, leave us curious.)

okay okay but HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT'S "ENOUGH"??

as an author, ask yourself these questions:

do i know what kind of story this is? (genre, and tone!!)

do i get a feel for the main character's dilemma?

do i feel tension/ a question that makes me want to open page 1?

do i get overwhelmed with lore/confused about names (bad)

did i just write the plot of the entire book in 3 chunky paragraphs? (also bad)

we don't need to know EVERYTHING, we just want to know more.

examples, because i'm a visual creature:

VERY BAD BLURB:

"Lunara is the Princess of the Blood Moon Court and must Reunite the seven shards of the Sun Blade with her talking fox familiar in order to restore the Balance before the Eclipse consumes the Twelve Realms."

...... girl what. i'm tired. there are too many nouns. what is the story even about??? help.

a better version:

"Seventeen-year-old Lunara's kingdom is dying, and it's her fault. To fix it, she'll have to strike a deal with the ancient enemy who burned who home to the ground. He has secrets. She has one last chance. And time is running out."

yess, we get tone. we get stakes. no lore dump, no made-up nouns (which is fine, but INSIDE THE BOOK, not the back-of-book teaser). there's intrigue. and there's danger. i'm interested

final tips that made MY blurbs less garbage:

write 3 versions. one ultra-short (like 50 words long) one medium (100-150), and one long rambly one (just for you). you'll find the gems hidden in the rambles

try to pitch it to a friend. literally message someone and say "okay here's what the book's about". write it in your default tone and then take that and revise it into a blurb

read blurbs of books like yours. what do they reveal? what kind of tone do they set?

don't try to sound fancy. just sound like YOUR BOOK. if it's dark and sexy? be dark and sexy. if it's cozy and magical? be cozy and magical. MATCH THE VIBE

once again thank you for asking me this question, i hope this help you and others. send me your blurb in if you ever want a second pair of eyes btw!! i live to blurb edit. also i might love writing blurbs more than actual books but don't tell my WIPs that. they'll unionize.

✅ DO Address the literary agent name by name. Personalization is important for queries. You're trying to stand out among thousands of query emails. You have to make yourself memorable. Mention why you're querying a particular agent. Maybe they represent one of your favorite writers—mention that!

✅ DO Research the literary agent. The more you know about them and what they represent, the better you will be able to gauge if they are the right agent to represent your story. Don't just query anyone! Be sure they represent your genre. Be sure they are still seeking those types of books. A quick Google search will go a long way!

❌ DON'T Avoid saying that your book is the nest bestseller, or that you're the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. Doing this is your one-way ticket to an agent closing your email and moving on. Be formal. Be professional. Don't brag about yourself or your story. Even in your bio, remain humble.

❌ DON'T Email the literary agent insults or "that they've made a mistake" if you receive a rejection letter. This will get you on a list that will lead to you receiving rejections from every agent within the publishing industry. The book community talks. We love tea (all kinds). You will be put on a "do not represent" list and never be considered after you've crossed this line.

Querying is the worst.

1)  If you can afford it, get the Query Tracker ‘premium’ membership. It lets you see user-reported data that lets you know which agents reply to queries, which don’t, and what their usual timeline is.  Everything is slower than usual this summer, but it’s still a rough guide on what to expect.

2)  Find a friend with a subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace and research agents. Someone can say they rep YA, but if all they’ve ever sold are picture books, maybe their intentions don’t match up with their knowledge.  Data is self-reported, and really successful agents don’t always bother but it’s some information at least.

3)  Have as many people look over your query as you can.  PubTips on Reddit is a good place to get brutal but good feedback.  

4) If you’re about to query, and your book is fiction, look into Pitch Wars. The showcase is worth the pain - about 60% of people who get picked end up with an agent within a year.  I did not, but then I wrote a vampire/fairy romance and there’s not exactly a market for that right now.

5)  Which leads me into, know what’s selling.  Deals announced on Publisher’s Marketplace can give you a feel for this.  You’ve already written the book, but I, at least, find it soothing when I can’t sell a book because there’s no market for fairy/vampire romance.  I mean, it’s distinctly possible the book still sucked, but I can tell myself it’s the market not me.

6) And, no, really, it’s the market.  The first book I queried had 20 requests, the second one had four.  And two of those were referrals.  I don’t think I somehow got that much worse at writing, but YA fantasy was hot at the time and climate fiction near future biopunk was not.  Assuming your query is reasonably professional, you don’t sound terrifying, and the pages are good, what matters most to determine whether you get a request is, does the agent think she can sell this.   And also does she want to read it multiple times and talk it up, but if you're writing in a dead genre, you’re just hosed.  

7) Start writing the next book so the thing you are emotionally attached to is the new project.  This will help take the sting out of the rejections (and every book gets rejections, even ones that eventually sell at auction and become lead titles and make list)

8)  Good luck!!!

Author Chantel Pereira, aka barrierspark, chats with us about querying tips and success. Her upcoming novel, Coltrane’s Cross, is a magical children’s fantasy series already being praised as the next Harry Potter.

What was your research process like?

I honestly didn’t dabble enough in researching the first time I sent out queries. I definitely knew from my research what a query letter was and how to draft one, but I didn’t take in the information I should have that would have helped me write a successful one sooner. As I became more serious about my writing, and after I received my first inevitable rejections, I really took a step back and re-evaluated what I wanted for my books, what I felt like they could achieve, what I wanted for my future writings, and what I wanted out of this process. After knowing what direction I wanted, I researched every possible agency before sending any further queries. Querying an agent is not something that should be taken lightly - this is the person who is going to be championing your hard work. You need to be 100% happy with who you may end up with, and the only way of being certain is by doing your research. I think a lot of people run the risk of accepting the first agent who says yes. Which can be scary if it’s not the right arrangement for both parties.

What did you look out for when picking agents to query?

I looked out not only for what types of books they represented (i.e. reader age, genre, and possible crossover genres I also identified with my book), but I also looked for what they weren’t looking for, what authors they already worked with, if they had a Manuscript Wishlist, and generally agents tend to post a small description about themselves, the books they love most, and what inspired them to enter their line of work. Sometimes that small bit of information can tell you so much about whether they could be interested in what you’ve written and your personal style.

Where did you start looking for Agents?  How did you keep track of which agencies had special query instructions?

At first, I used the Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market, a poorly-drawn chart in my notebook, and a lot of coffee. I’m a bit of a Type A personality, meaning my graph was organized by things like how many sample pages they’d like, books they covered that I recognized, trends of what they were looking for based on their Manuscript Wishlist (if they had one posted either on their personal agent page or Twitter). As time went on, I found an incredible tool of a site called Query Tracker. It was essentially what I was physically writing on paper but organized in a more accurate online database. More accurate as updates happened quicker there than in my outdated Market book reprinted once a year.

What was the hardest thing about writing your query letter? What tips do you have for others?

I think the hardest thing about writing my query letter was a mixture of me trying to keep myself composed so I didn’t word-gush about how much I love my books to them, and also perhaps striking the confidence to just write that letter. It was a bit terrifying for me because this has been a dream I’ve wanted since I was eight. But I think it’s important to keep your query letter brief, clear, and professional. Of course, depending on the type of book you’re writing, I’ve read that the query letter can reflect the writing style you’ve used in order to cement what your book is all about, but I found I had a lot of luck keeping my query professional. My other two important tips - besides doing your research - are proofread, proofread, proofread, and send small batches first. If there is a glaring typo in something as serious as your query, very likely that agent may pass before reading your sample. And what I mean by sending queries in small batches is that say you send to five and they all immediately reply with a rejection, your problem may not necessarily lie in your manuscript. It could be your query letter. It’s always best to have an editor or beta reader give it a fresh read. Sometimes other can catch things we simply can’t with our own eyes.

What motivated you the most through the rejections?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have an incredible support system through my friends, family, boyfriend, and my writing partners I’ve gathered over the years. Who knows, it may have all just boiled down to my stubbornness, but I really felt I had something that needed to be seen. I won’t lie, the rejections were incredibly hard on me. I took them a lot worse than I imagined I would, especially because I knew this was an inevitable part of being in this industry. But I think failure is so important and it took me a while to realize that. I just took failure and failure and not as the opportunity it was to get stronger. So after a while, my motivation was that every rejection was making me into the stronger writer I needed to be to make this book/series happen. Keeping my brain occupied with other healthy hobbies - like hiking - helped too.

Do you have any other tips for querying writers?

Keep going. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be tough. Each one is going to take a long time to write and you will stay up late into the night perfecting this one-page letter, but this is you fighting for your future. Don’t take it lightly.

More about Chantel:

Chantel’s blog, barrierspark, is an online scrapbook of her book/planning process, complete with writing tips, aesthetic photos, poetry, and snippets! Follow Chantel here for publishing updates on her series, Coltrane’s Cross. Here is a snippet from book one in the series:

Make sure your protagonist’s conflict is at the center stage of your pitch. I’ve read so many pitches that described the world and the characters (including the protagonist), but failed to leave out the driving force of the novel - what your protagonist is fighting against/for!

All those monsters and space ships and dragons are super cool (for reals, give me ALL the monsters), but why are they important to your MC? How do they play into your MC’s struggle?

✅ DO Use a conventional letter format when writing your query letter. Improperly writing a letter can tell a literary agent that you are unprofessional and possibly give off an "I don't care" attitude. So ALWAYS follow this rule to look professional, serious, and to reflect that you did your research.

✅ DO List your qualifications and publication history. If you don't have any publication history, that is fine, but be sure to hone in on your qualifications. Did you major in creative writing or English in college? Did you win a writing contest at some point? Do you have a Facebook Group dedicated to writing with x-amount of members? Mention anything you can and be professional rather than braggy.

❌ DON'T Writing more than one page can be a death sentence. Address the agent by name, hook them with the summary of your book, provide the genre and word count of your book, list your qualifications and publication history in a short bio, and then list your contact information—ALL WITHIN ONE PAGE. More than this will waste an agent's time and might cause them moving on.

❌ DON'T Do not send a query letter that isn't proofread. Read over your query letter, have a friend look over your query letter, and then have another person read over your query letter. Do this and ask for the other eyes on your query letter to catch any mistakes you might have made. Sending a query letter containing errors is a huge mistake.

✅ DO Include the important details of your book. Yes, the summary/blurb of your book is important for your query, but there are other essential elements. Include your book title, genre, and approximate word count. You can even include comparison titles! Comparison titles can help you describe the vibe of your story.

✅ DO Be sure to keep the summary part of your query to the necessary facts. Reference blurbs of already published books to get ideas on how to write one for your query. Avoid overloading your summary with description. Keep the summary to the more impactful elements.

❌ DON'T Saying your book is for everyone is a flat lie. Not everyone is going to love your book, even those readers who gobble up books in your genre. Some people are going to love it, some will like it, some will tolerate it, and some will hate it. Thus, do not pitch that your book will be universally liked.

❌ DON'T Do not ask for an NDA or be paranoid about a literary agent or editor stealing your work. Industry professionals don't steal ideas. To assume a professional would steal your work is a ridiculous notion. Do not be unprofessional or disrespect the agent/editor in your query email.