I’ve seen a lot of query letters. Between my internship experience at multiple agencies and through my editorial services. But sometimes it does baffle me the mistakes I see in the query slush piles.
If you are reading this article right now, you are probably not one of the offenders to make this mistake. Probably, but not certainly. Trust me when I say if you make one of these mistakes, it’s good enough for a busy agent to move on to the next query. If you’re lucky and you get an intern or an assistant, they might give you an extra shot—the query slush pile and requested material tends to be their main feature. But, not always. Sometimes those interns and assistants are tired or overworked or working more than one job. And agents? They work 40+ hours a week, and query slush pile is kind of a side job for them on top of their client work.
Don’t make these mistakes. Give yourself the best shot.
ATTACHING QUERY LETTERS TO EMAIL
What the what? Yeah, a weird amount of people will attach a query letter to the email either as a PDF file or a Word file instead of pasting it into the body of the email. Some agencies request this, but not many. Most agencies want you to paste the query into the body of the email.
Some agents, plenty, don’t want to risk a computer virus to view your query letter. Make this mistake and get an auto-reject.
QUERYING MORE THAN ONE PROJECT AT ONCE
Uh, no. You don’t do this. You perfect one project and query it by itself. Pairing it up with other projects—like the other two books in the trilogy—just means you don’t know how to query properly. If you haven’t done your research to prove that this is not what you do then you probably aren’t ready for an agent.
I’M THE NEXT JK ROWLING
Nope, you aren’t. Sorry, but I don’t believe they’ll ever be another JK Rowling. There will never be another Stephen King. There just won’t. You aren’t going to be them. Or Dan Brown. You can be you, and you might be awesome, but nothing proves that you’ll be a top seller like them yet.
Bragging it up about how awesome you are is stupid. No one wants to work with someone arrogant. Confidence is good, but too much of it sets of red flags about your ability to work with other people.
SUPER LONG QUERY LETTER
Queries should be between 250 – 300 words. Not a ton more than that. If you can’t figure out how to write a query letter, you haven’t researched the industry well enough to understand why query letters are important.
ALL ABOUT YOU, NOT ABOUT YOUR BOOK
Queries that are paragraphs and paragraphs about you, about what you read, about what you do, and three or four sentences about your book is not doing yourself any favors. If you are writing about fiction, you want to talk about your book. You could be awesome, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the book.
NO QUERY LETTER
Sometimes people say they don’t want to “bullshit” the agent with a query letter. They want to get straight to the point, so here is the first five pages of the book.
No.
That’s not how it works, people. The query letter exists for a reason, and if you haven’t researched the industry enough to know why that exists, then … well, you probably aren’t ready.
NO PAGES
If the submission guidelines call for pages, you want to include those pages. Why? Because a busy agent might be on the fences. They might not want to take the time to write you an email, you who ignored their simple submission guidelines, and ask for pages. If they are new, then maybe yes. If they aren’t new, if they are well established with a lot of great clients, they probably won’t. Read the submission guidelines, if you expect an agent to take the time to read your query, take the time to read up about them.
WRONG PAGES
You don’t submit an “excerpt” — you submit the first five or ten pages. Not some random set of pages from chapter ten.
WRONG GENRE
Crazy how reading up about an agent can save you the easiest, quickest rejection—the agent doesn’t represent your genre. You can usually figure that out by looking at the agency’s “about us” page. Querying an agent that specifically says, for example, I do not represent paranormal means that they do not represent paranormal, so querying them with a paranormal novel? Not a good idea.
TOO HUMBLE
“I doubt you’d be interested in this, but I thought I’d show you my novel anyway.” Or something like this, it’s a bad idea. Don’t be too humble. You have an awesome book, don’t assume—if they represent your genre—that they don’t want to see it.
WEIRD SUBJECT LINES
QUERY: TITLE YA/MG/ADULT
Most agencies ask for that sort of format. For example, if you wrote a book called ALL HERE NOW and it’s a Middle Grade novel, then your subject line should be: QUERY: ALL HERE NOW MG. Don’t write weird stuff in the subject line. A lot of agencies have filters, so writing something long like “thriller novel about space aliens invading that find love in all the wrong places” isn’t going to really help.
NO, MG/YA IS NOT A GENRE
So, no, MG and YA aren’t a genre. Also, a book cannot be both MG and YA. It is either one or the other. A genre is sci-fi, fantasy, horror, contemporary. A marketplace is Middle Grade (MG) or Young Adult (YA).
EVERYONE WILL LOVE THIS!
Everyone will love your book—from teenagers to grandmothers!
Nope. Sorry, they won’t. You have a marketplace. Accept it. Know it. You might have crossover appeal, but you have one set marketplace, and it’s definitely not teenagers to grandmothers.
CRAZY MESH UP
“It’s J.K. Rowling magic meets Stephanie Perkins romance with a dash of Courtney Summers writing and Nova Ren Suma magical realism with the atmosphere of Ransom Riggs.”
Does that make your head kinda hurt trying to figure out? Yeah. It makes my head hurt too. Pick one or two authors to compare your work to—if you want to—but more than that it’s insane.
IN CONCLUSION…
Like I said, if you are reading this, you are probably not one of the offenders above. Usually, they don’t do their research. But you do. So you’re really top of the class. Your slush pile awesomeness. You just need to have the right query letter, and give it to the right agent and the right time.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
