I’ve been working on my novel and researching literary agencies before I start querying. I’ve read plenty of lousy query letters and found writers who have no idea how to sell their work through this medium.

I wanted to write a post on how to write a query letter even though the information is publicly available. I feel like most people fail at the query level stage either because they hate marketing or they fail at writing the query itself.

I’ll start with a simple fact. A query letter is a presentation letter, a business document, not a creative text where you put some of your ideas and hope for the best. It should be professional, considering a salesperson will read it and decide. A query letter is not a blurb; it’s not about how great you think or believe your book is, and it’s not a pesonal letter. Being professional is of the utmost importance. Just put yourself in the agent’s shoes for a moment. What if you received hundreds of letters a month and had to choose those letters that were the most interesting and on target alone? Which letters would you choose? The most professional, descriptive, detailed, and specific? Or would you choose the vague, back cover blurb-like letters with grammatical errors?

The query letter has a structure. The basic structure goes as follows:

Greetings
Pleasantry
Three paragraphs describing your novel.
Comp titles
BIO
Contact Information
Goodbye
Your query letter should be between 250 to 400 words. It should follow the structure, be to the point, detailed and specific. Remember that the query letter is meant to be read by an industry professional. It’s not a back cover blurb meant to be read by consumers or readers while browsing the bookstore.

Let me show you an example.

Dear, Alice

I enjoyed your client’s book, SPARROW’S NEST, and I’m excited to share LOOK NO FURTHER, my 105,000-word dystopic, end-of-the-world thriller for adults.

35-year-old John Smith is one of the last geneticists alive since the meteorite KLS-11 hit Earth, killing 50% of the planet’s population and sinking the world into darkness. Extinction is inevitable now that a faction of mankind’s elite hordes all remaining natural resources to feed a select few.

As his entire town flees, John is the only one who understands what must be done. Mankind has to evolve. Gene therapy is the way. But since no electrical grids are functioning in most of the country, John can’t share his ideas with the people he needs help from. So, he sets off from New York to Washington, D.C., to talk to the science minister. But when he gets there, after escaping New York, he faces the elite’s forces trying no to save mankind but to let it die and to create a new world for very few people.

When John’s theory reaches the president of the United States, John tries to spread the truth about the meteorite-that its course was changed on purpose by the Pentagon Space Weapons program-and that the only solution to the perpetual darkness is to modify the DNA of mankind to become nightly creatures to take back the Earth.

LOOK NO FURTHER shares the same atmospheric setting and thrilling adventure style of Richard Matheson I Am Legend and Robert McCammon Swang Song.

Since finishing LOOK NO FURTHER, I’ve published stories in anthologies such as Murderous Ink Crimeoucopia, The Horror Zine, Belanger Books, and Altair Publishing Australia. I’ve been featured in international short story contests, too. I’ve written articles for Convesio, Shell Us, and other private-sector magazines. I’ve worked as a freelance line and acquisition editor for Blood Bound Books, and from time to time, I dabble into slush pile reading for lightspeed.com and Crystal Lake Publishing. I’m from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I work as a system administrator.

For a synopsis or chapters, please contact me at [email protected] or by phone at 54911+22222222

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Your description paragraphs are the meat of your query letter. Those three paras make or break the whole interaction. You should be specific and detailed, and share the most critical events in the story, the starting idea, the inciting incident, the central conflict, and the resolution including twists and reversals and any other form of surprising material. Any important plot points should be included, like the inciting incident/hook I just mentioned, the conflict, consequences and midpoint twist, but don’t give out your ending or major reveal. Just make it enticing enough to suggest an outcome, don’t make it explicit, and leave the reader guessing.

The three description paragraphs are made up. I just thought of the idea and wrote it down in the example. I can’t share my query letter because no agents have yet accepted it, and it contains lots of information about the novel. But this example works. It’s specific and detailed to the point and shares the most essential points of the story.

Start with the protagonist’s age, what he does for a job, and how the novel begins. After the description, you share your comp titles. Keep in mind the titles should be relatively new or recent, less than a decade old. In this example, I used old novels as comp titles.

The Bio I shared is my bio. You can gather that information from this blog as well. The contact data is fake. The greeting is in standard format.

My last piece of advice is to write several drafts before deciding on your final letter. I wrote seven before choosing mine. And also get professional help. Get someone with experience to advice you. It could be a writer whose letter was accepted, an agent or a writing coach. There are plenty out there like Reedsy and queryacademy.com.

And if you are curious like myself and want to know how not to write a query letter, visit this site: https://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/page/3

Best of luck.

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