Thinking about my query letter
This last week has been a good one. The proofreader has the last ten chapters of my novel. I have gone through several drafts of my synopsis and think it is starting to become presentable. Now I am thinking about my query letter.
It is a daunting task for me, writing the query letter. No matter how wonderful I think my book is, no matter how many of my friends loved it, I realize no agent will even look at it if I can’t impress them with a single page of introduction.
I have found several resources along the way that I have thought were helpful. I came across several places on the internet that had instructions for how to do a query letter. I also came across a few places that had sample query letters. Those references are good, but these have sample or real query letters and explain why they are good and/or bad – which I find to be extremely valuable information.
First I found the Query Letter Clinic in the 2009 Writer’s Market Deluxe Edition – absolutely awesome. A site that I found equally valuable was Nelson Literary Agency, LLC – Frequently Asked Questions which has a collection of great queries. Other sites that round out my top five favorites: Agent Query – How to Write a Query, QueryTracker.net – Query Letters and Literary Agents, The Basics, and BookEnds, LLC – Query Letters. I can’t really say enough about these five articles and blogs… check them out and you will see that they speak for themselves.
Hope you find these sites as helpful and informative as I did.
R. Garrett Wilson
www.rgarrettwilson.com
