The Wordsmiths Project Journal

With all the usual holiday activities and parties, plus the need to get extra work done before taking off for the holidays, it’s proving to be difficult to schedule photo shoots in December. So, I’ll be taking a hiatus in The Wordsmiths Project for a couple of weeks. See you in January.

Happy Holidays!

Sally

Who hasn’t had that nightmare of being back in school, wandering the halls, trying to figure out what you did that was so wrong. In one variation, everyone is staring at you, and you don’t know why until you glance down… at your own very naked body. Another is that you failed a test that you didn’t know was scheduled for that day, on a subject you didn’t even know you were supposed to be taking that year. Classic anxiety dreams, about unknowingly doing the wrong thing, or failing unanticipated tests, or being the object of derision, because you didn’t know the rules of the game and made a fool of yourself.

The freelance life often feels like an extension of high school in more ways than one. Like school, it’s a small world, in which a reputation (whether positive or negative) can spread before you know you’ve done anything worth gossiping about. And when an agent or editor fails to respond to your letters and queries, you can be at a loss to determine if their silence has more to do with how you handled yourself than with the quality and subject of your writing.

I was recently on a panel at the PhilCon conference (Philadelphia, November 17-19, 2006), called “How to Lose Agents & Infuriate Editors.” Essentially, the purpose of the panel was to help writers understand and avoid committing professional faux pas that make agents and editors run in the other direction. On the panel with me were Jane Letty (who recently retired from agenting), John Joseph Adams (assistant editor of “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction“), Jonathan Maberry (bestselling author and writing teacher), Jenny Rappaport (agent at L. Perkins Agency) and Margaret Riley (publisher, Changling Press).

Naturally, given the name of the panel, it started with discussions of the panelists pet peeves. Then, it evolved into a no-holds-barred discussion of what works and what doesn’t when (1) trying to get the attention of agents and editors, and (2) trying to keep them happy and invested in making your work successful. The panel was chock-a-block full of useful information for writers — much more than will fit into a single Journal entry. So, for this one, I’m going to focus on the panel’s advice regarding what a query letter should and shouldn’t contain.

One thing that editors and agents really don’t appreciate are query letters that go too far in sharing too much person information. Jenny Rappaport said, “I’ve gotten ones that say, ‘I’m a stay at home mom, who has three children, who are all delightful, and they do this and that and I like putting them to bed at 2 in the morning.’ And, I’m like, this has nothing to do with your novel.”

Jane Letty added, “And please don’t include in your cover letter or your query that if they don’t like this that you have tons of other material. I see that and I say, ‘Gee I can get another post office box.’” It’s a balance between sounding productive and appearing desperate. No editor or agent wants to work with anyone who comes across as needy, because that’s a red flag that you might be a problem to work with. As Margaret Riley said, “What we do for a living… we go out and we look for books to buy. Not just books, we don’t want your book. We want your next ten books. That’s how we make a living. We want to know that you’re reasonably stable. That if you tell us you can write a four book series that you won’t disappear in the middle of book two. So, you want to try to cut down on the flags that make us think that you might be insane stalkers.”

In other words, as friendly as you hope to eventually feel with your agent or editor, it’s important to remember at all times – and especially in your query letter – that it is a professional relationship. All they want to know is that you are a talented, productive writer, who has the ability to deliver great, saleable books, within deadline, with no hassles for them.

Jonathan Maberry suggests thinking about a query letter from a pure sales point of view. “It is a marketing tool,” he said. “It is something that is going to, hopefully, get them excited about your project in a way that triggers thoughts of, ‘Well, if I’m excited this way, sales will generate from it.’”

Jonathan further explained, “The essence of the novel, the heart of the novel is important. If you’re going to spend time on a letter, less is more…. Often the catch phrases about your book in your query letter are used by agents to enchant editors and I have seen on a number of my books and books of my clients and students, where stuff that was in the original query letter becomes part of the book’s back cover material. If you have a good hook, it just follows all the way through. So, actually, writing back cover text is a good way to distill down what your book is truly about, what’s the most interesting thing about it.”

It’s can be quite difficult for an author to narrow down an entire book into a single sentence. We’re too deep into the details, innuendoes, all the subtleties of character, plot and storytelling – even when we’re writing non-fiction. But it’s that high concept sentence that marks a book as having commercial (sometimes even movie) potential. What’s more, it helps to focus you while you’re writing, to stay on target with the book. When I was trying to describe my novel “The Winter Boy,” I turned to my husband, Daniel Grotta, for help, and he came up with a six word description: “Older women, young men, sex, conspiracy.” Of course, there’s much more to it; it’s only one piece of that advertising copy Jonathan referred to. I mentioned that phrase on the panel, when we were talking about crafting the description of your book. Several few minutes later Jenny Rappaport repeated it, proving the point that the right phrase or sentence gets you and your book remembered. “When you’re writing a query letter,” Jenny said, “I get so many of them that say, ‘My novel explores love and depression and the flow of patience.’ That tells me nothing about your book. The hook is so important,. Like what Sally said, you know ‘older women, young men, sex, conspiracy,’ That makes me simply go, ‘Ooh, that could be interesting. That I could sell.”

Of course, it doesn’t matter how good your query letter is, if you send it to the wrong person. An agent or editor’s ability to sell your book is the single most important factor in their decision whether or not they want to work with you. So, authors need to identify their markets, and then look for the agent or editor that knows and sells into that market. As Jenny explained, ” I don’t do picture books, because I have no clue what the picture book market is. It’s a completely different ball game than adult fantasy or adult non-fiction or children’s fiction.”

In other words, before you even start to write your query letter, you’ll need to do a bit of research. First, determine what authors write books that would attract similar readers to yours. Then, do an Internet search to find out what agents represent them. Or, just look in the acknowledgments pages of their books, where a smart author always thanks their agent and editor.

While Jane Letty feels that a query letter should be subtle, “an invitation to join in the conversation,” the entire panel agreed that doesn’t mean to curb your enthusiasm. If you’re not enthusiastic about your own writing, why should they be? However, don’t write in your letter, ‘This is the next DaVinci Code.’ That tells them nothing about your book, only that you have high expectations for it. On the other hand, a query letter isn’t a place to be modest. Tell them your credentials, and be proud of who you are. But don’t stretch the truth, to make your credentials sound more impressive than they are — not just because it’s wrong, but because you’ll be found out. Remember, publishing really is a small world. Besides, it’s your writing and the marketability of your project that matters the most, not your resume (though having been successful previously is a good omen that you will likely deliver again).

Another annoyance that the panelists voiced was the writers ignored the published guidelines, and/or didn’t bother to become familiar with the agency or publisher’s preferences. “In our case,” Margaret Riley said, “We’re an online publisher, we deal exclusively through email. If you snail mail me a proposal for a book that explains that you don’t have an Internet connection, it’s going in the garbage. There is no way you can promote an online book, if you don’t have Internet access. It cannot be done. And if you can’t promote it, it can be the best book in the world, and we’re not going to sell it, because we can’t promote it completely for you. We can help you. We’ve got a great promotions staff. But we can’t do the whole job. You have to be a presence.”

While many agents and editors now prefer email queries, others want snail mail. A very few invite phone calls; most hate phone calls from people they don’t know and have no dealings with. If you break the rules, you better do it with an incredible amount of style that you can be sure they’ll appreciate ( which is tricky indeed), or because you happen to have met the person at a conference or elsewhere, and you got their permission.

Remarkably, some query letters come through rife with grammatical errors, run-on sentences and circuitous, garbled thinking. Remember, this is your first salvo, trying to prove what a great writer you are. If the letter is sloppy, and poorly written, why should your book be any better?

But knowing all these things that tick off agents and editors, doesn’t really give a clear view of how to write your query letter — only what to avoid. So I described what my letter for “The Winter Boy” contained, to give a concrete example of a query that got results. “The first paragraph explained why I was contacting that specific agency — because they represent books that have a similar market to “The Winter Boy”. And it contained that six-word description of the novel. In the second paragraph, I had my three or four sentence synopsis. Then I had a similarly short paragraph of my credentials, with a Webpage link. I concluded with an offer to send the first three chapters. Attached to the letter was my one-page synopsis”

I have a lot of contacts in the publishing industry. However, I sent my letter over the transcom, as a cold query to an agency I wanted, because I knew they had significant successes in the right market for my novel. And, it worked, I signed with them, which goes to show that the right query letter to the right person can get results you want.

“None of these folks want to read a lot,”, I explained, “Well, they do want to read everything, but they don’t want to get a letter that is five pages long. Keep it all within one page, and break it up into short, easy to digest bites. Don’t give them the kitchen sink; leave them wanting more. Make it easy for them to understand who you are and what you’re offering. And don’t forget the self-addressed envelope in any snail mail queries. No matter how good you are, even if you are a well known personality, an SASE is a courtesy, simplifying matters for them.” And that’s the whole point — removing all roadblocks, so they’ll keep reading. Only then will they discover how good a writer you are and how much money they could make — if only they could sign you.