Thursday, November 29, 2012

Query Letters Suck

For those of you who don't know what a query letter is, let me s'plain it to you.

A query letter is the letter you send out to a literary agent when you are trying to land one. Simple right?

In theory. But then again, most things are.

In your query, you have to give a brief summary of your story, explain the plot, your credentials and tell how big the book is. Again, easy in theory.

But writing that SOB is a pain in the neck (especially for me, 'cause sometimes I hunch over my keyboard like Quazimodo).

Nailing a hook is a lot harder than I thought. I wrote my first part and thought, 'this is good.' I had someone read it, and their response was this (verbatim):

Your hook didn't grab me at all.

Ouch. Okay what about the summary?

That person came back with about a dozen questions to counter.

Lame.

Hell, I even messed up the final part with my credentials! (BTW - I don't have any, but don't go passing that around...)

Don't put any negative comments. Okayyy...

Anyways... I did pick up some great tips from the AgentQuery Connect Forum which has helped immensely, and I'm beginning to understand the basics. When I have finished a working one, I'll be sure to post it.

Til then, keep on tickin!

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