Query Letters (Part 1)

I received a question from a fellow aspiring writer, it was about query letters. As you may know I hardly consider myself an expert on the subject, but as I began to think about it I realized that I know a whole lot more now than I did when I first began. My nature of over-studying and trying to ask more questions than I think I need to ask has taught me a lot about writing a query letter, and the delivery of that query letter.

  First off my advice to newer writers is study!! Read books on how to write query letters, on what to do and what not to do. Then find your prospect agents or publishers and then you need to study more!! I know right about now you would say that being told to study is not what you want to hear, you want me to tell you exactly what you need to do, well unfortunately every genre requires a different approach, fiction, non-fiction; what level you’re writing, child, middle school, young adult, adult and it’s sub category, college level, average intelligence, or a specific field. Which is why there are so many reference books on the subject, and the rules keep changing every year. What I tell you now may be different by the time you read this. So what am I blogging about? Well, I’m going to tell you how I get ready to write a query letter, I am not saying this is the only way to go about it, or even if this is the best way to do it, this is just what I do.

  Let me set up the situation. Let’s say that I have a story called “Understandable” (I have no such book, this is just for an example) it’s an urban fantasy (aka. a fantasy story that takes place in our world as to opposed a fantasy that take place in its own world, like Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”) The main character is…a dwarf named…White, (hey, I’m making this up as I go, so stop snickering.) White works in the mines when he returns home to see a lovely lady dressed as a traveling apple sales woman, (wait for it) she’s a powerful sorceress in disguise, and she has come to the dwarf for shelter. This is an unusual occurrence as you may expect, but White lets her in, and that night she explains that she just caught wind of a plot to kill the queen, so she was on her way to stop them, hence the disguise. White offers his help as a….guide (I guess), she says thanks but no thanks, the sorceress refuses the food White offers her, saying she can only eat the apples she has with her, for they are the key to her strength. The next morning however, White and the sorceress find the basket with the fruit has been stolen, and the sorceress will die if they are not found, and the day for the planned murder of the queen is drawing near, and they need to do all of this while keeping themselves hidden from the other people of this world: the Ordinaries (that’s us)….White goes to his seven cousins for help and together they save the sorceress.

  So what do I do first after the story is written and edited?

I go and find agents and publishers that might be interested in this kind of thing. I write out an index card for each company or agent with all their important information.

Side One:

                (1)White (2)great    other project okay                         

       

        (3) 1.16.10                 11.12.07 (4) NO

(5) Fantasy Agency

(6)Aurora Kingly

(7)Fantasy@Imadeitup.com

or Aurorafantasy@Imadeitup.com  

(8) Fantasy Agency

212 I Make It Up St.

New York, MY 99999

Explanation

(1)    I list the books I am currently searching for agent for; usually I am looking for more than one book at a time.

(2)    I make a note at how well I think my project fits the agency or publishing house in question.

(3)    I note the date that I sent the agency the query letter.

(4)    I write down “NO” when I get a refusal or no response so that I can avoid sending a query to the same place twice.

(5)    Next I list the agency name.

(6)    I list the name of the person I wish to contact; there may be more than one noted person in the company, if possible I narrow it down so that I send it directly to my desired agent or publisher.

(7)    I write down the company email and/or the specific email of the person I wish to contact.

(8)    The final thing on this page is usually the physical address of the agency or publishing house.

Side 2

(1)    Picture books, fantasy, Short Stories

(2)    Q letter Snail Mail with 1^st 5 pages & synopsis along with SASE.

(3)    Q letter with QUERY & work title in email subject with 1^st 5 pgs and synopsis of work NO attachments. WILL REPLY, if none, email again.

Explanation:

(1)    I list the preferred genres of the company, or specific person I’m going to be sending the query to, in some cases, they list only what they don’t want sent to them in which case I list those instead with NO at the beginning of the list.

(2)     I note how they wish the query letter to be sent by mail. Since I am pressed for space I use a mix of my own shorthand, and the generally accepted slang of the writing world. Q letter, meaning they want a standard query letter, which is only one page long. Snail mail, which is regular mail; a lot of agencies will not accept UPS, or other deliveries and will not even let it in through the door. Some will ask for the first few pages from your work, it can be anywhere from the first five to the first fifty pages of the work, depending on the genre. They could also ask for a synopsis, which is basically a summary of the entire book condensed to around three pages for a “Short Synopsis” or around ten pages a “Long Synopsis” they may or may not specify what kind of synopsis they want and you’re left to guess. A SASE is a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope, a lot of companies will not pay for postage to send you a rejection or an acceptance, so you need to send an envelope addressed to yourself with a stamp, even then some do not guarantee a response.

(3)    This is where I note the recommended mode of sending the query by email. Most agencies and publishing companies get a lot of spam, so even if they don’t require it, it’s best to put QUERY in the subject line of your email, with your book title. Most of them are paranoid of viruses, and do not open attachments, so anything that they ask you to send along with the query you should paste to the email, they will most often request it but even if they don’t, you should do it anyways. Some will guarantee a response and will ask you to email another query after a given period of time, because if you didn’t get a response, they accidentally deleted it, or it got lost. Most are not so kind. Most of them will give you a time span of days to expect a reply, and then if they exceed it, you are to assume it to be a refusal.

So, this is how I start my query letter adventure, I think this post is long enough for one day, I’ll be posting more on this subject another time.

Working on Enthusiasm

Sometimes writing on a particular project is not unlike pulling out your own teeth. One of my newer projects “Chloe’s Diary” has been on chapter two for entirely too long now. Spitting out the prologue and first chapter was relatively painless. I don’t know what happened, after the first scene in chapter two was typed out, all my drive and enthusiasm evaporated and I have been unable to sit down and get on a roll for a while now. When I first began to have trouble writing things down, I thought I would set it aside and I would pick it up when it was ready. So I waited…then I waited some more, then I forgot about it for about a month. When I came across the file on my computer, I remembered that it existed and I opened it up. I read and edited the prologue and first chapter, by the time I reached the second chapter I was getting excited about where it was going and as I began to recall some of the ideas that I had about what was going to happen next, then something interrupted me, I don’t recall what it was, and I was forced to leave the story, when I returned and finished editing, all my prior excitement was gone. Not about to let it sit going nowhere all over again, I decided to try a different tactic and keep it where I would see it and I would make myself open it up and write something, even if it was only a sentence every time I had a moment to spare and maybe, just maybe I would get on a roll and I might get the second chapter done. So far it hasn’t worked, but at least I’m working on it while I’m waiting for the writing adrenaline to come along. It makes me feel like I’m not an utter failure as a writer.

A Collection of Death Stories

I think I’m finally ready to write then send out some query letters for “A Slice of Life Death”. I’m usually nervous at this point in the process, but after receiving so many “no” and non-replies from other agencies on my other books that were, in my opinion, so much better than this book, that I can’t even work up the energy to get nervous. I’ve decided it’s just not worth it. That’s not to say, I’m not going to give writing my query my best shot or anything like that. I’m just not nervous anymore; I’m not giving up either, so that’s got to be a good thing, right?
If anybody knows any name for agent or publishing houses that publish collections of short stories, let me know with a comment on my blog and that’d be great! Thanks!

Sunshine

“I find I'm more creatively inclined when the sun is shining”~ Samantha Blackwell (Taken from my 5/17/11facebook status.

Why I'm bring up the subject of sunshine is because today I am being deprived of it by the clouds (greedy, can’t they share! There’s plenty of sun for everyone, if they’d just get out of the way then we all could enjoy it. Sometimes the clouds remind me of those annoying people at the beach who stand right in your sun shine. There is a whole beach for you to be standing in, why’d you pick right there!?)

My loss of sun is the reason my post is so late. Everything seems to take longer when the sun is absent in my life. It's as if my body is preserving energy in semi-hibernation. Whatever it is, it all goes back to: no sun.

Reporting from the Writing Prison

After a day of Blogger not working on Thursday, which nearly drove me up the wall, I’m back to posting.  

  This week has been very eventful. I went and took my assessment test at my community college of choice and passed both the English and Reading test with flying colors, Math was unfortunately a different story, not that I was shocked, Math has never been my strong suit.

  I have edited and revised “A Slice of Life Death” and am getting ready to do it several more times before I start sending out queries to agents. The whole while I am continuing to edit “Survival”, which is taking longer due to its size, but I’m to chapter thirty-one of forty, so I’m almost there.

  It’s also the last week that I was told to wait for a reply from one agent, if they were interested they would contact me, and since they haven’t I am going to assume their answer was “no”. They were the last agent I was waiting on for my book “Samantha’s Animal Stories”.

  I think that gets you guys all up to date with what I’m doing. Till next week then.

Survival Editing

I’m going through my final editing cycle of “Survival” before I print it out. I’ll hold it in my hands and glow, like a loving parent should its child. Then I’ll put it in a drawer for a month or so, and then when my euphoria has subsided, I’ll destroy my ego with the merciless red pencil of critics.

  I’m about halfway my final computer edit, finishing Chapter Thirty last night. Which reminds me, I should probably print out “A Slice of Life Death” too, but I can’t let myself get distracted, (which happens entirely too easy for me sometimes.)

  Then there’s “Samantha’s Animal Stories” which I have sent out the last few agent queries that I’m going to be sending before I throw in the towel on that endeavor. I gave up on finding an agent for “My Magical World” a while ago. I’m thinking of deleting “Stargazers” - again. I’m hesitant to start writing “Chloe’s Diary” since I really don’t like the characters, though I love the story; and…I got off track didn’t I?

  Well, I’m going back to editing.

My Blog

Realization:In my attempts to try and get my book published I’ve found that I don’t really believe I will get published by a publishing house. Realizing that I felt this way I needed to figure out how I felt about my future as a writer. I realized that a writer is a writer, I can’t change it, so what am I going to do if I feel so put out and negative about the publishing world?

Decision:I decided that I would try to get an agent for a little while longer but if I can’t get an agent for any of my books, I’m going to try out self-publishing (if you want something done right, do it yourself.) Besides I’ve read that a lot of publishing houses won’t do any promotion for a lot of book. This being the case, even if I got published without an agent, then I would have to do all of the promotion myself anyways. So, why get a publishing house to publish a book at all if they don’t do their jobs most of the time?

Plan:As soon as I’m done with sending agents for all of my books, (and I’ll let my patience decide how long to keep that up.) If I get an agent, I’ll cut the deal and let them do their job. If all of my books are rejected by all of the agents I can find then I’ll save money to publish my books myself.

In the meantime:While I’m sending out queries to agents, I’ll try to build a fan base on-line, that way when I do publish my books someone out there will want to buy (and possibly read) my book.

Please follow my blog and friend me on facebook where I keep an update on all of my progress with my books and my blog. Thanks for your support.