Preditors & Editors ™
A guide to publishers and publishing services for serious writers
On Writing an E-Mail Query
By Kevin Ahearn, Literary Agent, NY Creative Management.
Getting published begins with getting read. If you're reading this column, typing out a query, putting it in an envelope with an SASE and mailing it is as dated as the Pony Express.
So why it this literary agent gets such a sloppy collection of e-mail queries?
Some tips beyond P & E's "Suggested Etiquette for Contacting Agents".
- Never CC. If I see your query has been sent to other agents, I won't bother to read it. Not that you shouldn't contact as many agents as possible, but by CCing, you've shown me you're too lazy to cut and paste. If you're not going to take the time to send each query individually, I don't want to deal with you. I doubt others will either.
- Typos, typos, typos. Also poorly written sentences, grammar gaffes and awkward phrasing. As the query goes, so goes the manuscript. Obvious advice, but doesn't anybody listen?
- Ask me to read one work. The last thing I want to hear about is how many unproduced screenplays you've scripted or how many unpublished novels you've written. Nor do I care if your work is the first of a series that will become a billion-dollar franchise. Writing is like baseball: you can't steal first base. Let's get your first book published and worry about all else later.
- Never include a website, yours or anybody else's. The Internet is free. I'm looking for writing people will pay to read.
- Don't put all your begs in one ask-it. Write, then rewrite your query and send it out to five agents individually. Then sleep on it. Next day, play with the words a bit and send out five more. Day after day, keep polishing and sending.
- Writers who get published know what their story is about. In fifty words get me interested. If the butler did it or the UFO is really a long lost Frisbee, make me want to find out myself. Complete synopses, casts of characters, titles of future volumes are completely unnecessary.
- Your college professor, the local doctor, the members of your writing group...I don't care who liked your work. If you had somebody with real juice behind you, you wouldn't be writing to me in the first place.
- Unique expertise and professional experience are worth mentioning, but only in passing. Your story, not your biography, will get you representation.
- Agents taking on previously unpublished writers will not sell their manuscripts to editors, but get manuscripts that sell themselves to the right editors. Selling me with a query is only the beginning.
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