I am currently on vacation, but I am sure many of you are planning to resume querying after Labor Day so I wanted to share this post again. Please enjoy it for the first or third time and as you make sure your query is completely ready!
Are you sending your query out only to silence or form rejections? Here are some possible reasons why…
Your manuscript isn’t ready.
Agents and editors barely have time to take on projects that need just a little work, let alone anything that needs a complete overhaul. But also, there’s a huge difference between a manuscript that is good…and one that can sell. So ask yourself, who really read your manuscript? If you’re getting only form rejections but all your beta readers are saying it is fine, it might be time to call in professional help / an editor like me.
You are sending it to the wrong people.
Once upon a time, one of my clients was only getting form rejections. I called her to confirm she was sending it to agents looking for thrillers. Nope! She was only trying agents looking for women’s fiction. Once we tweaked her list, she received an offer in a week.
Your word count is too low or too high.
I know online they offer a huge range of acceptable word counts. 50,000 words is 250 pages in a finished book. Look at books similar to yours. Where does yours fit in? Does your word count feel realistic? Agents will pass on queries with questionable word counts without even reading, so don’t let it be an easy reason to pass on yours.
Your comparison titles are non existent or confusing.
If you can’t figure out where your book fits in a bookstore, how can anyone else? The other problem is comparing yourself to an author like James Patterson or a bestselling phenomenon like The Da Vinci Code or Gone Girl. Those are brands, not realistic paths that a debut author should already be aspiring to. Find someone more recent and realistic. Ask your bookstore or local library for help. You should also be reading debut authors and keeping up with what is happening in the marketplace. Because if there’s one thing that makes you the best writer you can be, it is reading. (Also, the reason why I’m such a good editor. Reading makes EVERYONE better at EVERYTHING.)
Your plot is unclear.
Your query letter should include one or two paragraphs of clear synopsis. You don’t need to spoil the plot. Just give us enough to lure us in. Think of it like the back cover copy or jacket copy of a finished book. So many times I read queries where the author tells me the book is the best ever or will keep me on the edge of my seat and that’s fine, but the story copy should make that clear as well.
Bonus - it isn’t you, it’s them.
The gatekeepers are busy. There are fewer agents and fewer editors which means less eyes to read unsolicited submissions. It is an extremely difficult time to be an author on submission. But don’t just take my word for it:
Whatever you do, don’t let silence or rejections convince you to stop writing or trying. The only way you truly fail as a writer is…if you quit.
Until next time,
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As a book designer for small presses, I'm going to offer a slight correction to the 50,000 words equals a 250 page book example. I just did a quick-and-dirty setting for a 97,000 word novel because an author asked to be shown what the manuscript would look like as a book. I set it as a standard 5.5 x 8.5 book using Garamond 12, and it came to 362 pages, about 270 words per page. So that 50,000 word novel in the example would be about 180 pages, not 250. That's a big difference, and in real publishing life it would be greater, because no publisher's likely to publish a novel in Garamond 12.
The main reason my queries don't work is that my manuscript is not quite ready, although it appears to me to be ready. For example, I have had to tweak my short story after it was submitted and declined over eight times. Another reason is probably the title. My story about alcoholism has a title that is somewhat misleading because the alcoholism is the cause of the central characters problem. The story is not an attack on the consumption of alcohol itself. I suppose I'll get the story published eventually.