Vincent Zandri's Blog - Posts Tagged "agents"
How to Write the "Great" Agent Query Letter
I no longer have to write query letters to agents.
That part of my life is over. I have a great agent now and plan on spending the rest of my life with him. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.
I wasn't always good at writing agent query letters. It took a lot of practice honing the essential information I needed to include in the letter and to be able to present said information on a single page. Agents hate to read more than one page and often will read no further than your first sentence. So make it a good one.
But I've spent literally hours upon hours working up query letters and getting them out to agents. Originally I did this via snail mail and the cost was astronomical. For the past decade I've been able to pretty much go through the process of query submission and agent response via email and while that has diminished the cost element, it still takes up a huge chunk of time.
Time that could be used for writing.
That said, I thought it might be a good time to give you an idea of what makes a great query letter. Notice I don't say a “good” query because in this climate of radical publishing shifts in which the Big 6 publishers in New York are slowly downsizing, giving way to a huge influx of indie presses like StoneHouse Ink and StoneGate Ink, and/or self-published authors, agents must be more choosy than ever in which clients they decide to take on and which they decide to reject.
Get the rest of this at The Vincent Zandri Vox:
http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...
That part of my life is over. I have a great agent now and plan on spending the rest of my life with him. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.
I wasn't always good at writing agent query letters. It took a lot of practice honing the essential information I needed to include in the letter and to be able to present said information on a single page. Agents hate to read more than one page and often will read no further than your first sentence. So make it a good one.
But I've spent literally hours upon hours working up query letters and getting them out to agents. Originally I did this via snail mail and the cost was astronomical. For the past decade I've been able to pretty much go through the process of query submission and agent response via email and while that has diminished the cost element, it still takes up a huge chunk of time.
Time that could be used for writing.
That said, I thought it might be a good time to give you an idea of what makes a great query letter. Notice I don't say a “good” query because in this climate of radical publishing shifts in which the Big 6 publishers in New York are slowly downsizing, giving way to a huge influx of indie presses like StoneHouse Ink and StoneGate Ink, and/or self-published authors, agents must be more choosy than ever in which clients they decide to take on and which they decide to reject.
Get the rest of this at The Vincent Zandri Vox:
http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...
