Michael J. Sullivan hosts a Q&A discussion

Yes, I have some great suggestion on getting an agent. The key to getting an agent, in some respects, really has to do more with the query letter than the book itself. Agents have so many submissions that they really need to get "hooked" and a good query letter does this. Let me give an example from a good query letter I saw....

She's short, round, and pushing forty, but Julia Kalas is a damned good criminal. For seventeen years she renovated historic California buildings as a laundry front for her husband's illegal arms business. Then the Aryan Brotherhood made her a widow, and witness protection shipped her off to the tiny town of Azula, Texas. Also known as the Middle of Nowhere.

This introduction paragraph does so many good things:

* Clearly defines the main character in just one well written sentence
* Provides just enough to pique my interest but doesn't tell me everything
* Is just about the perfect length.

I have some really god resources that will help you write good query letters....

* Noah Lukeman's How to Write a Winning Query Letter (Free PDF)

* Marcus Sakey - How to ensure 75% of agents will request your mateirial

* Jane Friedman's Writer's Digest Series on Writing Queries

* Query Shark

For those that don't know Noah Lukeman is a literary agent and he distilled down (in this little free short) really good do's and don'ts of writing a query letter after reading approximately 10,000 over his career. It is HIGHLY recommended.

Query Shark is a blog where people submit their queries and the literary agent running it critiques them. The example above was from Query Shark and this agent agreed as I do that it was a winner and they would have requested to see a full off of it.

If you are unsure what to do once you have a good query - come back and ask and I'll post some good resources for that as well.

Once again thank you for the great information. Very helpful.

Thanks for the links, Michael. I wasn't aware of Query Shark. Sounds like a great resource.

@Brannigan - you are very welcome

@J.M. Query Shark is a great place - I highly recommend - enjoy!