Query Letters That Get Requests

You finished the novel. You wrote the letter. You sent it to twenty, forty, sixty agents, and what came back was two-line form rejections, or nothing at all. Was it the letter? The first pages? The word count? The agents you picked? Nobody tells you, so you keep sending the same thing and hoping. Query Letters That Get Requests is a debut novelist's working manual for the whole querying process, built around one idea: before you send another query, find out which of the three failure points is yours. The letter, the opening pages, and the manuscript-and-list fit each fail in a different, readable way, and your own results already tell you which one it is. This is not a general book on how to write a novel, and it is not a directory of agents. It is the system between 'the book is done' and 'I have an agent': diagnosis, the letter and everything attached to it, the agent list, and a batching method that stops you from burning eighty agents on an untested pitch. Inside, you'll learn: How to read your query tally and tell a letter problem from a pages problem from a list problem The commonly cited word-count ranges and category labels agents screen on, and how to cut 30,000 words without gutting the story A query letter skeleton (housekeeping line, pitch, bio, close) that fits in 250 to 350 words How to write a pitch built on one person, one want and one impossible choice, and the comp titles that place your book on a shelf Why your first five pages, not your letter, usually decide the request, and the openings that lose agents on page one A synopsis method that gets 90,000 words onto two pages, ending included How to build and vet a list of 80 to 120 agents, spot fee-charging operators, and query in batches of 8 to 10 with clear revise triggers What to do with a full request, a revise-and-resubmit and the offer call, and how to decide when to shelve this book and write the next one Written for writers of adult, young adult and middle-grade fiction who want traditional publication and a realistic plan to get there, with three composite writers followed from first query to final decision. No guarantees, because querying never comes with those, but no more guessing either.