Submitting My Query Letter

My first book Prometheus Blue now complete and ready for submission, with book two Prometheus Red in final draft form. Now it’s time to embark on the journey to getting published. Just remember, I’m not an expert on this. As I described in an earlier blog entry, I’m just a learning aspiring author going about the business of figuring out how I can get my best work published. But it has to start with actually writing my first book.

As I described in my previous blog entry – Writing My First Book – after actually getting the sucker written, the real challenge begins. Before I start discussing the primary topic of this blog – Query Letter – let’s review the process for getting that finished book into the hands of eager readers.

Your book is done. Great. Now comes the hard part. Nowadays, you can’t just go directly to a publisher and ask them to consider your novel. They almost never accept unsolicited manuscripts. In almost every case, you are going to need an agent.

But first, do a little research. You can’t fire out a mail-merge query letter to 100 agents and expect any results. First of all, you have to find an agent that is open to submissions from new authors and is looking for work in your genre. It also helps to find out a bit about the agent, such as some of the other authors they’ve represented and books they’ve had published. Make sure you’re not wasting your time and their time and only write to an agent that is open to work that you are doing. Got that? Super important.

How do you get an agent? You have to submit a query letter. The query letter is essentially a one-page sales tool that describes everything an agent might need to know to get interested in your work. Agents are notoriously busy people with very little time on their hands for people they don’t know. So if you are writing to an agent cold to represent your 250,000-word historical-romance-thriller-epic-memoir, you’d better have a damned-good query letter.

Easy right?

Contents of a Great Query Letter

Here’s what you need to cover in your query letter.

• Genre – mine is Science Fiction Thriller. What’s yours?
• Word count – There’s plenty of research on this topic, but if you’re writing Science Fiction as a debut author, 90-120 thousand words seems to be the sweet spot;
• Series – Is your book part of a series?
• Agent Specifics – Acknowledgement of the agent you are writing to, complete with why your work is suitable for this agent and vice versa;
• Hook – A one-sentence grabber that will keep the agent wanting to read more;
• Brief Synopsis – Like the back cover of the book. Don’t give away any endings, but make the agent interested enough in the story to want even more;
• Biography – Who are you and why are you the person to write this book. Eh?
• Comparables – What other books (say 3) are similar to your book? Preferably in the last 5 to 10 years. And no, your book is not fully unique. It hopefully will have a unique twist or spin, but there have to be comps;
• State – Is your book complete? (It really must be to be sending a query letter, but you must state that it is);
• Professional signoff – Include your website, blog, social media, etc and contact info.

No Problemo. Right?

Now do all this in 350 words.

It’s incredibly difficult to do this well. I have spent weeks on my query letter. And it’s fantastic. The perfect letter. Exactly the right tone. Wouldn’t change a thing.

It didn’t work. OK, my letter probably sucks. Or maybe it is great. Who the hell knows? Shit.

Fixing My Query Letter

So I’m doing 3 things to address this.

1. I signed up for a course. With Writer’s Digest, for $199, you can sign up for an on-line course where you get a self-paced series of slide-show presentations that describe exactly what an agent is looking for. Then there are two days of scheduled Q&A where an agent who is looking for work answers your questions. The following day, you submit your query letter (and your synopsis and first 5 pages) to the agent that is assigned to you. Inside of three weeks, I’ll get back annotated feedback in black-line format of problems, good points, suggested changes, etc. So before I go all out on the query letter route, I’m going to wait for my feedback from the agent and see where I’m missing out.
2. I am going to the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in New York later this month. In addition to all the courses and stuff about writing, marketing, cover design, plotting, etc., there are courses about how to create your query letter. You can get on-the-spot feedback on your letter. Yay!
3. Also at the aforementioned conference, I’ll be attending Pitch Slam. This like speed dating, where you get up to 5 minutes with an agent. 90 seconds to present, 90 seconds for feedback and up to 2 minutes to discuss. Here’s where the query letter courses should come in handy. Here’s where I can incorporate everything I learned from my assigned agent to improve my query language and hit the right notes. In Pitch Slam, I’ll get even more feedback.

By the end of all this, I should be in a great position to have a really effective query letter. Then I’ll get that sucker out there!

So look out agent world!! My query letter is coming for you!! Late this month. Or early next month. So you know, watch out for it. ‘Cause it’s coming.

So for complete transparency, I’m going to post my query letter as it currently stands. I’m going to latin generate the agent info and the personal detail about that agent that I included. Let’s see how this letter evolves after my course results, and after the Pitch Slam feedback. After all that feedback, I’ll post the revised letter so we can all see what changes were warranted (and why).

Here’s the August 13, 2019 version:

My Current Draft Query Letter

Dear Ms. Lorem

Re:  PROMETHEUS BLUE – Book One of the Third Stone series

When the world learns that Earth will be destroyed in 700 years, the US President gambles humanity’s best chance at survival for her place in history.

I am currently seeking representation for my debut Science Fiction Thriller, PROMETHEUS BLUE, complete at 101,000 words and the first of a planned six book series. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, quando facete inciderint et vel, eum no error commune, omnis antiopam pertinacia sit at. His eruditi argumentum ei, ea nam appareat contentiones. Te suas discere appetere mea.

In 2025, Dr. Marissa Blake discovers that the Sun and all the inner planets will be destroyed in 700 years by an approaching sun-sized star fragment. There is no credible path to Earth’s salvation.

That doesn’t stop hard-charging US President Amanda Lexington. Seeking her legacy as humanity’s savior, she assembles a dangerous coalition of existing and aspiring nuclear states to build a million-fold increase in Earth’s nuclear destructive capability in a futile gamble to destroy the indestructible. Con man David Destine starts a profitable religion to shatter Lexington’s fragile nuclear coalition using any means, including terror, to further his objectives.

These forces clash in a shocking ending so violent that humanity’s narrow path to salvation may forever be destroyed, condemning our civilization to living out its final centuries in war, poverty and environmental toxicity.

As a professional engineer, my career has been devoted to diagnosing complex technical problems and explaining causes and solutions to people who have no technical grounding in the subject. My stories are replete with physics, astronomy and mathematics, explained clearly.

PROMETHEUS BLUE will appeal to fans of Andy Weir, Evan Currie and Arthur C. Clarke for strong characters and human adventure, interwoven with hard science, clearly explained. Books of similar theme include Arthur C. Clarke’s Songs of Distant Earth, Jasper T. Scott’s Rogue Star and Larry Niven’s Lucifer’s Hammer.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely

Jim Nuffield

Address, phone number

https://www.jnuffield.com

What do you think? Any good? Stinks? Would you want to see more?

In a few weeks, I’ll post the revised letter with all the feedback that I expect to receive.

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