Guide to Writing a Query Letter
Contains a step-by-step guide to writing a query letter, including examples from actual query letters written by our authors.
Introduction
One common bit of feedback I often receive is that writing a query letter is a headache. It’s not enough that an author has to pen an amazing manuscript with chapters that grab the agent or publisher’s attention, but they often also need to write both a synopsis and a query letter. Writing a query letter is a skill in itself and can be difficult if you’re not used to that sort of promotion.
To try and help writers who are querying us, this is a guide to writing that letter. Please feel free to use this when you’re approaching us, and if you want to take it elsewhere too, you are more than welcome. At the end will be a very short and simple template of sorts that you can use while writing your own query.
Greeting and Personalisation
Start with using the name of the agent, editor or publisher. We know that you’ll be copy and pasting letters – that’s fine! But making sure that the greeting is personalised shows that effort has been made.
I don’t need writers to personalise it beyond that, unless there’s something significant to say. I can tell if you’ve read my wishlist from what you’re sending to me, so no need to include that. Do include if I’ve asked for your work via a pitch contest, from previous interactions, or if you’ve met me. It’s good to remind an agent/editor of previous correspondence or meetings.
I am writing to you because you expressed interest in my book, "A Fix of Light", during the #PitchDis event on June 23rd!
Market Information
The first full paragraph of the letter should be what I call the market information. This lets the agent or editor quickly see if your book is something that is of interest to them. It should clearly contain the genre, age category, wordcount and then comp titles and themes.
An extra note on comp (comparative) titles. They don’t need to be perfect. Try and keep to books published in the last few years if you can, but don’t be afraid to use other media, or older works. Try and avoid using massive bestsellers. Pick out a theme or a character from those books, rather than trying to find something that hits every note, because it’s very unlikely to work. If your book is exactly like another, why write it! You can also go the route of just comparing it to similar writers or books. “If you like _____, then you will like this!” Try looking at the blurbs on bookseller sites for inspiration.
The City Of Wings and Gold is an adult fantasy with crossover potential to the upper end of YA, and is complete at 99,800 words. It’s a fresh look at a post-cataclysmic world, set in an alternative future London, the society one of faith and magic, gods and mystery, while still holding echoes of our own. It has the slow-burn romance of The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid, echoes the wintry fairy-tale feel of Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, and explores themes of enemies-to-lovers, family, love and loss. While it draws on Celtic, rather than Norse traditions, it will also appeal to readers of The Witch’s Heart, by Genevieve Gornichet.
A VOW ONCE SPOKEN is a 95,000-word fantasy novel, inspired by Sri Lankan history and Buddhist/Hindu mythology. The lush world-building of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun and visceral exploration of caste in Saara El-Arifi’s The Final Strife meet the complex magic system (with very harsh drawbacks!) and empire-breaking heist of Brandon Sanderson’s The Final Empire, in a fiercely anti-colonial story that grapples with questions of cultural identity, intergenerational trauma, and familial bonds. As with Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, Vow features inspiration from Buddhist philosophy, and a story that explores fate and prophecy.
The Blurb
Here is where you can really sell the book. Keep it short – one or two paragraphs. Don’t worry about telling the whole story, that’s what your synopsis is for. Don’t try and mention all of the characters or story beats. Think about what would be shown on the back of a book on the shelf. Make it interesting! Tell us who the main character is, what the stakes are, and what challenges they face.
Haunted Teacup begins with tea, cake, and attempted murder; someone has pushed Nana, Hilda Device, matriarch of the Device family of witches, down the stairs in number thirteen Cauldron Crescent. In the grip of death, her spirit appears, teacup in hand, to her granddaughter, twelve-year-old Kate Ambrose, a girl with a fondness for ghosts rather than kids her own age. On discovering that Nana had stumbled upon a plot to summon Him, the murderous spirit of a Pendle witch hunter centuries in slumber, Kate must race to find not only the summoner but to stop Him from returning. Otherwise, it might doom all witches to an end at the gallows.
To unlock the secrets of the past and find the clues as to who the summoner is, Kate must take a sip from the haunted teacup. Doing so brings a four-hundred-year-old tragedy to light in the form of the red-headed, elemental ghost of Lisbeth Nutter, a girl whose own life ended in Pendle at the hands of the witch hunter. And she's the only person who can help Kate. But when you’re a witch in a working-class Mancunian family, with a chain-smoking, thrice-divorced mother and unemployed liberal lesbian of an aunt pointing fingers at every magick-abusing pensioner in the Crescent, who all want your grandmother dead, then things aren’t going to be easy.
Estate agent by day, necromancer by night, Toni raises the murdered dead to find out who killed them. In between she struggles to pay the bills or find a decent boyfriend. But when rogue vampires bring chaos to her sleepy county, it¹s going to take all of her resources to solve a vicious kidnapping, not get murdered, find who killed Jane Doe and sort out her appalling love life.
Writer Bio
Finally, tell us a little about yourself. It’s important to mention any prior publishing or representation, or any stories you may have in books or magazines, any prizes won or relevant qualifications. If you don’t have any of these, it’s absolutely not going to be a barrier. It’s just good to know! It’s also great to mention writing groups, writing courses, or anything connected to publishing. It’s up to you how much you share about anything else. It’s good to know if you’re from a background that feeds into your writing, or how your own experiences shaped your work but if you’re not comfortable disclosing that at this point, that’s fine too.
A few general tips
· Be confident. Don’t use “I hope that…” or “I imagine…” Write it as if you’re already published! Believe in yourself.
· The whole letter shouldn’t be more than one side of A4 or one page in a word processing program.
· You don’t need to include your address or phone number. That can come later.
Short template
Salutation
Personalisation if relevant
Market information (Title/genre/age/wordcount/comp titles/themes)
Blurb (1-2 paragraphs)
Writer Bio
With big thanks to Kel Menton, P.S. Anali, H.E. Gibson, Helen Glynn Jones and Alice James for letting me use samples of their work.
Helen also has a blog post about this with more examples: https://journeytoambeth.com/2022/08/21/writing-a-query-letter-to-a-literary-agent/