oliver yeh

If he literally pissed off the Devil in the process, he’d be standing on top of the Devil and urinating off him while simultaneously falling in love with a vampire whose soul he just replaced.

- Fragment of a query critique over at BookEnds, “Workshop Wednesday.”

(Source: bookendslitagency.blogspot.com)

‘Fiction novel’ is an automatic rejection. This is not a mistake I ever overlook. It’s not a typo. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what two words mean, and it’s a HUGE RED FLAG for bad writing… If you grew up in juvenile detention and murdered your first three husbands, stir fried your cats and enrolled your children in Fagin’s School for Thieves, I’m ok with it. The ONLY thing I care about is whether your novel is enticing. Sadly, it’s not. And it’s a fiction novel, so it doesn’t even really exist.

- The Query Shark (Janet Reid)

(Source: queryshark.blogspot.com)

In truth, there isn’t a single most common error that puts me off a query letter… It’s never about one thing in the letter. It’s about every facet of the query letter as a whole. And even then, if you put the same good query letter in front of 10 different agents, all 10 of them might have a different response. And some would ask for sample pages and the others wouldn’t.

- Kristin Nelson on what makes a successful (or unsuccessful) query letter.

I’ve sat down with a book editor and asked her how many pages she actually reads at the query stage, and she said, “Zero.” I got the same reply from a magazine editor. And two agents. Plus a publisher friend of mine. So what do they actually read when they get a query and manuscript? The cover letter.

And how much of the cover letter? The first sentence.

One sentence.

-

Peter Brown Hoffmeister, on how the importance of the first sentence of a query letter has become greater than that of the first sentence of a novel.

The last time I met my with my agent she said she was a little stressed because she had 900 queries waiting in her email in-box. When I asked her how many queries she receives per week, she said, “600 to 700.” Per week. Writer’s Digest and online writers’ websites say that the first paragraph of the query letter should be a hook, be informative, and one sentence. This is standard. So you have a one-sentence paragraph to sell your manuscript.

Read more…

NO NO NO NO NO NO. Do not ever OFFER exclusivity. It’s bad enough some agents ask for it, but do not ever OFFER first in a query letter. Exclusivity is almost never in your best interest. Don’t give up any advantage you get by querying widely.

- from Query Shark by Janet Reid.

(Source: queryshark.blogspot.com)

To be honest, even the crappiest (apparently word of the day) book should be getting requests because a good query, like a good car salesman, can sell anything. If you aren’t getting any requests on 20 queries (that means at least one request for every 20 queries you send), you need to rewrite your query. It’s not working.

- Jessica Faust, literary agent (BookEnds), in reference to an author who received 120 rejections on query alone (not one agent requested a partial).

(Source: bookendslitagency.blogspot.com)

Requested material” is not what you put on something if I’ve said “sure, send a query.”  A query is never requested material. You don’t need permission to send me a query.

- Janet Reid, literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management.

(Source: jetreidliterary.blogspot.com)

Font size is one of those issues. Like penises, they can be too big, too small, or just right. 12-point is the standard, friend, don’t fuck with it. And don’t go all Boldoni or Helvetica on my ass either. Bring it in 12 point type, Times New Roman, double-spaced paginated pages because there is nothing uglier on the face of the earth than an agent who has reached over for a sip of her Numi ginger tea and dropped an unpaginated manuscript all over the floor.

- Betsy Lerner, literary agent, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.