The Purpose of the Query Letter


I’ve been sending out query letters. The jargon is different, but sending out query letters is equivalent to the government or a business making an announcement that they are looking for a contractor to do a job for them. Government agencies and businesses put announcements on websites and in newspapers. Authors attend conferences and send out query letters.



With both processes, there is the possibility that no one will submit a bid, or in literary agent jargon, offer representation. This is probably more common with literary agents, but there are often government sponsored projects where a bureaucrat dreams up a project that no one knows how to implement. Likewise, publishers are especially reluctant to take a risk on authors without a proven track record and a recognizable name, so agents are reluctant to represent them.



Some agents know they aren’t going to offer representation to unknown author and have published notices saying so on their websites. I am trying to respect that, so the fact that I am not sending a query letter to Chip MacGregor, for example, has nothing to do with my opinion of his skill as a literary agent, but is because of a statement on his website saying:

MacGregor Literary works primarily with established authors. While our clients write in a variety of genres, each writes from a Christian perspective. We occasionally accept new clients at the start of their careers, generally from referrals of current clients. Regretfully, we cannot invest in the staffing needed to handle unsolicited queries or proposals. (http://macgregorliterary.com/submission/index.php)



I wish I could say that when I send a query letter it is because I respect the agent for his or her ability. In truth, I have sent letters to literary agents I know nothing about. Some literary agents have websites that say very little. With some, I don’t even know if they have a website. I sent one query letter and within minutes of sending the e-mail I received a reply saying, “I don’t represent fiction.” That’s why we send query letters. This guy’s website didn’t say what he represents, so sending a query letter provided me with additional information, though I will say that I don’t think any agent is under an obligation to respond to a query letter.



Literary agents will sometimes place a statement on their websites indicating what they want in terms of a query letter. Fortunately, most want pretty much the same thing, so they aren’t very hard to accommodate. I’ve heard things that indicate that some agents are picky about various things. If I happen to find a literary agent who is difficult to accommodate, I’m not going to be overly concerned about it. The last thing I would want is an agent with a bad attitude.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p...
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to...
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T...
Read more