#ktorne-writing

[tornepages-blog]

5 WARNING SIGNS OF A LITERARY BAD AGENT

There is such a thing as a bad literary agent — just like there is such a thing as a good one. It’s also possible — good or bad — the agent is just wrong for you.

The truth is, to become a literary agent all someone has to do is get a website and say — hey, I’m a literary agent! No one is gatekeeping the term or the job. So, yep, there are bad agents out there (also schamagents) and I want to help you avoid falling into their traps.

WARNING SIGN 1: THEY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE

Make sure to double check their website for their credentials (triple check, even). Where did they come from? And most important, do they have specifics? What you want in an agent is one of the following (or a combination of them is extra great):

They have a proven history in publishing and worked at a publishing house (one of the top five, or one of the big players right below the top five like Bloomsbury and the like)

They have worked for other literary agencies before (and make sure to note what sort of work, assistant literary agent? Was an internship? Have they interned for multiple places, or just the one?)

They are specific about where they worked (The vague “with a decade of work in publishing” or “having worked for years at a publisher” is not okay — if they aren’t willing to say specifics, it’s probably because they don’t actually have great experience. Either they’re making it up, or they worked at a small digital press that isn’t actually training for becoming a literary agent.)

They have a long history working at the current agency they are at, and they have sales to backup that long history. (If they aren’t new, but have been at this agency or another for a long time and have the sales to back up their agenting then you’re good to go too.)

If they don’t have one or a combination of the above, then red flags should be popping up all over the places for you. Don’t even query them.

WARNING SIGN 2: THEY MAKE THE OFFER DEADLINE

When they offer, they make a deadline for you. They say they need to hear from you within the week, or worse, within the next 24-48 hours. I know of a few agents that sell well at prestigious literary agencies will do this, but it’s bad practice and I would never sign — or recommend a friend or client — sign with someone like that.

It’s your book. It’s your career. I don’t care how badly they want your book or to represent you, if they respect you, they will give you the time you need. If they make the deadline, they aren’t respecting you (they’re actually bullying you) and just imagine what it would be like to work with them.

WARNING SIGN 3: THEY’RE PUSHY AF

This is after the offer has been made. Are they sending you nudging emails while you are discussing offers with other agents? Or while you are still taking your time to decide? It’s great if they are enthusiastic, it’s another thing entirely if they are being emotionally manipulative. Worse is when they email “so have you made a decision yet?” “have others offered?” things like that over and over again during the process.

If you feel like someone is being too pushy with you and it rubs you the wrong way, trust yourself.

You deserve to take your time making decisions. You really, really do. You put in all that work to write the book, you deserve to make the best decision for you. Truly, no agent is better than the wrong agent. The wrong agent can derail your career for years.

WARNING SIGN 4: THEIR SALES HISTORY IS NONEXISTENT OR WITH NOT-SO-GREAT PLACES

This is a very important thing to look up. I have talked with writers who didn’t bother to check sales history before signing or knew that the sales history just wasn’t there and decided to sign anyway and take that risk. Years later, they still regret it.

Truth is, it’s not easy to make money as a literary agent — and if they are new and not making the money they need to make within the first three years, they usually close up shop and change their profession. So beware, you could sign with someone and be orphaned when they realize they can’t make any money off of it.

But if they have no sales history, and no proven history in publishing, then it’s time to really think about whether you want to work with them or not.

More importantly, if you notice their sales history is only to digital publishers that take unagented submissions run for the hills. You could sell to those places and not give 15% of your money to the agent. If you are signing with an agent, it’s probably because you want to end up with a place that you can’t get to without them, right?

WARNING SIGN 5: THEY PROMISE BIG

If they are promising you the moon and the stars for lunch tomorrow, chances are they aren’t going to deliver it. Even the greatest agents can’t guarantee they will sell something. They can be really optimistic and think there is a great chance at it, but if they are promising you a 6-figure deal with your dream publisher and a TV deal, that’s a red flag. Good agents know better than to set up unrealistic expectations like that.

But there’s a flip side to this: Even if they have the sales history to seem like they can guarantee a big sale, it’s definitely what they are expecting to happen. So what if it doesn’t happen? What if your book doesn’t sell right away in a 6-figure deal to the editors they think it will sell to? That’s not a reflection on you or your book, but on timing often — maybe editors aren’t acquiring as much fantasy all of a sudden, maybe they just acquired a book and can’t acquire another like it.

If they are expecting it to sell right away, and sell big, and it doesn’t their enthusiasm in you could die out. It seems harsh — it is harsh, an agent should be invested in you for your career, not just for one payout — but I have actually seen this happen. I’ve seen writers be promised the moon and the stars by certain agents and when they didn’t actually get the moon and the stars they were suddenly dropped by those agents or it was impossible to get those agents to reply to their emails.

So 9 out of 10 times, if they are promising big, it’s not good.

YOU DESERVE BETTER

You deserve better than all of this. I know how much you want an agent when you’re querying but there are better agents out there for you. Maybe this book you are querying doesn’t land you an agent, but you don’t know the potential for the next book your query yet. It took me three books to get an agent. There’s no shame in that. And if I had signed with the agent most interested in my second book, I’d have regretted it.

So remember: You deserve a great agent. You deserve someone who will stand by you throughout your career, not just one book. You deserve someone who treats you well. You’re the one putting in all the effort and love and tears and sweat of writing that book, you deserve to give that book — and yourself — the best possible chance of success.

[tornepages-blog]

TOP 5 QUERYING MISTAKES

Querying can be scary. You have to compress your 80,000-word novel into 250 words. After that, you are going to send that query letter to an agent that gets probably between 50-100 queries a week (some get even more than that). As someone who has interned at three agencies, I’ve been shocked by what I’ve seen in the slush pile. Most rejections happen for a few simple reasons—and as long as you avoid these mistakes, you’ll be way ahead of your competition.

TOP 5 QUERYING MISTAKES

MISTAKE 1: WRONG GENRE, WRONG AGENT

This is the most common, and the one that just makes no sense to me! Seriously—why? Why would you shoot off a query to an agent without even looking at their agency profile? If the writer took five seconds to do that, they would realize: Hey, this agent doesn’t represent crime thrillers. I shouldn’t query them.

Querying an agent that does not represent your genre will get your rejected. Easy as that. Your crime thriller could be awesome, but if they don’t represent crime thrillers, they are not going to take you on as a client.

MISTAKE 2: TOO LONG QUERY / SYNOPSIS

Query letters should be around 250 words. Not hugely long, not one full page, not two pages. You don’t want to tell the entire story, aka a synopsis, in the query. You want to cover the first 2/3 of the story. When I glanced over the slush pile, if I saw a query letter that was hugely long it was already a point against it because that usually meant overwriting in the novel, or that they didn’t actually know what their plot was, so their query was all over the place.

You are doing yourself a disservice by not following the query letter guidelines: 250-300 words. Not more. (Though if you have a really killer bio filled with important information, that could push your query to 350 and be totally acceptable.)

MISTAKE 3: COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Like #1, I do not understand why a writer wouldn’t look at the submission guidelines before querying an agent. Where do you get their email address from? From the submission guidelines page! So why wouldn’t you take the extra ten seconds to read what they want to see?

If the agent wants to see pages, and you don’t send pages … that’s not good. What if they are on the fence about your query? If they have a full client list, they aren’t going to take the time to ask for more pages because they are on the fence; they needed those pages to really determine if your writing style jived with them. They are more likely to reject you and move on to the next query.

MISTAKE 4: NOT DOING YOUR RESEARCH / STRETCHING IT

Doing your research is vital. You can save yourself rejection by doing it. You can also personalize your query and set yourself apart by doing it.

For example, one literary agent can be widely known for being a horror fan. However, if you look at her profile page, you’ll see she clearly states:

“I am no longer looking at science fiction and I have never accepted paranormal/supernatural/fantasy.“

So … she isn’t interested in paranormal. She isn’t interested in supernatural. But she still got a lot of queries for paranormal horror, supernatural horror, and sometimes even fantasy horror (at least when I was her assistant). But since Bree is known for being a horror fan, people will still query her with paranormal horror because they think—she wants horror.

It’s a stretch, and obviously not true. It’s also an avoidable rejection if you read her profile. This is true with a lot of agents. There is probably another agent at the same agency that would fit with you better anyway.

MISTAKE 5: BEING POMPOUS

Declaring you are the next best thing — that you are the next JK Rowling or Dan Brown or Gillian Flynn, well, guess what? You probably aren’t. I’m sorry. You might be, but no one likes a pompous person. Don’t be pompous. No one wants to work with a pompous person. (Have I made the whole pompous = bad case repetitively enough yet?)

It’s a turnoff and a waste of space to go on and on about why your book is awesome, why you are obviously the next Stephen King, etc., etc… You would be doing yourself a favor by showing the agent your book is awesome with a strong query letter and strong opening pages.

Using them as a comp title (while not encouraged) is a separate thing. When I say pompous, I mean the people who really do declare they will be the next Dan Brown and they expect their advances to be at least six figures and to sell the movie rights within a few months after making a book deal. Yeah, these people exist. They don’t understand the way the publishing world works, and dealing with that sort of unrealistic expectation is not going to be fun for anyone involved.

[tornepages-blog]

5 MYTHS ABOUT HAVING AN AGENT

There are a lot of myths about what happens to writers once they get literary agents, and these are the 5 I hear most frequently. My point for dispelling them isn’t to depress authors aspiring to have literary agents but to prepare them.

One of the things I see go wrong most frequently between a writer and agent’s relationships is when a writer is expecting too much, too quickly and becomes hopelessly disappointed when it doesn’t happen. I don’t want that to happen to you. And I’m sure you don’t want that to happen to you either.

MYTH #1: MY BOOK WILL SELL RIGHT AWAY!

Truth: Nope. I mean, it could sell right away. This does happen. I’ve had friends who get an agent and within three months (yes, three months is fast in the pub industry) they are signing a book contract. But this isn’t the norm. I would say 50% of first novels don’t sell (the first novel your agent tries to sell, at least) and 50% of them do. This is not a hard and fast statistic, I haven’t polled every writer ever of course. But this is based on what I’ve seen as an intern, my friend’s experiences, and from my own.

Be prepared for the long haul. Just like you were when you were in the query trenches, be prepared for it to take a while. I’ve known people who have been on submission for a whole year still sell their books. Others had to wait until book 2 or 3 before they got their deal.

MYTH #2: I HAVE AN AGENT—MY BOOK MUST SELL.

Truth: This is interconnected with the first myth but different. Some people are under the false assumption that just because you have an agent, it means your book will for sure sell. The truth is: nope. There is no guarantee it will sell. If an agent promises you that, there’s something sketchy about the situation. Any good agent will prepare you for the possibility that the book won’t sell.

Be prepared for this possibility. And be working on the next book, the best way to keep your mind of submission (or querying) is to be writing your next book.

MYTH #3: MY AGENT IS GOING TO BE MY NEW BFF.

Truth: Not really. I know some people who are BFFs with their agents. I know a lot of us aren’t. It’s a working relationship, and I like it that way. I really like my agent, she’s easy to talk to and super sweet. We’re going to meet for drinks later this month and everything. But it’s really more a colleague like relationship rather than a BFF one.

I don’t think you need to be BFFs. I think you need to be comfortable with each other, and feel like you can email them whenever you need to and visa-verse, but don’t go into it thinking that you have to be BFFs or that you’ve failed if you aren’t your agent’s new BFF.

MYTH #4: IF MY FIRST BOOK DOESN’T SELL, MY AGENT WILL DROP ME. *INSERT PANIC*

Truth: I would love to say this is a totally false assumption, but it’s not. I’ve known some people who sign contracts for one book and then if it doesn’t sell, they will discuss whether to go forward with the author/agent relationship for the next book. However, this is not the norm. Most agents sign you on for the long haul. They recognize that selling a book is hard, and selling that book is really on them, not you. 

If the book doesn’t sell, that’s not your fault. You aren’t the one with the publishing connections. I’ve had friends who are all panicky over their first book not selling and thinking their agents are so disappointed in them—only for them to talk to their agent about this, and it turns out the agent also feels bad and is worried that their client is disappointed in them.

This is why communication is important. Generally, whether a book sells or not has a lot to do with timing and luck. So if it doesn’t sell, that’s not on you. That’s not even on the agent (most of the time).

To avoid this anxiety, talk with your agent. Make sure you are the same page about your next project and know what the game plan for subbing that one will be.

MYTH #5: MY BOOK WILL SELL AND I WILL BE RICH *MWHAHAHA*

Truth: Haha, no. Just no. So much no here.

Writing is not something to do to make money, trust me. Most advances are on the small scale. If you are debuting and lucky, you’ll get a 20,000 advance (broken up over the span of two years). Most get less. A few (very few) get more. It depends on the situation. But don’t go into it thinking you will get a huge advance, or else you’ll be disappointed.

Go into it wanting the best editor and imprint for your book. Being an author is about the long-term career path, which is another thing to talk to your agent about. Make sure you both are in agreement what you want out of your career. Let’s say, for example, you had your heart set on a physical book deal but you ended up with a Bloomsbury Sparks (digital first) deal. There are so many advantages to ending up with Sparks—you get to form connections at Bloomsbury. That’s a house an author can stay at for their entire career. So even though you don’t get the big money or the physical book, you have a great first step and a house that will support you and your book.

———

There are a lot of myths out there about what it’s like to get an agent (or a book deal) but try not to go into any of it with unrealistic notions. Talk with your agent, before you sign with them and after, so you can have solid, realistic expectations.

[tornepages-blog]

QUERY TIP: WHEN TO NUDGE

First off—congratulations! If you’re worried about when to nudge on a submission, then you probably got a request from an agent. That’s so awesome, take a minute and pat yourself on the back.

A lot of queriers worry about when to nudge—when is it too soon or too late?

SO WHEN DO YOU NUDGE? 

FIRST: CHECK THE AGENT’S WEBSITE

The agent or agency will often have somewhere on their website that states when they welcome writers to nudge. They might say they read within the next six weeks or two months, and nudge if you haven’t heard from them since. But what if the agent’s website doesn’t say?

FOR FULL REQUESTS:

Three to six months. You really should wait at least three months before you nudge. If you feel three months is too soon, then try for six months. Most writers nudge either at three months or six. Those are the two golden periods.

FOR PARTIAL REQUESTS:

Three months. Three months is definitely the standard for Partial Requests.

FOR QUERIES:

You DON’T. Sorry, but it’s very unusual to nudge on queries. Unless the agency website specifically says you can nudge. There are a few that do, but others usually just have a NO RESPONSE/NO INTEREST policy.

WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN NUDGING

Be pushy.

There really are very little things more annoying when dealing with a query slush pile than a writer who continuously emails about a partial or full or query–once or twice, in regards to a partial, is completely fine.

Five times about a query you just sent last month? Not so much.

Agents want to find clients they will work well with, so put your best foot forward. Don’t look like you are going to be difficult to work with.

Imagine this, if you are pushy about a query or a full or a partial—what does that say about you overall? The whole publishing process is a long hard road, and patience and determination are very important. Don’t look like you’re impatient. No one wants an impatient client.

Also being pushy is rude. It’s like you’re telling the agent that they don’t have anything better to do than serve you right then and there—someone who isn’t even their client yet. Agents make no money off reading queries or partials or fulls.

Agents make their money when they sell manuscripts, so it’s kind of crazy to think about how much time they spend reading potential clients work that may never make them any money.

Be respectful of their time, and don’t make a bad impression.

[tornepages-blog]

COMMON QUERY MISTAKES

I’ve seen a lot of query letters. Between my internship experience at multiple agencies and through my editorial services. But sometimes it does baffle me the mistakes I see in the query slush piles.

If you are reading this article right now, you are probably not one of the offenders to make this mistake. Probably, but not certainly. Trust me when I say if you make one of these mistakes, it’s good enough for a busy agent to move on to the next query. If you’re lucky and you get an intern or an assistant, they might give you an extra shot—the query slush pile and requested material tends to be their main feature. But, not always. Sometimes those interns and assistants are tired or overworked or working more than one job. And agents? They work 40+ hours a week, and query slush pile is kind of a side job for them on top of their client work.

Don’t make these mistakes. Give yourself the best shot.

ATTACHING QUERY LETTERS TO EMAIL

What the what? Yeah, a weird amount of people will attach a query letter to the email either as a PDF file or a Word file instead of pasting it into the body of the email. Some agencies request this, but not many. Most agencies want you to paste the query into the body of the email.

Some agents, plenty, don’t want to risk a computer virus to view your query letter. Make this mistake and get an auto-reject.

QUERYING MORE THAN ONE PROJECT AT ONCE

Uh, no. You don’t do this. You perfect one project and query it by itself. Pairing it up with other projects—like the other two books in the trilogy—just means you don’t know how to query properly. If you haven’t done your research to prove that this is not what you do then you probably aren’t ready for an agent.

I’M THE NEXT JK ROWLING

Nope, you aren’t. Sorry, but I don’t believe they’ll ever be another JK Rowling. There will never be another Stephen King. There just won’t. You aren’t going to be them. Or Dan Brown. You can be you, and you might be awesome, but nothing proves that you’ll be a top seller like them yet.

Bragging it up about how awesome you are is stupid. No one wants to work with someone arrogant. Confidence is good, but too much of it sets of red flags about your ability to work with other people.

SUPER LONG QUERY LETTER

Queries should be between 250 – 300 words. Not a ton more than that. If you can’t figure out how to write a query letter, you haven’t researched the industry well enough to understand why query letters are important.

ALL ABOUT YOU, NOT ABOUT YOUR BOOK

Queries that are paragraphs and paragraphs about you, about what you read, about what you do, and three or four sentences about your book is not doing yourself any favors. If you are writing about fiction, you want to talk about your book. You could be awesome, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the book.

NO QUERY LETTER

Sometimes people say they don’t want to “bullshit” the agent with a query letter. They want to get straight to the point, so here is the first five pages of the book.

No.

That’s not how it works, people. The query letter exists for a reason, and if you haven’t researched the industry enough to know why that exists, then … well, you probably aren’t ready.

NO PAGES

If the submission guidelines call for pages, you want to include those pages. Why? Because a busy agent might be on the fences. They might not want to take the time to write you an email, you who ignored their simple submission guidelines, and ask for pages. If they are new, then maybe yes. If they aren’t new, if they are well established with a lot of great clients, they probably won’t. Read the submission guidelines, if you expect an agent to take the time to read your query, take the time to read up about them.

WRONG PAGES

You don’t submit an “excerpt” — you submit the first five or ten pages. Not some random set of pages from chapter ten.

WRONG GENRE

Crazy how reading up about an agent can save you the easiest, quickest rejection—the agent doesn’t represent your genre. You can usually figure that out by looking at the agency’s “about us” page. Querying an agent that specifically says, for example, I do not represent paranormal means that they do not represent paranormal, so querying them with a paranormal novel? Not a good idea.

TOO HUMBLE

“I doubt you’d be interested in this, but I thought I’d show you my novel anyway.” Or something like this, it’s a bad idea. Don’t be too humble. You have an awesome book, don’t assume—if they represent your genre—that they don’t want to see it.

WEIRD SUBJECT LINES

QUERY: TITLE YA/MG/ADULT

Most agencies ask for that sort of format. For example, if you wrote a book called ALL HERE NOW and it’s a Middle Grade novel, then your subject line should be: QUERY: ALL HERE NOW MG. Don’t write weird stuff in the subject line. A lot of agencies have filters, so writing something long like “thriller novel about space aliens invading that find love in all the wrong places” isn’t going to really help.

NO, MG/YA IS NOT A GENRE

So, no, MG and YA aren’t a genre. Also, a book cannot be both MG and YA. It is either one or the other. A genre is sci-fi, fantasy, horror, contemporary. A marketplace is Middle Grade (MG) or Young Adult (YA).

EVERYONE WILL LOVE THIS!

Everyone will love your book—from teenagers to grandmothers!

Nope. Sorry, they won’t. You have a marketplace. Accept it. Know it. You might have crossover appeal, but you have one set marketplace, and it’s definitely not teenagers to grandmothers.

CRAZY MESH UP

“It’s J.K. Rowling magic meets Stephanie Perkins romance with a dash of Courtney Summers writing and Nova Ren Suma magical realism with the atmosphere of Ransom Riggs.”

Does that make your head kinda hurt trying to figure out? Yeah. It makes my head hurt too. Pick one or two authors to compare your work to—if you want to—but more than that it’s insane.

IN CONCLUSION…

Like I said, if you are reading this, you are probably not one of the offenders above. Usually, they don’t do their research. But you do. So you’re really top of the class. Your slush pile awesomeness. You just need to have the right query letter, and give it to the right agent and the right time.

[tornepages-blog]

HOW TO PERSONALIZE A QUERY LETTER

Depending on the literary agent, they can get anywhere between 50 to 100+ queries per week. With that many queries, on top of their current clients’ work to read and contracts to negotiate, can you imagine how much time they have for each query letter? Maybe thirty seconds, a minute at most.

So how do you stand out in the query slush pile? One of the best ways: personalize your query letter. Show the agent you did your research and you are querying them for a specific reason.

How do you personalize a query letter?

STEP ONE: RESEARCH THE AGENT

Publishers Marketplace, Literary Rambles, Writer’s Digest, Twitter, Google, all these are great resources to research literary agents. Find interviews and make sure they represent your genre (you’d be shocked how often people query agents that do not represent their genre, guess what that gets you? An automatic rejection).

In most interviews, agents talk about what they want to see in their slush pile.

See if they represent any of your favorite authors or popular authors in the marketplace and genre you are writing.

Make sure they like personalized query letters. This is rare, but sometimes you’ll find interviews where agents say they would rather just get to the query letter than have personalization. But trust me—most agents like to see personalization. It shows you’ve done your research.

A lot of queriers don’t do their research. By proving you have, you’re already a step ahead of your competition.

STEP TWO: IDENTIFY WHAT MAKES THEM THE RIGHT AGENT FOR YOU

By now you’ve read a few interviews, checked out their clients, and probably can figure out at least one reason why you are querying them—even if they don’t have interviews out there, you have to know why you’re querying them, right?

It could be something as easy as their “about us” page on says they are interested in fantasy YA, and you wrote a fantasy YA novel.

STEP THREE: WRITE THE PERSONALIZATION

Put the personalization on the top of the query, since the agent is going to be glancing over the query—you want them to see it right away. Proof that you’ve done your research. A connection that shows them yes, this will be a good query for me to actually pay attention to and read through.

I know that sounds cruel, but the truth of the matter is that agents are extremely busy and well trained. They can usually do a quick 10-30 second glance over a query letter to know if it’s something they are interested or not.

INTERVIEW PERSONALIZATION TEMPLATE:

“I read in your XXX interview that you are interested in dark, gritty contemporary YA. As such, I thought you might be interested in my 75,000 word YA novel, TITLE.”

(XXX of course should be replaced with wherever you read the interview. For example, “in your Writer’s Digest interview”.)

CLIENT PERSONALIZATION TEMPLATE:

“I am querying you because I greatly admire your client XXX. Since he/she writes dark, gritty contemporary YA, I thought you might be interested in my 75,000 word YA novel, TITLE.”

PROFILE PERSONALIZATION TEMPLATE:

“I read on your blog/profile/agency website that you are interested in fantasy YA. As such, I thought you might be interested in my 80,000 word YA novel, TITLE.”

There are, of course, other ways to personalize a query, but these are the most common. Personalization will help you set yourself apart from your competition.

If you’re in the querying trenches, good luck!

[tornepages-blog]

HOW TO STRUCTURE A QUERY LETTER

Query letters are widely hated by writers. I understand this hatred and used to feel it too, but I’ve come to respect the process. Query letters are important for a lot of reasons. Chances are, the fact that you are reading this means that are already ahead of other query-ers out there. Most don’t structure their query right, and a ridiculous long or weirdly structured query can do a lot of harm.

To help illustrate the structure process, I’m going to share parts of my query for LIV ON FIRE, a thriller YA that got a lot of requests, multiple offers, and eventually, I picked my agent from them.

HOW TO STRUCTURE A QUERY LETTER

There is a well-known structure for query, and a great way to start with your first draft of a query letter: PERSONALIZATION, HOOK, BOOK, and COOK.

PERSONALIZATION:

I recommend putting it at the front. That way the literary agent knows right away that you’ve done your research.

Here’s how you do it:

“In your interview with Writer’s Digest you expressed an interest in gritty, dark contemporary YA. As such, I thought you might be interested in my 75,000 word novel, LIV ON FIRE.”

HOOK:

Your first paragraph should be the hook of your book. Something that conveys the whole concept clearly, quickly, and in a way that will make an over-worked literary agent (or literary agent assistant/intern—the ones eagerly learning about the process, but for free while they are working maybe one, probably two other jobs) stop and take notice instead of scanning through the rest of their query pile.

Think of it like your elevator pitch.

Here is an example of a hook:

“Eighteen-year-old Liv Ashwin is just learning to cope with the death of her twin brother when a serial killer starts burning through her hometown.”

That’s the whole concept of the book. Liv is struggling with the death of her twin, and a serial killer comes and complicates the whole situation. That’s the book, right there. In one sentence.

BOOK:

After that, you dive into the book. In one to three paragraphs (do not go over 250 words), talk about what the book is about—try to stick with what happens in the first 2/3rd of the book, since that’s easiest. You want to end it on a choice.

Here is the rest of the query for LIV ON FIRE. (Note, after some major revisions, anything after the first paragraph is no longer a true representation of the book.)

The media goes crazy over the elaborate killings, each recorded and showing an odd ritual involving fire. When Liv discovers a girl tied to a burning stake in the woods, she fails to save her and runs before the inferno consumes her, too. The killer broadcasts her failure online, like all his other killings, but this time with a message: BE MINE?

Liv wants to hide and pretend the sick proposal never happened until another video surfaces — one of her brother’s death. Seeing it ignites a maddening need for her to find the killer, no matter the consequences. When she gets too close, her best friend is kidnapped and a new message appears: BE MINE & I’LL STOP.

Liv’s done running. She won’t let another person die or her brother’s killer go free, even if it means swapping places with her friend in a final sacrifice.

See that last part? The choice: she can save her friend, but only by sacrificing herself. It’s high stakes, and it’s a tough choice. It gives agents a pause—do they want to read to see what happens, or don’t they?

30 agents did.

COOK:

And the final paragraph is the cook, where you talk about the book. Also, this is where any comp titles go.

“With blog posts, texts, and news articles embedded in the story, fans of NIGHT FILM by Marisha Pessl and LIAR SOCIETY by Lisa and Laura Roecker will enjoy this book. I’m a member of HWA, SCBWI, and a former intern at P.S. Literary.

Thank you for your time and consideration.”

Quick, easy, and to the point. Do not go all braggy here. Saying you are going to be the next big thing is pompous and not going to do yourself any favors. If you don’t have comp titles, don’t worry about it. Comp titles are good, but only if you have the right ones.

Don’t ramble on about yourself. If you have relevant credentials, put them there. If you don’t, don’t worry. If you are writing fiction, it doesn’t matter at all if you have no credentials. It is all about your book. Not about you.