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What’s the best length for a query letter?

September 2, 2008 by Nathan Bransford

Best length for a query letter

What is the best length for a query letter? How do you know if yours is too long or too short?

Back when I was a literary agent, I ran a word count on every query I received for a week.

If the author included sample pages in the body of the e-mail I did not count those. If the author said “please see my synopsis” in lieu of writing an actual query, I counted the synopsis. When the author included a bio or other material after their signature I included that, since that’s the type of thing that should go in the body of a query.

I received 180 queries that week, which was actually a light week for me because it was a holiday weekend.

UPDATED 5/30/19

Query word counts

Here’s the breakdown by number of words:

1-100: 4
100-200: 20
200-300: 46
300-400: 48

400-500: 33
500-600: 14
600-700: 4
700-800: 2
800-900: 1
900-1,000: 1
1,000+: 7

The shortest query I received was about 50 words, the longest was 2,200+.

The best length for a query

Why are 200-300 and 300-400 in bold? Well, after reviewing the queries I concluded that there is a sweet spot in query word count between 250 and 350 words. Anything shorter than 250 usually (but not always) seems too short and anything longer than 350 usually (but not always) seems too long.

As you can see from the stats, this means that about half of all queries are the right length while half are either too short or too long…. with a good chunk that are WAY too long.

Keep in mind that this chart doesn’t really convey just how long many of these queries look on the page. Everything I’ve written in this post up to THIS POINT is about 350 words. And it’s a lot of words!

There were 33 queries that were 400-500 words, which means that they were anywhere from 50-150 words past the “sweet spot.” Sometimes there can be a compelling reason for going this long, such as if you need to explain some extenuating situation in addition to the query. But not usually.

And then there were even queries that were way longer than that!

Of these 180 queries, I requested to see four partial manuscripts. One was in the 200-300 range, two were in the 300-400 range, and one was 400-500, but had a very good reason for being that long.

Keep those queries at a reasonable length! 250-350 words is the way to go.

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.

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Art: Franz Marc beim Holzschneiden by Wilhelm Marc

Filed Under: Literary Agents Tagged With: How to Write a Query Letter, query stats

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    September 2, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    2,200 words? That must have left, ah… an impression.

  2. Natalie says

    September 2, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    Very interesting. Such a useful post, too. Definitely something to keep in mind for that next query attempt.

  3. ezc_19 says

    September 2, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    Hey Nathan,

    Just wanted to say good post, it really is helpful when we see these types of stats.

    I’ve been reading your blog for about a month now, first time I commented though, and I just want to say it has helped me more than anything else on the internet in regards to starting my first novel.

    Thanks again.

    ezc_19

  4. jeanoram says

    September 2, 2008 at 5:48 pm

    Thank you for doing this Nathan. There are so many ‘rules of thumb’ when it comes to queries that it can make a new writer a bit shaky. I’ve got a word count goal now–thanks again.

    Jean

  5. WendyCinNYC says

    September 2, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    Thanks–I’m writing my query *right now* and I’ll aim for that sweet spot.

  6. Deaf Brown Trash Punk says

    September 2, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    it’s taken me 3 weeks to work on my query and i am still revising it. i just checked my word count, 392 words, not bad, i guess…

  7. ashley says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    Interesting! Thanks, Nathan.

    Can’t wait to see the post about things to leave out of a query. I’m sure it will be extremely helpful!!

  8. Gina Black says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    Thanks Nathan! This is very helpful as I make the finishing touches on my query. So far I’m at 344 words. I’m going to consider the final six very carefully. šŸ˜‰

  9. Kristin Laughtin says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:16 pm

    Ahh, I am reassured! I have written a couple of practice queries and they all seem to fall naturally within that length. I figure anything longer would just be stuff I should talk about with the agent once they show interest.

  10. David says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    2,200 words isn’t a query. It’s a short story!

  11. nomadshan says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    Ooo, thanks for the info! There definitely seems to be an optimal range.

  12. ORION says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    This was really great. I was at the Maui Conference and talked to writers about queries- This would have been good info to have.
    Did you do this on the word count of novels queried too?
    (Hey I met Kristin Nelson and she was way cool)

  13. Kylie says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    2,200 words? Isn’t that about eight pages??? I honestly can’t imagine what would go in all that space. I hope that was the “please see my synopsis.”

  14. Shannon says

    September 2, 2008 at 6:53 pm

    Thank You! I love the query stats posts!

  15. Ryan Field says

    September 2, 2008 at 7:04 pm

    “I’ll soon have a post on things to leave out of a query”

    This sounds interesting.

  16. Joanne says

    September 2, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    Would like to see the desired word count on different manuscript genres. It seems the word count has been lessening in many published books of late.

  17. Kat Harris says

    September 2, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    See my synopsis? See my synopsis?

    Isn’t that cheating?

  18. Dan says

    September 2, 2008 at 7:28 pm

    Nathan,

    I can write a “things to NOT leave out of a query post for you” with three words:

    King’s court-side seats.

    As for those additional 1,800 words I need to edit out of my query, I’m guessing I can remove my space monkey’s life story and explanation for his lack of writing credentials…

  19. M Clement Hall says

    September 2, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    To put a page perspective on this, I counted the words in a letter I had written.
    Excluding my address, the salutation and the signature, single space, double space between paragraphs, standard margins, the page was nicely fulled with 338 words.
    I join all other contributors in thanks to Nathan for his continuing and invaluable Instructional Course.

  20. J.P. Kurzitza says

    September 2, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Great insight.

    Just curious, what genres made up the 4 you requested?

    Thanks Nathan.

  21. Janet says

    September 2, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    Always nice to see an agent post with a fresh take on a tired old trope. I would be interested in reading further.

    ;o)

  22. Elyssa Papa says

    September 2, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    Oh, I like the new query stats. It gives me a better visual of where I fell in (luckily in the bold). Would definitely love to see what not to include in a query. I think my query is good but watch me be horribly, horribly wrong.

  23. Travis Erwin says

    September 2, 2008 at 8:54 pm

    Interesting, thanks for compiling and sharing this.

  24. Anonymous says

    September 2, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    But which ones did you like? Average is just…average. Your two favourites may have been 50 words, or 1024. A big kiss to you and your orange t-shirt.

  25. Heidi says

    September 2, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    Good golly miss molly! 2,200 words??? How long was their manuscript? Did you read the entire thing or just toss it?

    I love this variation on query stats. I’d love to see them broken down in other ways, as well, just out of curiosity.

  26. Madison says

    September 2, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Mr. Bransford, you could NOT have posted this at a better time. I am working on my query letter to a particular agent and it’s over 500 words, which makes it EXACTLY one computer page. Now I know I needs to downsize my synopsis, but hopefully that won’t be too much a problem.

    And over 2,000 words for a query?!? That’s insane! They might as well have sent you the whole mss. which means it would STILL have been rejected. Oh well. I guess some people just don’t want to do the homework.

  27. Anonymous says

    September 2, 2008 at 10:37 pm

    Nathan,

    This is awesome information. I was the person that asked about the idea word length for a query (mine are usually about 450 which I think is a bit long) and this really helps. Thanks for taking the time to compile the information!

    I’m surprised over some of those super long queries. I’m sure this will help some of those cut their word count down.

    Thanks! Amy

  28. Marva says

    September 2, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    This included the credits paragraph? Well, I guess I shouldn’t have published so much prior to subbing novels. No, I didn’t list every single thing.

    Still, I’m in at 389, so I’m in the ballpark of okay.

  29. Anonymous says

    September 2, 2008 at 11:22 pm

    Amateur hour.

    Where’s all the writers at?

  30. Madeleine says

    September 2, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Dear Mr. Bransford,
    I’ve just stumbled on your site and am so delighted. It’s all orderly and so relevant.
    I’ve just completed a nine-month Master Memoir program with Samantha Dunn at UCLA and have been so focused on finishing and editing, and editing, and editing that a lot of this slipped out of my consciousness.
    The dreaded and exciting query and what to send.
    So grateful for this and I have carefully read through all of your posts and the comments.
    I’m not ready to “sweet-spot” query you as you, sigh, want a finished product. Wouldn’t it be sweet …
    I did use so much of what you talked about to send a proper and sweet query to the agent (UCLA honorarium) that had agreed to read and respond to the eight of us in the program.
    The only possible thing I could add to the plethora of relevance here is not to wholly trust Word. Alas. Word corrected the spelling of Louisa to Louis (Lous May Alcott – oh mortification) and I am shamed to say I missed it. I’d unwittingly depended on that red mark that meant error.
    Thanks so much.
    Madeleine
    Oh and the greatest influences on me ever were Mary Rakow (The Memory Room) and Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind). The first for its dreamy intelligence and haunting prose, and the building of dread and Margaret Mitchell for some of the greatest one liners ever, anachronistic or not.

  31. Starrie says

    September 3, 2008 at 12:09 am

    Unrelated to the post, really:

    A funny thing happened to me on my way home from work today. I got on the bus and ended up beside a man who was holding what I thought might’ve been a Kindle. I’d never seen a Kindle in real-life before, so I worked up the courage to ask if that was what it was. The guy looked up to answer me and I thought, “Hell, he looks like Nathan Bransford!”, but I kept that to myself. Then he mentioned that he was in the publishing business and confirmed that he was a literary agent. And I, thinking “So, are you like, Nathan Bransford?” was really stalker-ish, decided to let the conversation die there.

    I really wanted to ask, though.

  32. cynthia howle says

    September 3, 2008 at 12:14 am

    Thanks. This is most helpful for those of us writing queries to magazine editors as well. Great blog topic.

  33. Nathan Bransford says

    September 3, 2008 at 12:27 am

    starrie-

    Ha! Yeah, that was me. A very exciting day on the 10 Townsend.

  34. AstonWest says

    September 3, 2008 at 12:32 am

    Was there a correlation between the size of the query and the size of the manuscript, or not so much?

  35. coloradokid says

    September 3, 2008 at 2:10 am

    The query I was planning to send tomorrow is a little on the long side. I’ll cut in half by just using every other word. When you get one that refers to JUSTICE A LIGHT you’ll know I paid attention to your blog! You can fill in the missing words with your imagination and probably be right on.

  36. clindsay says

    September 3, 2008 at 3:55 am

    Nathan –

    Better the 10 Townsend that the 22 Fillmore. Just sayin’.

    šŸ˜›

  37. austexgrl says

    September 3, 2008 at 4:05 am

    ohhh now I get it..you just do not publish any blogs/posts that do not agree with you, Nathan. Very American!

  38. Tracey S. Rosenberg says

    September 3, 2008 at 11:45 am

    I opened my ‘query letter’ file with trepidation and peered at the little word counter on the bottom….

    493 words! Oh no. I am verbose and overly wordy and perhaps I even unintentionally obfuscate. But the query looks so neat and trim on the screen! Clearly I am also somewhat delusional about my own ability to write.

    Then I scrolled down.

    HUZZAH! Half of the document is taken up by a query letter posted on this very blog as an example of a Good Query Letter, which I copied for close study.

    After deleting it, I once again checked the word counter.

    265!

    For once in my life, I’m proud to be average. šŸ˜€

  39. Tracey S. Rosenberg says

    September 3, 2008 at 11:47 am

    WRT the query letter from this blog: by ‘copied’ I means ‘cut-and-pasted’ – not ‘plagiarized.’

  40. Julie Weathers says

    September 3, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Hmmm, this was interesting. Mine has been sliced and diced to 250 words and I STILL had people telling me to cut it further.

    Thank you.

  41. violinhunter says

    September 11, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Everyone seems to want to write! Thanks for the advice.

  42. Anonymous says

    September 12, 2008 at 6:08 am

    good post

  43. Anonymous says

    September 12, 2008 at 6:09 am

    good comment

  44. Dreamers Dream says

    February 18, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    wow this helped me alot.
    im on the stage of writing my queries and it’s very quite stressing.

    Your entire is so helpful.

    šŸ˜€

    – Hailey

  45. Dreamers Dream says

    February 18, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    entire blog * oops

  46. Ruth says

    May 12, 2009 at 12:01 am

    Woohoo! I had read this post before but just re-read it today… I’d been worried that my query letter was too short at 264 words (counting the words after “Dear [agent]” and before “Sincerely,”), so this definitely makes me feel better. šŸ™‚ Thanks, Nathan!

  47. Geoffrey Arthur says

    September 20, 2010 at 10:11 pm

    425.

    Again. HALF as long.

    Siiiggghhhh…..

  48. word counter says

    January 7, 2013 at 12:38 am

    how he did that 2200 words !!

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Hi, I’m Nathan. I’m the author of How to Write a Novel and the Jacob Wonderbar series, which was published by Penguin. I used to be a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. and I’m dedicated to helping authors achieve their dreams. Let me help you with your book!

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