Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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How to write a query letter

How to write a query letter

In order to have a book published by a traditional publisher, you will likely need to know how to write a query letter to find a literary agent.

A query letter is part business letter, part creative writing exercise, part introduction, part death defying leap through a flaming hoop. (Don’t worry, you won’t catch fire and die during the query process though it may feel precisely like that at times).

In essence: it is a brief letter describing your book that will hopefully make an agent want to represent you.

Read on to learn about the steps I recommend for writing a successful query letter. For more in-depth information on querying, editing, and the publishing process, check out my series of online classes here.

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Here are the basic steps for how to write a query letter:

(Click to skip to that section!)
  1. Start with a completely finished and polished manuscript (fiction) or a book proposal and 30-50 sample pages (nonfiction)
  2. Read examples of query letters that worked
  3. Hone your pitch
  4. Research agents so you can personalize your query
  5. List your credentials (if you have them) and other key details
  6. Format your query letter properly
  7. Send it out and wait for a reply
Step 1.

Polish your manuscript and/or proposal

There are as many opinions out on the internet about query letters as there are, well, opinions on the internet. You will find lots of dos and don’ts and peeves and strategies and formulas.

The important thing to remember about this is that everyone is wrong except for me. (Just kidding. The important thing to remember is that you will need to choose the ideas that work best for you).

Before you even write a query letter, it’s absolutely imperative that you start with a completely finished and polished novel or a nonfiction book proposal with 30-50 polished sample pages.

A great idea alone is not going to sail you through the publishing process.

Here are some resources that can help:

Step 2.

Read examples of query letters that worked

Familiarize yourself with what works. Read examples of good query letters in order to get a sense of the rhythm and format.

Here are four good query letters to sample:

Step 3.

Hone your pitch

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Once you have a sense of what works in a query, it’s time write your pitch, which will comprise the bulk of your query (usually 2-3 paragraphs). This is extremely tricky to write, and it’s so important to nail it.

But you are in luck because I have a handy dandy mad lib to get you started. Just plug in the details of your novel into this query letter template and it will give you a basic query letter to start with. From there expand on it, personalize, and make it your own.

You are trying to accomplish two important tasks with your pitch:

  1. Make the plot/subject of your book sound awesome
  2. Try to show the agent that you write well

Especially for fiction, try as much as possible to write the query letter so that it embodies the spirit of your project. If your book is funny, write a funny query letter. If your book is written with beautiful lyrical prose, write your query letter accordingly.

As you’re doing this, be as specific as possible about the plot, rather than descending into generalities. Key details about your characters and setting will make it come alive.

For narrative nonfiction, my advice is similar to fiction. Make the story you want to tell come alive through details.

For prescriptive nonfiction, be clear about the problem you’re trying to solve and give the agent a sense of your authority and voice.

For further reading:

Step 4.

Research literary agents

Make your query letter shine through personalization. To do this, you need to research literary agents so you can show them you queried them individually. You also need to follow submission procedures to the letter.

Here is a comprehensive post on how to research a literary agent. But the short version is that you need to do some research in order to

  1. Figure out which agents would be the right fit for your work – Three basic things to figure out: a) does the agent represent your genre, b) do they represent something too similar to your project, c) do they seem like they would be a good fit for you. The answers should be a) yes, b) no, c) yes
  2. Figure out the agent’s submission procedure – Submission guidelines are like snowflakes: no two are alike. Also they melt. (Not really.) You will need to Google the agent and/or the agency in order to figure out where to send the query (it may be through the mail or via e-mail or via an online form or via a query service) and what the agent wants included with the query. Follow these guidelines!
  3. Include a personalized tidbit about the literary agent in the query to show you did your research – Personalize the query! Show the agent that you put in the time and have targeted them in your search. Mention an interview or a book they’ve represented or that they seem inordinately attached to the color orange.
  4. Make sure they’re reputable – There are tons of scam artists out there, so do your research. No literary agent should charge you a fee upfront. Know your rights as an author.

For further reading:

Step 5.

List your credentials (if you have them) and other key details

For nonfiction, it’s very important to give a sense of your level of expertise, your platform, and how much publicity you could bring to bear in the promotion of your work.

For fiction it’s totally fine to not even have a publishing credit to your name (just say confidently: “This is my first novel”). But do include a very brief bio and if you have, say, a notable social media presence, don’t be afraid to mention it.

Other things to include:

  • Any previously published books, including books you self-published. List the publisher and the date of publication.
  • The genre and word count (or estimated word count for nonfiction)
  • If you think your novel could be expanded into a series.
  • If you have comp titles you can include them here. Some agents find comp titles important, but for the most part they’re optional if you don’t feel that you have good ones at the ready.
  • That said, try as best you can to be brief and concise for everything apart from your pitch. Keep the focus on the project you are querying about, even if you’re a previously published author

For example, here’s my bio paragraph from my query letter Jacob Wonderbar (I had separately included the genre in the personalization paragraph):

JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW is 50,000 words and stands alone, but I have ideas for a series, including titles such as JACOB WONDERBAR FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSE and JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE VACATIONING ALIENS FROM ANOTHER PLANET. I’m the author of an eponymous agenting and writing blog.

For further reading:

Step 6.

Format your query letter

Don’t. Get Crazy.

Use block formatting. Double-space between paragraphs. Use a default font in a default size. Left-justify.

The amount of time you spend formatting, coloring, bolding, italicizing, and adding pictures to your query is inversely proportional to how professional it looks when you’re finished.

Here’s what this format looks like in action.

Altogether your query should be roughly 250-350 words.

For further reading:

Step 7.

Send it out

As the immortal Douglas Adams said, don’t panic! Write the best query letter you can, be yourself, don’t overthink it too much, don’t sweat it if you realize the second after you sent it that you made a typo or accidentally called an agent Vicky when their name is Nathan. If an agent is going to get mad or reject you over something trivial like that they’re probably not the type of person you’d want to work with anyway.

I highly recommend having query letters out with around seven agents at a time, which doesn’t leave you hanging endlessly with one agent, but also gives you some time to adjust course if you feel your query letter isn’t getting the attention you would have expected.

For further reading:

What Happens Next?

After you’ve sent your query letter off into the great unknown, you sit back and wait for the literary agent to consider it. And wait. And wait some more.

Here’s what’s happening on an agent’s end: First they print out all the queries and stack them up. Then they spread them around the room until they’re a few inches deep. Next they lie down, wave their arms and legs, and make query angels.

Actually it works kind of like this.

What you want is a request for a partial or a full manuscript, in which case your query letter has done its job and you have moved on to the next step. If you’ve sent out a dozen or so queries and haven’t gotten so much as a nibble, there might be something wrong with your query letter and you may wish to tweak it a little and give it a second look.

Bear in mind that many/most literary agents have a no-response-means-no policy, so if you do not hear back after a couple of months you have your answer. It is not customary to follow-up if you haven’t heard back on a query letter.

Also please remember that literary agents are positively besieged with queries – you have one query you are worrying about, agents have 15,000 or more to answer in a year. Keep your cool, stay calm, and be professional throughout the process.

For further reading:

You can write a successful query letter!

Query letter writing doesn’t have to be a horribly frightening experience. Just remember to be professional, do your research, and keep writing in the meantime. Don’t forget the 10 Commandments of the Happy Writer. And for a light-hearted version of this process, check out The Publishing Process in GIF Form.

And don’t forget, if you need help: reach out to me.

Happy querying!

Need more advice or personalized help? I teach online classes about the publishing process and offer one-on-one coaching and editing services. Learn more below!

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. JH says

    Dear Mr. Bransford,
    Say whatever it is your submitting is written under a pen name, like for example you want to get your start by writing one type of book under an assumed name then go on to write something else under your own.

    When writing a query letter, do you sign it with the your legal given name, the pen name, or “sincerely, Real Name a.k.a Pen Name?

  3. Sweta says

    Dear Mr. Bransford,
    I am working on writing a query letter for a collection of short stories, it would be helpful if you can please share a query letter example for the same.

    • Nathan Bransford says

      This might not be a wholly satisfying answer and opinions may vary, but unless your short stories have attracted the type of publications and attention that means literary agents are approaching you, I’m not sure that I would spend time querying about a short story collection. And even if an agent is interested in your stories, they may want to pitch it to editors with a novel.

  4. Naomi Lisa Shippen says

    Some helpful insights here and it’s good to know what it’s like from the agent’s perspective. I have been very nervous about querying but this post has given me some reassurance. Thanks, Nathan!

  5. Anne Johnson says

    Is it good to mention a self-published book that was a “best of Kirkus indie” with a starred review if it had abysmal sales in my author bio in my query letter or should I not bring it up? Otherwise my writing credits are zip.

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  7. Nick says

    I’ve completed two of three books in a series (book three is nearing completion). When querying, should I query all three books as a trilogy, or just the first book in detail with only a passing mention of books two and three?

  8. Ryan Field says

    I think this advice works for people who aren’t coming from a marginalized community, but I have found…personally not through hearsay…that if I didn’t take a different road than the query process I would have been passed over time and again. The sad truth is that the publishing industry will hand over book deals to the non-gay authors who are writing gay content while the actual gay authors sit back shaking their heads. André Aciman is one of them. Annie Proulx is another. Both straight white authors appropriate gay content. Kathryn Stockett did it with black fiction. And we have no voices. This is the way publishing works. So after enough rejections about 20 years ago from the straight white gatekeepers, I went a different way with gay presses and digital presses and I found a nice little readership there. I haven’t sold millions of books but I’ve sold thousands. I’ve even been pirated many times. Indie publishing is also a way to avoid the privileged system. But the query system is painfully flawed.

    • Nathan Bransford says

      I’m glad you found a path that works for you, but is it really true that there are “no voices” in traditional publishing? While I would be the first to say that there always have been and continue to be structural problems in publishing that results in certain communities being underrepresented, I’m not sure it’s quite as stark as you’re suggesting here, and think you might be extrapolating your own personal path to be more universal than it may be?

    • Aaron says

      Hi Ryan, I agree as a gay male author and reader. I really dislike reading gay books and finding the author is straight or especially a women. It seems odd and off putting and a turn off.

  9. Margaret says

    Such a helpful article. Definitely will be bookmarking this for future use. Very helpful to beginners in this field.

  10. Bronwyn says

    Hi Nathan, thanks for the informative article. I’m ready to start sending queries for my first novel but agents who represent fantasy fiction seem few and far between in Australia. There are many more in the US, would I be wasting my time (and theirs) if I queried internationally?

  11. Bronwyn says

    Ah, you’ve got an answer already prepared! Thanks, I’m finding your site very useful.

  12. David Jace says

    Nathan,
    I think I must be going crazy. I was certain I saw in this post, or in one of th ehundred wonderful posts you linked, that you should include the firsts 5 pages *with the query*. Am I wrong on that? Does that sound crazy? Would you please clarify when we send how much sample pages?