Cathy Yardley - Rock Your Query: A Simple System for Writing Query Letters and Synopses

Chapter 1: The Target

The query letter is the basic building block of submittingyour work. Way before the partial or thefull, before even the synopsis, your query letter is going to represent you asa professional writer and persuade an agent or editor that you have somethingworth investigating further.

Before you focus on writing the query letter, you need toknow who you're targeting, and why you are targeting them.

You don't want to take a shotgun approach to submissions,blanket-bombing any agent or editor who seems like they might take on yourwork. If you do, they'll know: in most cases, you'll be wasting their time andyour postage.

How to choose your target agent or editor:

1. Know what you've got.

Don't worry about being pigeonholed. Right now, your agentor editor needs to know how to position your work: where it would be shelved ina bookstore, for example, even if you're only trying to get digitally published.Even electronic bookstores like Amazon and IndieBound still categorize theirbooks, and help people find things that are similar.

At the very least, it's good to know your novel's genre, thesub-genre if applicable, and the word count. (Use your computer's word countand round it to the nearest ten.)

You should also know what the general guidelines are for thegenre you're writing for. If you've written a YA and it's coming in at 200,000words, you're going to be facing an uphill battle. (Actually, if you've got anything coming in at 200,000 words, you've got a rough road ahead.)

There are some genres that might currently be a hard sell.Think about how to position it more attractively.

Just a few years ago,Western and Chick Lit were both impossible to sell. You might call your Western "historicalfiction" and Chick Lit "humorous women's fiction," not so muchto hoodwink the person you're submitting to (you won't, even if you wanted to)but to show them where the work might still find an audience. Women's fiction still sold, even when ChickLit imploded. Historical fiction stillhad a chance, even when series Western was, pardon the pun, a ghost town.

Also, if a genre is a hard sell because it is currentlyglutted (for example, in 2012 it's hard to sell a vampire paranormal romance toa traditional legacy publisher because of over-cataloging) I would mentionwhat makes your particular story in the genre unique.

That said, make sure it's something truly remarkable, notsimply there hasn't been a vampire paranormal romance set in Taos! Mine is!

You can usually find out if a genre is a tough sell byreading some recent agent and editor interviews, on blogs or in trademagazines, especially when the editor says what's selling and what isn't. It's usually called What I'm Looking for orsimilar, and if you do a Google search for the current year, an agent's name,etc., it helps. It takes some datamining, but in my opinion, it's worth it.

2. Look for agents andeditors who deal with what you've got.

Once you know what your novel can be categorized as, look inthe Literary Market Place (LMP) or on Publisher's Lunch, and see who'srepresenting things that are somewhat similar to your work. Look at yourfavorite authors in the same genre, and do a Google search with their names and"agent" in the search field.

Or look on Amazon, with the same search parameters - often,authors will include their agents in the acknowledgments of their books, andyou'll be able to find it in the "search inside" feature.

3. Dig deeper.

When you've got a list of say three to five agents oreditors that you're targeting, do a Google search with their names and thewords "interview" or "looking for" and the currentyear. See if they have blogs. Whatyou're looking for is something quotable, some way to show them that you'retargeting them for a reason.

4. Look at submissionguidelines!

Nothing irritates an editor or agent more than someone whohas blatantly ignored submission guidelines... except possibly someonemisspelling his or her name. If you can't follow the rules that they've stated,and you couldn't be bothered to double check how he spells his name, what wouldyou be like in a working relationship?

Now that you've got your target, we'll discuss how to usethis information in your first paragraph: the opener.

ASSIGNMENT:

Choose a list of three to five agents. Collect:

The correct spelling of their names

Their addresses

Their submission guidelines

A paragraph of research regarding what theyrelooking for, as recent as possible.