A query letter should be 1 page.
It should contain your contact information somewhere on the letter or letterhead.
It should begin with a salutation (by name, if possible).
Next should come a one-line grabber about your book: a ten-word hook or line of dialogue or, if non-fiction, some intriguing statistic.
Follow that with 2-3 short sentences describing your story (When DNA expert Jennie Stevens encounters prehistoric...).
Then a short paragraph listing title, genre, wordcount, completion status (be done with the rough draft before you approach agents and editors), and target audience.
Anything about you that is pertinent. Like you're multi-published already or you spent a year in Greece researching this story, or whatever. (If you don't have anything like that, just leave this section out.)
A request to send the proposal or the full ms. (May I please send you...?) This is the point of the query, so don't forget it.
A notice of whether or not this is a simultaneous submission. That's when you're sending it to multiple agents/editors at the same time. Some houses don't accept simul. subs so be sure to check their Web pages for writer's guidelines.
End with a closing. (Sincerely...)
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Some notes.
First, many agents and editors want to skip the query phase and go directly to the proposal. In our e-mail age, you can write your query letter as the e-mail and then attach the proposal to the message. (But some folks are still nervous about attachments and won't open it, so be aware.) At the very least, have your proposal ready to go as soon as you send out the query, in case they want that right away.
Second, it's better if you can give an exclusive. In other words, while it might help your peace of mind to send out many copies of this as simultaneous submissions, editors and agents love knowing they're the only person looking at something. So to be able to offer an exclusive is good. But it can hinder you--because what if the person doesn't get back to you for a year?
I recommend offering a limited duration exclusive. Let's say there's one agent who you really want to work with, so you send that person an exclusive (in other words, you send your query to that person only). To give the feeling of exclusivity but not lock yourself in to an indefinite wait, consider saying something like this: I am pleased to offer this to you as an exclusive, since I believe you are the perfect agent for this project. So until January of next year, I will show it to no one else. I look forward to hearing from you."
See what you've done? You've built in an ending to the exclusivity.
For more on agents, synopses, proposals, and the whole publishing process, go here:
www.wherethemapends.com/writerstools/writerstools.htm Jeff
