How to write a query letter that gets an agent’s attention
Practical tips and personal experience on crafting a professional, polished letter that makes agents want to read your work
I feel a bit of fraud telling you how to write a query letter to an agent. After all, I’m not an agent. I’m a writer. I’ve written many query letters—but how am I to know how they land!
In addition, I don’t have an agent right now. But, I’ve had an agent since my early twenties, I’ve had to part ways and find new agents, and I know firsthand how tough it is. For ‘tough’ read heartbreaking, soul-destroying and tediously lengthy. And as I’m going through it right now, I can feel your pain if you’re searching for an agent too!
(If you missed it, you might find my previous article useful: Why you need an agent (and how to find one).
My agent (let’s call him Bob) stopped being an agent during Covid for personal reasons. I was devastated. We’d been together for years—he’d been my first agent’s assistant and had done the main work of corresponding with me and editing my writing since my third novel, The Priest and the Lily. When he set up on his own, it made sense to go with him. During lockdown we’d worked closely on a new crime fiction thriller, which we were both excited about and thought would do well.
Bob said he’d found me a new agent (let’s call him Tom)—a young person named by The Bookseller as a rising star, and who was in a large and renowned agency founded by my first agent. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (or desiring to go through the whole process of trying to find an agent again 😱😂), I went with Tom, and tried to suppress my doubts about the whole thing.
Tom was great—polite, thoughtful, an excellent editor—but we didn’t really go anywhere together. He didn’t seem to want my thriller, which Agent Bob had worked on so lovingly with me. He wanted me to write something else, something new.
Which, of course, I did.
And over the next few years, all those doubts resurfaced. I had, after all, been passed on to him, not chosen.
I decided I needed to break up with Tom. Instead, I procrastinated. I made lists of pros and cons. I drafted letters in my head as I went on walks. Then, just before Christmas, Tom sent me an email. He was moving to a new agency and he wouldn’t be taking me with him.
Have you ever wanted to end a relationship but been overwhelmed by the thought of the pain, anxiety, upheaval and conflict ahead of you? And so you don’t, and you just limp on? And then one day, your partner tells you they’re leaving you?
It was like that. The same pain, the same sense of betrayal, the same overwhelming feelings of unworthiness and also—relief.
So here I am, a few months down the line. The bruises have healed. I’ve polished the novel I worked on with Bob; novel two is also finished, and Wilderness, my nature memoir, is done.
I am submitting. I am querying. Let’s do this together! 🎉
So here goes—my thoughts on how to write a cover or query letter to an agent.
REMEMBER—do your homework, be professional and above all, be brief.
Dear First Name
Why them?
About me.
My book.
Attachments.
Good bye and thank you.
1. Dear First Name.
Publishing is a relatively informal business. Nevertheless, I’d go for Dear (not Hi!). First name is fine (but for goodness sake, spell their name correctly!).
2. Why them?
Why do you want to be with this particular agent? This is where you show you’ve carefully researched them and you explain why your book could be of interest to them.
Have you, for instance, gone to a book event and the author was a) brilliant, b) in your genre, and c) recommended their agent? Or have you and the agent you’re submitting to both loved and read some of the same books?
Just a sentence or two; if they’re your dream agent, and you’re only submitting to them for the moment, do say so.
3. About me.
Keep this relevant to your professional writing career.
Have you had any poems/short stories/books published? Are you a journalist? If you haven’t and this is your debut novel, own it. Publishers love a debut because you have no previous poor sales track records and you could be the Next Big Thing.
Have you won any prizes for your writing? Have you done any writing courses?
of says to mention your social media following, but personally, I think it’s only relevant if you have a huge following, say, thousands, or else you’re an influencer and your platform alone could guarantee sales.Is your day job or background of interest? For instance, were you a detective in Scotland Yard for twenty years and now you’re writing your first crime fiction novel?
4. My book.
Title, genre and two sentence pitch. Yup. It’s going to be tough to distill a complex book down to a nugget that will make an agent go Ooooh. But it’s so important. As
says in her article on how to write a query letter:‘You know what works? Telling me about your book. That is the single most effective strategy in writing query letters. The point of a query letter is to…tell me about your book so I can decide if I am the right agent for it.’
I’ll cover how to write a pitch for an agent in my next article.
5. Attachments.
Tell them what you’re attaching to the email, which MUST be what the agent or agency has asked for. Exactly.
Don’t say—I know you said send the first chapter, but I thought you’d love to read the whole manuscript.
6. Good bye and thank you.
Wrap up authentically and sincerely. I always thank them for their time, as I know how busy they are. In an interview with
of , Sue Armstrong, an agent at C&W, said she receives 400-500 submissions a month!I also offer to chat in person, online or on the phone. It’s highly unlikely an agent will take you up on this unless they want to represent you, but I do think personal connections are so important and it can’t hurt to ask or to show willingness to travel from, say Somerset to London, if that’s what it will take.
As the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote, ‘I have made this [letter] longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.’
Work hard on making your query letter brief! Also professional and polished.
Many agents are so overwhelmed with submissions that they say if you haven’t heard back from them in X number of weeks, assume they don’t wish to represent you.
My personal rubric is to send a second email after six weeks (two months if it’s the holiday season), and if I don’t hear back after a total of two to three months, I’d submit to different agents.
Let me know how you’re getting on!
And let’s catch up next week to talk about how to write that ever-so-tricky pitch.
Sanjida x
This post is free, but you might consider buying me a coffee so I can continue to write these kinds of articles to help you. 🌿
Thanks for sharing your story. I imagine it wasn’t easy reliving that pain. But onward, right?
I’m really bad at sending a follow up email 🫣 (note to self start doing it).