How not to get published, point 2.

1.      Please do blast a copy of your query.

There are companies that promote the query blaster, perhaps because fools and their money are often separated. A query is generally an email in which you ask an agent or editor to consider your work for publication. People teach courses on how to write them. There are writing books on the subject. To sum up, these pedagogical sources recommend three paragraphs plus a sample of your work. The short paragraphs are often in this order:

1.      Introduce yourself with short relevant resume .

2.      Describe your story.

3.      Write why you chose the agency, agent or editor and based on the books they represent why you are a good fit.

All this should fit on one printable page, minus the writing sample, which should be attached. Some books or teachers add to write using your author’s voice or style. That’s tough.

All this is well and good as a starting point. Let’s call it your generic baseline. Then you take this well crafted package and email it to 100 companies. Some suggest that you drop the part about how you are a good fit with so-and-so and the books they represent so that you can get that work out there in front of as many eyes as possible in as short a time.

You are wasting your money on a number of counts.

1.      You must do research on the agent and agency, editor and publisher to discover if you are a good fit and to personalize your query.

2.      Doing said research, you will discover that my soup kitchen analogy from Point 1. does not hold. Each agency agent publisher and editor have ways they want to see your material and they say so. It is your job to dig into persons, or companys’ web sites to discover this. If there is a difference between agent and agency or editor and publisher follow the agent or editor, because if you get past them, you’ll get your chance.

3.      These professionals are daily assaulted by creative usage of the English language. They need order and rules to speed up the process.

The agent or editor then assign, just as said in point 1., their interns to read all submissions and instantly reject any that don’t conform to the rules they published for the prospective author to follow.

Sorry, you have just been caste out into the cold. You’ve received your 100 rejections and you can now go about with your badge of honor telling every writer you know how you tried, am ready to quit. They’ll tell you to keep going and you might.

I have tried to tell multiple friends about this pitfall at conferences, meeting and critique groups, often to no avail. With limited persuasive time I had to move on and hope they’d consider my point.  One reason why people don’t listen to this obvious point is that they can’t do research on the computer. They’ll say things like Hemmingway did it his way. Hemmingway was a professional journalist with many contacts and those contacts told him what they wanted.

Besides the agent, agency, editor and publisher web sites you need to find these people. Ideally, you’ll meet them at a conference and you’ll like them and they you. This is way better than showing up as a stranger in their email in-basket. Barring this try sites like:

www.agentquery.com

www.absolutewrite.com

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