Lessons Learned: Queries 2

Since the first material an agent will ever see of your book is a query, I'm very interested in anything that will peak the agent's interest, and I think I found a great article from an agent's website. It's called the Perfect Pitch from Sarah Jane Freymann's website. It's really interesting, and it's packed with good ideas. The thing about the perfect pitch is that whenever I go to a bookstore or library to talk to someone about scheduling a book talk or book signing event, they always ask me what the book is about. And the perfect pitch really helped me hone mine down. So please, take a look at the Perfect Pitch.

Another thing, comparing your book to the current bestsellers is not the best idea, but on the other hand, there are a few agents who ask for that info. For instance, one of the early readers for my current book told me that my book reminded her of the book Gone with the Wind. She and I would talk about the book, referring to it as the Gone with Wind, Korean style. But I didn't mention that at all in my query letter. It's not that I didn't agree with the reader. I did. There were many similarities, but I didn't want to come across as pretentious. However, I've done something like this before. "My readers would also enjoy readying xxx, xxx, xxx, and xxx." Trying to give the agent some idea as to how I see my book being marketed, but ultimately, I stopped doing that for the same reasons. I didn't want to come across pretentious, arrogant, or worse yet, clueless. So, beware.

As far as bio section in the query, I write about my writing credits, such as an essay contest I've won, a short story that got published, and self-publishing Waiting for Appa. I don't include much else because I'm not sure if it'll be helpful. It could also be that since engineers are not known for writing emotionally moving prose, I just keep that to myself. However, there are agents who specifically ask for 1 page bio, so have that on hand and be ready to submit that.

At the end, I end with the basic ending of "I look forward to hearing from you soon," along with included SASE. I know. This could be boring, but I like hitting the basics. When I was a manager at a high tech company, I would receive 500+ page stack of resumes for one or two openings I had in my organization. All I cared about was finding the relevant information as quickly as possible. I spent matter of seconds on a resume. All the other stuff that people did to make their resumes supposedly "interesting" only irritated me, and I would quickly pass on those. So, that's what I'm going for here.

If and when I'm lucky enough to get an agent, I'll post my "winning" query letter and the query letters of my past for your comparison.