Tip #4: Read Query Project

Posted by bridgid on | October 4, 2010 | 2 Comments |

This month we’re celebrating you, our fearless readers, by offering 30 days of reading, writing and networking tips. On October 31st we’ll conclude the festivities by giving one lucky reader a copy of the 2011 Writer’s Market and a goodie bag. Learn how to enter here.

TIP #4: Read Jodi Meadow’s Query Project Blog

Young Adult writer Jodi Meadows* knows a thing or two about query letters. As a slush reader for the now-defunct Rappaport Agency, Jodi read 243 query letters in two weeks and sent personal responses to each one. (For real!) When her time as a slush reader came to an end, Jodi decided to continue sharing her critiques through her blog, Query Project.

Query letters decide whether your manuscript will make it out of the slush pile, which is why writing a concise query is one skill you want to hone. Jodi’s Query Project is a great place for new writers to pick up the query-writing basics. Also, although Jodi’s blog is popular, you stand a far better chance of getting a critique on Query Project than you do on one of the more mainstream critique sites (and it’s free!).

Get started by learning the basics:

• Agent Nathan Bransford, How to Write a Query Letter
• The Agent Query Website, How to Write a Query

My favorite query resource:

• The Writer’s Digest Guide to Query Letters, by Wendy Burt-Thomas
  • Includes tips for fiction and non-fiction query letters.

A great quote on query letters from the Query Shark, agent Janet Reid:

All you need to do is tell me about a novel I want to read. And I’ll read it. Have confidence enough to let your writing speak for itself. You’re a writer. I’m a reader. That’s all we know, and all we need to know.

*Jodi is now represented by Lauren MacLeod of the Strothman Agency. Her trilogy, about the only “new” girl in a world full of reincarnated souls, will be published by Katherine Tegen Books.

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