How to Write an Effective Query Letter [Part 2]

A literary agent is a critical ally in your mission to write a great book and get it published. 

To find a literary agent, you’ll need to send him or her a convincing query letter.

But how do you write an effective query?

We interviewed Literary Agent Sam Hiyate for his advice. Watch the video to find out [Transcript Below].

So You Want to Write?: Ok so Sam what do you actually look for then in a query letter, if we’re going to be specific? 

Literary Agent Sam Hiyate: Ok so, and I feel like this would be a subgroup of all the agents, but the first thing is I want to know why you’re approaching me.  

SYWW: But not so blatant, right? You don’t want people to be like…  

Sam: Oh no, I love when they say, “Sam you did this book and this book and this book, and by the way my book is a comp [comparable]” The best example would be, “It’s this meets that meets this,” which would be pretty funny. Some people have actually done that and I respect that, because it means they’ve done their homework. 

So the first thing is I want to know why. Why should I be looking at it rather than somebody else. One of my pet peeves is if I see that I’m on an email thread and they haven’t learned how to use the bcc and then there’s like 50 other agents and usually those I just delete. 

SYWW: And how long-ish?

Sam: As long as it takes, there’s no rules about that. But the general query should be about a page, an 8 and a half by 11 piece of paper, and it should be a page double-spaced.  

SYWW: Right, and even in fiction I suppose, it can be your own life but but told through other metaphors or characters, you can bring it back to yourself… 

Sam: Well and it’s true there’s always a fine line because a lot of fiction contains a lot of truth from the writers’ lives and the lives of their friends and so on, and sometimes a lot of what is known as memoir or non-fiction, usually they put that right up front in the disclaimer, that they’ve created a composite character to solve a problem, or they’ve changed names. 

SYWW: And is that how you like the structure, the way you just laid it out. 

Sam: Ya usually it’s like, if I get 100 of these a day, which I sometimes do, I want to know why is it coming to me, what do you have? Who are you?

SYWW: And how about the [email] subject line? Is that how you choose to open [emails] sometimes? 

Sam: That’s a good question, I’m not really picky. If they say “Query” and give me the title of the book…  

SYWW: So do you open every email or not really? 

Sam: I try to, and I do most of them, but sometimes I just forward them. From our website you can pick which agent or agents should get a query, so often if I see that I’ve got a query and one of my other agents that it might be better for already has it, that means that the author has done their homework.  

Watch Part 1 Here