Re-post: Opening the Door With Your Query

You’ve written it, now you’ve got to sell it. It takes a great query letter to open a door before an editor will read your work.

A query is an introduction to you and to your writing. The query is your audition, your advertisement, your pitch… You want to hook the editor and make him want to see more.

Make sure of your market – check the publisher’s book catalogue or several issues of a magazine and make sure that what you have to sell is what they will be interested in buying. While you are checking the publisher or magazine out, find their submission instructions; they may have those listed on the website, inside a magazine cover, in a trade magazine or a reference book like The Writer’s Market. If all else fails, make a phone call and ask.

Address your query, whether hard copy snail-mailed or emailed, to the appropriate editor or department. Follow the directions! The easiest and quickest way to get turned down is to ignore obvious directions. Get the correct spelling of an editor’s name, make a phone call and ask if necessary.

Open your query with your hook. We want to know what is your article about, why is it interesting, and what you are going to accomplish. For a magazine addressed to parents of teens, for instance, start with something like “College students need to worry about their grades and not their tuition bills…” Then describe what your article offers such as new funding opportunities, information about refillable credit cards and inexpensive sources for textbooks.

What is your expertise in this area? Are you a school financial officer or a banking official? Maybe you are a parent of a recent college grad or even a college student yourself. What experience do you have as a writer? Have you been published before? If you have a writer’s website, include the link to it especially if you have samples of your writing available. If you are querying by snail mail you can include a tear sheet or two but not a lot; if you are querying by email, do not include any attachments as many email clients will reject those.

Why do you believe that your article would be interesting for the magazine’s readers? Resist telling the editor that this article is better than anything else they’ve printed to date and don’t promise that your article will make the magazine “fly off of the shelves”. For a book, what makes this book different from the others on the market? And above all else, do not tell the editor how to do his job or that your article or book is, or will be, a prize winning bestseller.

If a response time was listed in the submission guidelines allow that time to pass before sending a follow-up if you don’t hear back from them. If there was no specified time and a reasonable time (four to six weeks) has passed without word, send a polite query. Never lose your professionalism. And never lose your confidence – if you are turned down, find another place to query and send it out again.

Writing exercise: Check your favorite magazine, the past few issues if possible. Who do you think reads this magazine? Make a list of what topics you think that magazine’s audience would find interesting. Do you have any expertise in those topics? Try to write an article that you feel would be appropriate for that publication.

Writing prompt: Make up a headline that you would use if you were to write an article describing your day. Try to come up with headlines for the past few days.


Challenge Assignment: Chances are you have at least one unfinished or unsubmitted manuscripts lying around. Play "Acquisitions Editor" - read the manuscript through and decide if and what makes it publication worthy for a particular periodical (of your choosing). Does it need revision? Write a letter in response to the "author" about why or why not the manuscript is accepted or rejected. Be sure to keep your personal attachment to the WIP out of your response.