A query letter has one job: to make an agent ask for more pages. It is not a synopsis, not an artist's statement, and not the story of how you came to write the book. It is a short, confident pitch, and it follows a shape that has barely changed in twenty years.
The shape of a query
Three paragraphs and a sign-off. Under 350 words, on one screen, no attachments unless the agent asks for them.
1. The hook
One or two sentences that give the agent the book's central problem. Not the setting, not the theme — the problem. Who wants what, and what stands in the way.
To inherit her aunt's estate, Merritt Quinn must first discover the truth about her own mother's death. The only man who knew is murdered before she reaches town.
That is the whole engine of the book in two sentences. An agent reading it knows immediately what kind of story is coming and whether they can sell it.
2. The pitch
Two hundred words, maximum. Introduce your protagonist by name, state what they want, raise the stakes, and stop at the point of no return. You are writing back-cover copy, not a plot summary. Resist the urge to explain the twist — an agent who knows the ending has no reason to read the manuscript.
A useful test: could a stranger, reading only this paragraph, tell you what the book is about and what genre shelf it belongs on? If not, you are still describing events rather than pitching a story.
3. The housekeeping
Title, word count, genre, and any comparable titles. Then a short line about you: previous publications, relevant credentials, or nothing at all. "This is my first novel" is a complete and perfectly acceptable biography.
Comparable titles ("comps") are worth getting right. Pick two books published in the last three to five years, in your genre, that sold respectably — not runaway bestsellers. Comping to a phenomenon reads as naive. Comping to something obscure tells the agent nothing. What you are signalling is: here is the shelf this belongs on, and here are the readers who already buy from it.
What to leave out
- Your rationale. Why you wrote it, what it means, who it will help. None of this sells a novel.
- Praise from people who love you. Beta readers, family, your writing group. Agents discount it entirely.
- Comparisons to the untouchable. Nothing is the next Gone Girl.
- Apology or bravado. "I know you're busy" and "this will be a bestseller" fail in opposite directions.
- Rhetorical questions. "What would you do if your mother's killer lived next door?" Agents have read thousands of these.
Research before you send
The single largest cause of rejection is querying the wrong person. Before you send anything, confirm three things:
- They represent your genre, right now. Agents' tastes shift and their lists close. Check their agency page and their recent sales, not a list you found on a forum.
- They are open to submissions. Querying a closed list is an automatic no.
- You have followed their format exactly. Some want the first five pages pasted below the query; some want ten; some want a synopsis. This is a competence test as much as a preference, and the pass rate is your own to control.
Personalise only when you have something real to say — a book of theirs you have read, an interview where they described wanting exactly what you have written. A generic "I admire your list" is worse than no personalisation at all.
Send in batches
Query six to ten agents at a time, not sixty. If those come back with form rejections, the problem is almost certainly the query itself, and you have preserved most of your list to try again with a better one. If you get requests for pages but no offers, the problem is in the opening chapters. If you get full-manuscript requests and then passes, you are close, and the feedback in those passes is worth more than anything else you will receive.
Expect silence
Many agencies now operate a "no response means no" policy, and response times of three months are normal. Log what you sent and when, then go and write the next book. That last part is not a consolation prize — it is the actual strategy. Writers who get published are, overwhelmingly, writers who were working on the next thing while the last one was out.