The ABCs of Book Writing: Q is for QUERY (letter) . . .

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. . . and when to start QUERYING.

As most authors know, the usual first approach to agents and publishers is via a query letter. It's a given that the stronger your query, the better are the chances of sparking interest in your book project. Less widely known are the optimal times for drafting and for sending your query letter, as well as the most effective content to include in it.

When to draft your query

It is never too soon to write the first draft of your query letter. Drafting your query at the beginning or early in the writing of your project will help you focus on the most original and marketable aspects of your manuscript. This is turn can lead to insights on how to best structure your book. If, as the writing proceeds, you get new ideas, you can always revise your draft query to reflect any new ideas that emerge as the writing proceeds.

If, however, you did not write a draft query early in your project, and left it to the middle or the end, this is not a serious problem. More crucial are knowing when, or when not, to query initially and how to ensure the effectiveness of the query letter's content.

When to start querying

The point at which it is reasonable to start querying, and to expect some positive results, varies according to the category of your book. Here are the basic guidelines:

Fiction

Novel. Any novel of any genre must be completed before querying. For practical purposes, in most cases a completed manuscript will not be a first draft but a well-revised later version, possibly also edited or assessed by a professional editor.

Short stories and short story collections. Unless specified otherwise, for anthologies, journals, and the like, individual stories should be completed and as polished as possible. Unless you are an established and well-known fiction author, short story collections should also be completed.

Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction. Unless you are established and well-known in your genre, memoirs, popular histories, biographies, and other creative nonfiction should be completed before querying.

True story and poetry collections. Unless you have an established reputation, collections must be completed before querying.

General commercial nonfiction and niche-market nonfiction. This category includes self-help and how-to books of various kinds, as well as assorted textbooks, manuals, and guides. When you have a publication track record in your field, or have otherwise established your expertise (through workshops, talk circuits, and webinars, for example), you may be able to secure a book contract on the strength of a detailed proposal and written samples. The minimum sample requirement is typically an introduction and first chapter. But the required minimum may vary according to publisher and genre.

If you have expertise in a field but do not have standard credentials, then it is unlikely that anyone will give you a contract based on a partial manuscript. Your best chance is to wait until you have a completed, polished manuscript that is publication ready. This minimizes risk to the potential publisher and will increase the odds that some acquiring editor just might take a chance on you.

When never to send a query

Never waste your own or others' time by sending out queries when you are an unknown writer with a great idea (you think) and little or nothing written down. In the book trade, ideas and titles cannot be copyrighted and therefore do not hold commercial value or interest for agents and publishers. The value rests in the tangible expression of the idea: book, collection, story, essay, or poem.

Length and content of an effective query letter

Queries may vary by author, genre, and particular manuscript, but in all cases, a basic effective query letter should be no longer than two single-spaced pages; one page is best. Your query letter should include the following content:

Opening “hook.” This is a paragraph of one to three sentences that introduces the book as concisely and compellingly as possible. In some instances, framing this introduction as an open-ended question, or question and answer, may work well. Some agents like the formula of "blank meets blank in . . ." Example: The Walking Dead meets The Hunger Games in this post-apocalyptic dystopian thriller.

Short description of the book, a.k.a synopsis. The synopsis embedded in a query should be brief: 100 to 250 words that clearly convey the overall subject/theme/story line/characters/problem/resolution/purpose of the book.

Marketing information. Summarize any or all of the following, as relevant to your particular book: the most important statistics/facts/information about the book’s topicality; its main targeted readership; its secondary readership, if any; the current works that it compares to or would be in competition with; how it differs from the competition or will fill a gap in the market; whether the book is part of a series or will have a sequel; what your next book will be about and how it will relate to this one.

Brief author bio. Focus on prior publications, if any, and what qualifications—education and/or professional credentials and/or research interests and/or life experience—make you particularly suited to write this book.

Summarizing paragraph. This is an optional paragraph to include any crucial information you have not managed to convey in preceding paragraphs: for example, availability of complete manuscript and/or sample chapters and/or full proposal; genre or subgenre; and total actual or projected word count of the completed manuscript.

A few final tips

Do make it clear that your manuscript is completed. This can be a selling point even if you have the kind of nonfiction project that does not necessarily require completion. A bird in the hand . . . is how agents and publishers think.

Don't ever assume that almost meeting completion or other requirements (such as word count) is good enough because agents and publishers will make an exception for you. They won't.

Do articulate what is different about your manuscript; specify how it offers something beyond the current competition in your genre.

Don't say your manuscript is unique: this raises the skeptical hackles of agents, acquiring editors, publishers, and their marketing personnel. Remember the prior blog post N is for NEW . . . and its message that little if anything is entirely new or unique.

Do use email or snail mail according to the stated preferences of agents and publishers. Consult the submissions pages of their websites and, to the letter, follow the guidelines given.

Don't, unless specifically invited to do so, query agents, publishers, or their acquiring editors by telephone.

You're a writer, so write.

Up next . . . "R is for REVISING"

The ABCs of Book Writing: E is for EMAIL . . .

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. . . and ERRORS in writing.

Email, a relative newcomer to the world of written communication, is now deeply embedded into our daily lives. And why not? It's mostly quick and easy, and it doesn't demand the time-consuming formalities of old fashioned letter writing.

The problem is that what is acceptable in email writing style, even colorful or amusing, can be downright annoying in a book manuscript—annoying to the point of being a deal breaker. Agents and publishers will take one look at a manuscript riddled with the typical errors of email writing and think: "Too much editing required." In today's competitive book trade, that's all you need for a rejection. If you are self-publishing, your editing costs will soar if you do not self-edit the email style out of  your book manuscript. If you choose to bypass editing, some readers might not mind your cool, free-wheeling style, but plenty of others hold book authors to a higher standard. Can you afford to lose these potential readers?

Email Writing Syndrome.

Watch the video below . . .

A few years ago, I noticed the extent to which email writing mannerisms and errors were infecting book writing and coined a tongue-in-cheek term for this contemporary malady: "email writing syndrome." You can read all about the symptoms and find out my suggested cures here. Alternatively, watch the video version at the end of this blog post.

How to recognize email writing style

The main signs of email writing style are:

Inattention to paragraphing. Paragraphs run on despite topic changes; alternatively, there are too many one-sentence paragraphs, creating a choppy effect.

Use of hyphens instead of conventional punctuation. Hyphens have specific uses, for example in compound words and in some prefixes and suffixes. They are not sentence punctuation.

Overuse of sentence fragments. Incomplete thoughts presented as sentences have their place and can create drama or emphasis. But too many sentence fragments lead to disjointedness and impaired readability.

Run-on sentences. Connecting several complete sentences or thoughts together, separated only by commas, has its uses in dialogue, as it shows how people often talk. This dialogue technique has made its way into the chatty style of email but needs to be used with restraint in other forms of writing.

Ellipsis gone wild. She paused..............................then tried again, without success, to tell her story............................................

Use of capitalization for emphasis. This KIND of EMPHASIS is acceptable in design, advertising, and some headlines but generally NOT appropriate in book writing.

Overuse of exclamation marks. Need I say more?!!!!!

Self-editing email style

Here are the basics for editing email style out of your book manuscript, and replacing it with a dash of elegance:

Break long paragraphs into shorter ones. Use no more than twelve sentences per paragraph in most kinds of writing. Use occasional one- or two-sentence paragraphs for dramatic effect or extra emphasis.

Use hyphens for compound words and some prefixes and suffixes. Examples include kilowatt-hour, mass-produced, co-op, anti-inflammatory, university-wide, and so on. Consult Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for authoritative help. In sentence constructions, replace hyphens with commas, semicolons, periods, or em dashes (—), which are sometimes typed as two hyphens--as shown here.

Use sentence fragments sparingly. The fragment is a device to add compelling, not distracting, effect to your writing. A device—not a complete writing strategy.

Break up run-on sentences. Insert periods to make shorter sentences, or use conjunctions and semicolons to separate thoughts within a sentence. Wrong: The dog was black, the cat was white. Right: The dog was black. The cat was white. / The dog was black and the cat was white. / The dog was black; the cat was white.

Use ellipsis properly. Ellipsis is signified by three points, with a space between each, used with or without added punctuation. Ellipsis can indicate speech trailing off in dialogue:  "What . . . ?" "I don't . . ."  It also indicates time elapsed and/or repetitive action: They walked and walked. . . . In advertising and design it can be an attractive substitute for a colon or em dash.

Avoid using capitals for emphasis and keep exclamation marks to a minimum. Create emphasis through language and imagery, punctuation, cadence, and occasional use of italics.

With email style eliminated or reduced, your true authorial voice has a chance to be heard.

Coming next week . . . "F is for FORMATTING"

The ABCs of Book Writing: A is for ASPIRATION . . .

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 . . . and ALL that goes with it!

No book truly begins with page one or even with the first word you write down or type into a computer. Many authors, long before they actually became authors, began their careers with aspiration, an unrelenting desire to live and breathe the literary life. Such aspiration can emerge at any age, from childhood to the golden years. It can be a heady personal experience, as it is often accompanied by grand dreams of fame and fortune, seemingly boundless creative energy, enough ideas to make your head spin, and a vision of authorship—your own—that could change your life and even the world.

The writer Jacques Barzun (On Writing, Editing, and Publishing) well understood the psychology of the aspiring writer. The dream of authorship is a worthy one, he had no doubt, but he also posed the cautionary question that new writers must ask themselves: "Do I want to write—or to have written?" He concluded that "practicing to write well and finally writing well will repay." In other words, aspiring to authorship must in reality be aspiring to write. It is fine, probably essential, that your vision of authorship includes grand dreams, but your sights must also be trained on the more earthbound task of developing your craft as a writer.

Nurture your dreams, cultivate your creativity, plant your ideas, and grow your vision of what being a book author means to you. At the same time, prepare to write well:

• Read some good books. Choose your favorites from the present day, but also dip into works of the past to expand your knowledge of all the many possibilities of book writing.


• Take a writing course or attend a workshop. Writing courses and workshops are a mixed bag, but even the least of them will get you writing and thinking about the many facets of the act and profession of writing.


• Above all, learn about writing and how the pros do it. There are many excellent books on the craft of writing. Among my favorites are William Zinsser's classic guide to writing nonfiction, On Writing Well; for aspiring fiction authors, I recommend Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King.

You owe it to yourself and your aspiration to read, to study, and to learn. Strive to write and to write well—or at least as best you can. Keep at it and, as Barzun put it, "Editors and publishers will seek you out, the public will be carried away with love and gratitude."

Hmm . . . these days, maybe not. On the other hand, someone who counts might like your query letter and eventually someone else might write a nice review on Amazon. Either way, you'll be realizing your passion.

Coming next week . . . "B is for BLOCK, writer's"

The ABCs of Book Writing: Series introduction

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Most things, including book writing, begin with the basics.

This blog series is about those basics that apply specifically to creating a book. It is about how—at the most fundamental level, from A to Z—effective books are started, get written, and develop a better than-average-chance of successful publication.

In this series, I am not offering a comprehensive guide to discovering your voice or polishing your style or plotting a novel or composing your memoirs or writing commercial nonfiction or getting published. Rather, this series will be a mix of insights, reflections, a few personal anecdotes, and some practical advice about creating a functional, commercially viable book—pretty much any sort of book. Throughout this series, I will be trying to shed light on both the pleasures and pitfalls, the successes and shortcomings, that typically go with writing a book. While there are all kinds of books (and diverse authors producing them), my aim is to focus on what is most likely to be the common experiences and demands that many authors face, regardless of their genres or intended readers. My wish is to smooth your progress along what I have observed to be the bumpiest stretches of road on the way to successful book writing and publishing.

Starting next week, articles will appear weekly here, in the Helping You Get Published blog,  and I will share them via links on my main Helping You Get Published website and in the following social media:


—Facebook
—LinkedIn
—Pinterest
—Twitter

As much as the content allows, articles will include supporting infographics and/or other visuals.

The first ebook—title secret

until release—will be FREE,

with or without purchasing

any other book in the series.

In writing this series, I am thinking mainly of the first-time book authors who may be approaching the start, and each subsequent stage, of the book writing journey with an uneasy mix of hopefulness and uncertainty. I also suspect that many authors who are not beginners, but who have gone a long while between books, and/or may be changing genre, might find these ABCs to be a useful refresher course. In fact, I am, myself, at work on a series of ebooks on writing and publishing—which will elaborate on what I do not cover in this blog series. I hope to release at least the first three of these ebooks by the end of 2017 or early in 2018. Not only is this my first attempt at writing several books at once, but I am doing so after a hiatus from book writing and while I continue to do my long-standing day job of manuscript assessing, book editing, and literary consulting.

From this point onward, we'll navigate the writing process and the book trade together. From A to Z—from the awareness of wanting to write a book, to zeroing in on publication opportunities—this blog series is for you. And no less for me.

Coming next week . . . "A is for ASPIRATION"