Submission Sunday REDUX: Query Letters

Tips for querying literary agents with a compelling letter

Happy Sunday, writers! Thank you for subscribing! This post was originally sent out on Sunday, March 25, 2023, but I’ve updated the upcoming deadlines at the end.

So let’s say you’re a novelist with a completed manuscript, a nonfiction writer with an engaging book proposal, or a memoirist with one or both—what’s next? (Poets, you might want to read this P&W article for a deep dive on the relationship between agents and poets.) The next step is to start contacting agents to represent you on the road to publication. A future Submission Sunday post will tackle how to publish without an agent, but for now, we’ll assume you want an agent, which means you need a query letter.

One of the author services I offer is to help writers draft query letters, and I also used to assign query letters in my manuscript workshops, so I can tell you from experience that some writers find query letters to be exceptionally painful. But they don’t have to be!

I’ve put together some of my favorite tips below, and the next redux post for paid subscribers on December 29 will be dedicated to how to find the agents you want to send the query letter to.