Query letter
How to use this template
Keep the query to 250 to 350 words, and send it in the body of an email, never as an attachment.
Personalize each one: the agent's name, one sentence on why you chose them, and exactly the pages their guidelines ask for.
The pitch is three short paragraphs in the present tense. The hook, about 40 words: your main character, their situation and the event that knocks it over. The story, about 90 words: what they want, what they do about it and who stands in the way. The stakes, about 90 words: how it gets worse, what they could lose and the hard choice they face. Stop on that choice; the ending stays out.
Round the word count to the nearest thousand. Pick two comparable titles from the last five years, neither of them a giant bestseller, and say what each shares with your book.
With no publishing credits, “This is my first novel” and one line about you are enough.
Copy everything from the subject line to the pasted pages into your email. The how-to, the example, the checklist and the tracker stay here.
See an example pitch
Hook: Nell Okafor restores old maps for a living, and she has never found one that lied. Then a dead client's 1890s survey of the Essex marshes reaches her desk, showing a village no other map has ever recorded.
Story: The client left Nell the map in his will, with a brass key and a train ticket to a coastal town that floods every spring. The locals swear the village never existed. But pages are cut from the parish register, the town archivist won't meet her eye, and someone has begun following her along the sea wall at night.
Stakes: As the spring tides rise, Nell learns that the village was emptied in a single night in 1899, that her own grandmother was born there, and that the Ashbys, the family who have welcomed her into the town, made sure no map would show it again. Now she must choose: publish the map and give a lost village back its name, or burn it and spare the only people who have treated her as family.
The book: THE SALT ARCHIVE is an adult mystery, complete at 92,000 words. It will appeal to readers of The Tidewater House by J. M. Hale, for its drowned history, and Cartographers by Ruth Ames, for its obsession with maps.
About me: I am a conservation technician at a county record office, where I repair parish maps. This is my first novel.
The book, its author and both comparable titles are invented.
Subject: Query: [TITLE], [category] ([word count] words)
Dear [Agent's name],
Optional: why this agent, in one sentence.
The pitch, in three short paragraphs: hook, story, stakes.
[Title] is [category], complete at [word count] words. It will appeal to readers of [Comparable title] by [Author] and [Comparable title] by [Author].
About you, in two or three sentences.
Thank you for your time and consideration. As your guidelines ask, I have pasted [the first ten pages] below.
Best regards,
[Your name]
[Email] · [Phone] · [Website]
The pages or synopsis the guidelines ask for, pasted as plain text.
Before you send
The agent's name is spelled right, and they represent your category
The query is 250 to 350 words, and the pitch stops before the ending
The word count is rounded, and both comparable titles are recent
The pages or synopsis are exactly what this agent's guidelines ask for, pasted as plain text
Every bracket is replaced and the grey hints are gone
It goes to this agent alone: no group email, no CC
Optional: Query tracker
Agent | Agency | Sent | Asked for | Reply |