An author walks through an actual query letter that worked.

[JohnBertel]

An author walks through an actual query letter that worked.

 

[Hannah F]

Link your bio to your story. Good snippet of advice.

 

[E G Logan]

Thank you, John, for sharing that.

Nice, caring guy, Will. A kind thought to point others in the right direction. (And this is a British submission letter, with a slight Transatlantic twist, rather than a US query letter, as such.)

I've seen a handful of these real submissions now, including some US ones, and for one or two it's hard to avoid thinking that the ms. is so well targeted to the agent, and the story so right, so now, for its market/genre, that the letter could have been written in scarlet crayon on the back of a groceries receipt. Some stories do pretty well sell themselves.

 

[Vagabond Heart]

That's some five-star hair, right there.

 

[Ed Simnett]

My guess is that timing was important here. Wallander was just finishing on TV in the relevant time frame so if you hit UK agents in the run up to that last series, there might have been lots in the Artz n Entz press about scandi crime.

+1 to what @EGL says. Mediocre pitch can work with great writing and story. Opposite not so much.

 

[PCFrontier]

Hi John, Thanks for highlighting this helpful podcast.