What exactly is a query? Ive noticed people have sent them out. But not sure what it entails.
On the chance this isn't obvious, let me back up a step from what everyone else has said.
If you're writing a book, and you're serious about it, then at some point you'll want to think about publishing it so
other people can actually read it. You could, of course, try printing it up yourself, but except in some very particular circumstances, you'll never wind up selling more than a handful of books that way.
So, of course, the other way is to convince someone in the actual publishing industry--the folks who print up all those lovely books at the bookstore--to publish
your book. However, far more books are written every year than get published. That means the books that
do get published have to be
better than a whole lot of other books.
It also means that, in large part, publishers are relying on independent agents to find the best books, which means that you as an author will probably want to contact an agent (rather than a publisher directly) to represent your book.
That's what a "query" is: it's just a letter sent to an agent (or a publisher) asking them to consider your book. Simple, right?
However, again remember that far more books are written every year than get published, and agent want to represent only the
best books. And they simply don't have time to read (literally) thousands of manuscriplts every year to find the best ones. They'd rather
sell books to publishers. So agents play a game of percentages, and they'll only read manuscripts that sould like they're really interesting.
And
that's where everyone else's comments come into play. Because the query letter has evolved into something of a sales document, designed to convince the agent to read
your manuscript. You're hearing about them because writers obsess, just a little, about maximizing their chances of getting a foot in the door by writing the very best query.
Make sense?
aboard.