Business Decision is best approach to queries

Great points here and I think sometimes looking at the business aspect of a subjective industry can help soothe rejection a little. Would be interested in seeing your query if you'd ever post it here. Awesome to see your enthusiasm.

Loving your enthusiasm! It's a great attitude to have,

Sorry if I'm reading this wrong, but are you saying You've self published the first book in a planned trilogy, and you're attempting to get an agent for the entire series? I think unless your sales figures are phenomenal you may be starting on the wrong foot there. Getting an agent for a self published book is incredibly hard, and you're no longer a debut author, so much less appealing to agents. Self publishing any part of a proposed series is a bad idea if you want to go the traditional route.

I'm hoping I've read that wrong? Please let me know if that's the case! Best of luck with everything

ETA: I've just noticed this is an old thread. I probably won't get an answer lol

"They (The Agents) have proven to be a very resilient foe who come up with excellent defense against each new onslaught I attack with."

Woo Boy. There are things you can do to maximize your chances.

Agents don't care about "making money" - that's not their area. What they want is to convince a couple of people at a corporate table to give you a large advance. They'll sell only to 5-10 buyers! So this is what you need to have in mind.

These buyers (at a publishing company) will need to convince THEIR bosses to release the purse strings. You need to give THEM tools to do it => a great story, a good social media reach, an author who is not going to have any unpleasant surprises (A raging MRA troll on Twitter forex).

These are the concepts you need to establish as part of a sales pitch.

Treehouseman said:

(A raging MRA troll on Twitter forex).

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Lol

RW Andrews said:

Just been reading a few pages of the forum and glad to see many positive attitudes here.

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Based on a long deal of personal experience, i can provide an antidote.

caw

Agents are not Leary of new talent, whether that talent has a spotlight on it or not. All you have to do is look at the long, long list of writers agent's rep who had no spotlight at all, but who got picked up quickly, and whose book hit the bestseller list.

The trouble agents have is the same trouble editors have, and that's finding new talent. Judging by the slush, both query slush and manuscript slush, new talent is extremely rare.

It isn't about making them understand that you have a product that will sell and make money. Their job rests on knowing this. An agent or editor who can't tell when something will earn money will not be an agent or editor very long.

The main problem with query letters is that almost all of them look alike, and sound alike. They follow a standard pattern, say nothing new, and are usually so matter of fact written that they make old dishwater look exciting. Read one, and you can safely say you've read the next five hundred. Nothing changes except plot details, character names, and which book they compare theirs to. Each of these things is put down in a standard, unexciting way, with the same level of exciting writing and as a laundry list. They put you to sleep after reading three or four, let alone three or four hundred.

Each reads like it was written by an emotionless computer, programmed to write monthly reports for a widget factory.

There's no voice, no style, no exciting writing, nothing that SHOWS and agent or editor that the writer has talent, has a unique voice, etc. The writer takes no chances, doesn't deviate from what thousands of other writers are doing, and gives no reason at all why his or her novel is any better than the one the last standard query letter was promoting in an equally boring manner. It's like there's a query letter factory out there where robots churn out the same query letter over and over, just changing the names and plot details to protect the guilty.

Unless the query letter is illiterate, the first three or four pages of the novel can save a poor query letter, but few writers send these. The first few pages can also kill a good query letter, but it's better to know the first few pages suck as soon as possible.

Query letters are so standard, so formatted, so boring, that one really good sentence can often make an agent or editor say yes. Just one really great sentence. There was a brilliant example in a thread on here a year or so ago. It was a case when the first sentence made the agent request the full. That sentence was, "It was another perfect day. . .another Goddamn perfect day."

It took a chance . A small chance, but one that was infinitely larger that what's in most query letters. The average query letter takes no chances at all. It doesn't even sound like a human with real emotions, with genuine enthusiasm, with an actual voice, and with real talent they SHOW in how well they write the query letter, is behind it.

The other problem is copying successful query letters. By the time the great majority of writers learn about a successful query letter, thousands of other writers have copied it, and every agent and editor has seen it numerous times. Copying shows neither talent nor originality.

If there's anywhere in writing that "show, don't tell" matters, and where good voice and originality count immensely, it's in a query letter. If you can't write a query letter that's exciting, original, that shows talent, and that sounds like a person you'd love to meet wrote it, why should an agent or editor think your novel will be any better?

Jamesaritchie said:

Unless the query letter is illiterate, the first three or four pages of the novel can save a poor query letter, but few writers send these.

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I'm curious as to what you're basing this on, because when I was querying, the vast majority of agents asked for at least the first five pages of the MS, and often ten, to be included with the query letter. Those asking for just a query letter seem to be rare these days.