My Query's Too Long!

It seriously IS a big deal, even for e-queries. You need to cut it down.

Cyia said:

It seriously IS a big deal, even for e-queries. You need to cut it down.

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Ditto. 250 words or thereabouts, period.

Good luck!

Anyone who has looked at e-queries for a while can tell their length. Easily. Agents have discussed this in their blogs. And we do it all the time in query letter hell.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

There's nothing sacred about one page, though some agents say they prefer it, and shorter is definitely better. Squeezing more words in by fiddling with the margins and font will only make for a denser read. You don't want that, do you?

What matters most is how good the query is. If it's grabbing agents and keeping them reading it's working.

However...

Longer queries carry all kinds of negatives. If it looks too long to bother with, you can get rejected even before someone reads it. Not fair, I know, but most long queries are long because they're bad, and agents know this. So a long one might trigger "bad" in their minds.

I'd suggest trimming it down. If the hook just can't be cut further, look at getting rid of some of the other things. Maybe your intro para can go or be cut down to a single line. Maybe you can cut credits or your bio (which don't carry that much weight anyway unless they're super good)

And if you really feel it's the best it can be as is and don't want to cut it, send it out. Just accept that it might have some negatives and then don't worry about it.

RainbowDragon said:

Thing is, I'm 2 for 2 for requests for more material with the new query (via e-mail). Call me superstitious but that's more than a plecebo effect. . . I'll think about whether I can cut somewhere though. I might be able to wrangle it back to a single page without losing whatever's working with it.

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Hey if it ain't broke....

I started out with a query on the long side, had about a 25% request rate, shortened it up a bit, got nothing. I went back to the longer version and am getting requests again. It could be the agents I'm hitting. Who knows?

Rename all your characters so they have names like Ty, Oz, or Bea.

Nicole

Throw it in Share Your Work. I bet you're including a ton of info you just don't need to. I just wrote a query for my novel and it's 197 words. We can help.