I appreciate your personal take on query letter composition, especially because you're both a writer and a literary agent. What really stood out were your comments bout the bio, "why did you write this book? What are your major interests? What do you do day to day? Is there anything I should know about you or your identity as I dive into your book?"
I've read in other query tips that the bio should super-short and focused only a few skills and accomplishments, but your insight reminded me that I can still add my personality and flavor to the bio as an intro to a potential author-agent relationship.
I'm so glad to be helpful! And of course, every agent is a little bit different... but I certainly feel that while succinctness is always appreciated, answering those questions provides information that's really useful to know.
This is very insightful! I do have a question for the author bio part. Most of my writing experience/accomplishments are in science but my debut is fantasy. Would including the science info help or harm my query bio? Or I guess would it make an agent hesitate since it’s not fiction related?
Hi and thanks for reading! I would say a brief overview of your scientific writing career would be a great thing to include - literally a sentence. It shows that you understand what it is to write professionally, which is genuinely helpful, as well as providing interesting background info on you. Good luck!
Great article for new authors 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 I came to see what exactly I forgot to do while querying, and looks like I didn’t miss a thing. Turns out my agent has to match my level of crazy.
Thank you so much for this invaluable information and insight. It was fantastic to meet you a few weeks ago through through Zoom at the Oxford Center of Fantasy seminar. Everything you shared was worth more than gold or Mithril to me! I utilized this post to craft my first query letter for my novel series and I think I would have been quite off the mark without your guidance. I wish you the best of luck and wishes until our paths cross again!
I hope you are well. This is so incredibly helpful, thank you. I'm just putting together the query letter for my new novel and keep referring back to this. Sorry to see you are closed for submission at the moment (from a selfish perspective!) and wow, those are big numbers. Good luck with catching up and I hope you find some gems. I'll keep an eye out for when you are open for submissions once again, as I would love to query you with my new project. I hope all is going well in the US.
Ahh thanks so much Sophie! I’m glad it’s helpful. It’s lovely to hear from you and I’d be excited to read about your new query! Hope all’s well with you too x
There are days that writing the query letter feels harder than writing the book, but the query letter I'd write today is much stronger than the ones I wrote months ago thanks to advice like this. <3 Thank you
I appreciate your personal take on query letter composition, especially because you're both a writer and a literary agent. What really stood out were your comments bout the bio, "why did you write this book? What are your major interests? What do you do day to day? Is there anything I should know about you or your identity as I dive into your book?"
I've read in other query tips that the bio should super-short and focused only a few skills and accomplishments, but your insight reminded me that I can still add my personality and flavor to the bio as an intro to a potential author-agent relationship.
I'm so glad to be helpful! And of course, every agent is a little bit different... but I certainly feel that while succinctness is always appreciated, answering those questions provides information that's really useful to know.
This is very insightful! I do have a question for the author bio part. Most of my writing experience/accomplishments are in science but my debut is fantasy. Would including the science info help or harm my query bio? Or I guess would it make an agent hesitate since it’s not fiction related?
Hi and thanks for reading! I would say a brief overview of your scientific writing career would be a great thing to include - literally a sentence. It shows that you understand what it is to write professionally, which is genuinely helpful, as well as providing interesting background info on you. Good luck!
Great article for new authors 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 I came to see what exactly I forgot to do while querying, and looks like I didn’t miss a thing. Turns out my agent has to match my level of crazy.
Thank you for this! I have been gearing up to get my query letter together and really appreciate this info.
So glad to be helpful - thank you for reading!
This was such an informative and helpful article, thank you for sharing this Kesia : )
You're so welcome!
Hi Kesia,
Thank you so much for this invaluable information and insight. It was fantastic to meet you a few weeks ago through through Zoom at the Oxford Center of Fantasy seminar. Everything you shared was worth more than gold or Mithril to me! I utilized this post to craft my first query letter for my novel series and I think I would have been quite off the mark without your guidance. I wish you the best of luck and wishes until our paths cross again!
~Best Regards,
Fred
I am so so glad to hear this - thank you for letting me know! :)
Hi Kesia,
I hope you are well. This is so incredibly helpful, thank you. I'm just putting together the query letter for my new novel and keep referring back to this. Sorry to see you are closed for submission at the moment (from a selfish perspective!) and wow, those are big numbers. Good luck with catching up and I hope you find some gems. I'll keep an eye out for when you are open for submissions once again, as I would love to query you with my new project. I hope all is going well in the US.
Best wishes,
Sophie x
Ahh thanks so much Sophie! I’m glad it’s helpful. It’s lovely to hear from you and I’d be excited to read about your new query! Hope all’s well with you too x
Wonderful, thank you! I'll be in touch when you are open for submissions again x
There are days that writing the query letter feels harder than writing the book, but the query letter I'd write today is much stronger than the ones I wrote months ago thanks to advice like this. <3 Thank you
You’re so welcome - I’m glad to hear it!
Thank you for giving clear ideas about what is important to include in query letters. Will consider them for future queries.
Thanks so much for reading!