Query letters that work with Adrienne Kerr

Adrienne Kerr is the senior editor for commercial fiction at Penguin Canada.  She’s worked in various book-oriented occupations for seventeen years (gosh, she must have started as a kid).

Adrienne ran the session alone and we had a fabulous time.

Here are my notes:

• Everyone has to hustle.
• Harness your enthusiasm.
• Craft your query as carefully as you craft your novel.
• Find out what your target agent or editor has sold or acquired recently.

Research

• Writers have the power.  Act like it.
• Start with your bookshelves.  Pick out your favourite books.  Look at the acknowledgements.  Authors always thank their agents and editors.
• Next, go to your library or bookstore and do the same thing.
• Then go on line.  Look at the agencies.  Look at the submission guidelines.  Anything less than 100% compliance is a waste of everyone’s time.
• Be open to the process; be delightful to work with.
• Editors are hidden.  They’re not on-line.  Traditionally, they don’t take unsolicited submissions.  Now, they’re taking a more active role in ferreting out new talent.
• Check out Publishers’ Marketplace.  Search through 14 years worth of deals.  Each entry has a logline attached.

Loglines – you need one

• What if – so what formula
  25 words or less.  Convey major conflict.
  Answers so what.
• Hollywood style
  It’s X meets Y.
  Mash-up of famous books and/or movies.
• Save the Cat method
  A sentence or two, ironic, compelling, genre/audience-targeted, killer title.
• Blurb-based
  Who/what the hero wants and why.
  Focus on conflict.
• Comps must be realistic.  Consider the sales numbers and the social media imprint.
• Indicate your job only if pertinent (e.g. a lawyer who writes legal thrillers).
• Agents will use your query/logline/synopsis to sell.
• Editors will use your query/logline/synopsis for marketing.
• You will use it when someone asks what your book is about.

The rest of the session was spent critiquing loglines and queries volunteered from the attendees.  I was still working on mine and didn’t speak up, but there were some pretty interesting projects pitched and some effective improvements were crowd-sourced.

I will be finishing off my SiWC posts one per day.

Until tomorrow, mes amis!