• Because my background is in engineering, as I tried to write a query letter for my book, I decided to take a very organized approach to things. Let's face it, query letters are hard. You never know if the agents viewing your query letter don't like the letter iteslf, or don't like the book idea, or what. So here's my strategy for writing query letters.

    First, try a variety of styles. Sure, there are suggestions online about how to write a query letter, but lets face it, every book is different. As such, pay attention to the advice you see, but don't make it the only thing you try. I like to come up with three or four different query letters that I'm really satisfied with.

    Once you have a set of query letters, begin sending them to agents. I try to send each query letter I have to a batch of five or so literary agents and publishers at a time and see what kind of responses each one gets back. I'll continue to use all of them for two or three runs of this to get the best idea of which style works.

    Using an excel document, track which letters you send to which agents, and what agents responded back most favorably to your novel. Hopefully, you'll be able to see patterns emerging over which query letter produced the greatest interest from the agents. At this point, I would try and stick exclusively with that one, refining it as much as you can to get the most quality responses.

    While we haven't told you how to write a query letter itself, we'll try and do that next time. However, I find this almost as important as writing the query letter since it will help you figure out which one works best for you. Check back next time for further tips as we try and help you write your first novel.