Pitch Your Book Contest
Query Letter Advice
From Voyage YA Editor-in-Chief Racquel Henry!
I initially learned to write a query letter from Literary Agent Carly Watters at P.S. Literary Agency. After 6 years of querying my YA novel off and on, I’ve stuck by these tips and used them to write the query that eventually landed me my agent! I’m sharing these tips below and hopefully, they’ll help you too!
Break your query into three sections:
- The intro
- The book pitch
- The bio/wrap-up
Query letters should be one page.
Address the agent or editor by their full name or use their first name. (I know the inclination is to be formal, but you may not always know the agent’s preferred pronoun.)
Intros can include info such as: where you heard about the agent (mention if you took a workshop with them, or saw them at a conference, etc.), why they might be a good fit, the title of your novel, the word count, and genre/category. Many agents also like comp titles, and this would be a good place to put those as well.
The pitch should be the focus of the query. Agents and editors will be most interested in the project itself. Therefore, the pitch section will be the longest section. The pitch should also make three things clear: who your protagonist is, what the conflict is, and what the stakes are. Try your best to avoid introducing too many characters—the leads of the story should be the center of attention. Keep the intro and bio section brief.
We have additional query letter resources listed on our Book-Pitch contest page here.
And you can also see samples of successful query letters here and here.
Happy query letter writing!
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