Story Magic

78 - How to start querying with Abigail K. Perry

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Today, Emily & Rachel talk about the querying process with guest Abigail K. Perry!

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • Exactly what a query letter is and how to structure it for your best chance at snagging an agent's attention
  • How to know when you're ready to query and where to get started when you make that choice
  • Why people keeping saying 'querying is hard than ever right now', and whether or not it's true
  • Pitfalls authors make in querying and how to avoid them

Connect with Abby: https://www.abigailkperry.com/

Resources Mentioned: 


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Emily:

Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of. I'm Emily, and today I am talking about querying with book coach and editor Abigail K. Perry. Welcome, Abby. I'm so excited to be talking to you today.

Abigail K Perry:

Hi, Emily. Thanks for inviting me on the show. I'm so excited to talk, talk about querying and to support your listeners.

Emily:

Awesome. Yeah, I mean, querying is one of those things that every writer has questions about, wants to talk about. So I'm excited to talk about the basics of it and then answer some common questions that folks have. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about you and where, how you got here. How did you get to book coaching, talking about querying. It seems like traditional publishing is a focus of yours and so I would love to hear a little bit about your path and how you got here and the Litmatch podcast.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I am a book coach and developmental editor. I'm a certified book coach and developmental editor. So right now I have my certification as an author accelerator book coach, which is a program that Jenny Nash started. And that means that I have basically been through hundreds of hours of mentoring and have done clientele work that has been evaluated by their team and then classified. This is a process that we can make sure that we're really awesome book coaches that are going to help writers write their books. And then I'm a certified story grid editor. And that was a certification that I got back in 2019, I believe now. And that is a specific craft resource. So when I say I'm a book coach and editor, I focus on coaching people through the fiction writing process and I focus on developmental editing. So I'm not a copy editor. I am not a line editor, although I give advice to writers. But I always say, do not come to me for copy editing. I can point to grammatical mistakes, but that's not my focus. I'm focusing on big picture. And how I got there really started, actually, back in college when I was studying tv, radio and film. So I graduated from Syracuse University with a tv and film. With a tv and film, sorry. With a tv and film degree. And I was ready to go to Los Angeles and get into screenwriting and directing thing. Yeah, and do the thing. And my now husband had no interest in going to LA. So I was thinking, okay, how am I going to stay on the east coast here? And I thought, well, you know, where do stories come from? Publishing? So I switched gears a bit and I was like, you know, honestly, so much is franchise. Anyway, I want to be in stories where the stories beginnings. So I started to look for publishing internships, and I I'm not in New York based at that time. There were not really a lot of remote positions. I did find an internship at a children's book publishing, children's book publishing company called Charles Bridge in Boston, and I worked it there as a sales special projects and sales marketing intern, and that's where I kind of started to get into there. At the same time, I started teaching. So I actually went back, got my master's in teaching, and created creative writing and film courses for the high school level and taught that. So that was really fun. But at that time, I was thinking, I'm the only teacher in my peers who's teaching creative writing. I want to challenge myself more. I found a literary agency that was offering remote internships, applied, and got that position, and I worked as an editorial intern at P's literary agency.

Emily:

Oh, so did I.

Abigail K Perry:

That was so fun.

Emily:

Yeah, I was a. I was an intern there during the pandemic. It was crazy.

Abigail K Perry:

So right after me. So that's where I was before I worked closely with Carly. And we think it was 2018 that I started working there. And I worked then as the agency relations assistant in 2019 or 2020. I might be need to shift that 2019 to 2020, but I was the agency relations assistant in 2020. And then at that time, I was a new mom. I was trying to run my own business, and I was working a part time as a content blogger for a writing company called the right practice. And it was just I needed to step back from one of the rules, being the full time mom at the same time in a pandemic. So I loved my experience at the agency, and now you can attest, I love PSLA. I love the collaboration between the agents. And I learned so much from Carly. She was an amazing mentor. And, you know, now that I've been focusing on my own business, it's really just building that and connecting in this way. I'm really good friends with. I'm lucky to surround myself by mentors and colleagues who are just constantly teaching me certain things, you know, Savannah Gilbo, I know that you've had her on the podcast. She is one of my most favorite people, and I'm just going to give her a little plug because she's an amazing book coach and writing teacher as well. So I'm here through various walks of paths of life.

Emily:

I love it.

Abigail K Perry:

And just doing what I can to support writers and their process.

Emily:

That's awesome. Yeah. Rachel and I did author accelerator as well. We didn't end up going and getting the certification and kind of took it on our own path. But we did not do story grid. But I did have a period of time where I was totally obsessed and nerding out about the story grid method. So that's really cool. I didn't realize that you and Savannah also bolted that. That's really cool. Okay, so querying for folks, I'm sure that there are newer writers who are listening. I feel like querying is one of those words where you're like, I'm going to write a book. And then you're like, okay, how do I do this whole thing? And then you come across this word and it can feel like, you know, from this side of things, it's a pretty straightforward process, but I think it can feel very nebulous and confusing when folks are first starting out. So can you walk us through, like, what is querying? Why is it required for the traditional publishing process? And kind of how, like, what are the components of that process and what you need to go about doing it?

Abigail K Perry:

So querying is something that a writer needs to do once they've completed a manuscript. Completing it is the key thing there. Is the key word there. If you're fiction, you know, if you're doing nonfiction, you're working on proposals. But once you have a completed manuscript, you query a literary agent, and a literary agent is going to be your business partner, and they are going to be the one who sells, pitches and sells your book to a publisher, ideally a big five publisher if you're a debut author. I didn't mention that. I run the podcast litmatch, and that is the whole foundation of Lintmatch was helping you find the best literary agent, the best business partner to enter the traditional publishing world. And Litmatch has expanded beyond just that now. But I think that's the key idea here with querying, is that you need to query if you want to traditionally publish, because you need to find your literary agent who is going to work with you in this partnership in the path to publishing. And when you say that it intimidates a lot of writers, I think it does because the publishing industry is very competitive. And also I think that the query process is drastically different writing than when you're writing your fiction book. And I think that this is the other thing that you want to think about, is that to query an agent is essentially to write a sales pitch and pitch your book to, you know, at the time you pitch your manuscript to an agent in order to capture their attention so that they request more. And that's ultimately the whole foundation of it. It's that no one, an agent is never going to offer representation based on a query. They're going to offer representation based on the manuscript, but you have to capture their attention in order for them to request more pages. And then, you know, the number one material in a query package would be a query letter. But there are multiple steps, I would say, that you want to consider when you are querying that come before actually writing the letter.

Emily:

I love that. I love that distinction because I feel like people sometimes can put so much weight on their query letter. Like, this is the thing that's going to sell my book. And it's like, no, your book is going to sell your book. Right. The query letter's job is to capture attention. And that's important because it puts the emphasis on like, you need to have a good book. Like you're agent is not going to offer representation just based on, you know, your premise or your, you know, what your book is about in the query letter. They're going to offer you representation because of your writing, because of the book that you've written. And so I think that can be helpful to be like this. The query letter is just a piece of this process. So you just mention that there's more steps. Yeah, yeah, that's very important.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah, very important. Yeah. So I'd say, you know, when I, when you're looking at, I'll talk about the materials that you want in a pitch package first. So query, I call it query package. Pitch package.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

That's what you're looking for. You, a standard pitch package is going to include your query letter, a synopsis and your sample pages. And what you need to know in order to pitch is you need to know if the agent and the agency are a good match for you. And I think that this is one of the most important steps that sometimes writers forget to invest enough time in is research, because you need to research literary agents and you need to research agencies because you need to ensure that this is going to be a great business partner for you. And there need to be specific reasons as to why you are pitching to a specific agent and agency as well. Right. So those are all items that you want to consider as you get your query package ready or your pitch package ready now in the materials that I mentioned. So we're going to talk deeply about the query letter because that's obviously the most important piece of this you need the dreaded synopsis. They call it the dreaded synopsis. You can't underestimate the synopsis. Is the synopsis going to be what make or breaks your offer of representation or your request for more pages? Not necessarily. But usually a synopsis is going to be a key piece of submission materials that an agent will use later when they're reading the manuscript, if they need to determine if they're going to read on or if they. Yeah, I think. I think that's actually probably the most important piece. If they're reading a manuscript and they're thinking, is this going anywhere? They might read the synopsis. A lot of agents don't want to actually read the synopsis until they finish the manuscript and they can see how is the writer pitching the story as a whole. But in a query letter, a query letter is not giving away the entire story like in a synopsis. And a synopsis might not necessarily be requested until later if they've requested more pages. What an agent is going to request or an agency is going to request, usually are the query letter and the sample pages. The number of sample pages will probably differ. The number of pages will probably, will probably change based on the agency's request. So standard ten page, you know, ten first pages is very common. I've seen other agencies say, give me the first three chapters. I've seen some say, give me the first five pages. I've seen some say, give me, you know, more than ten pages. There's going to be a specific number of pages, usually that an agent is going to request that come when you pitch the query. And why that's really important is because these are the two pieces that are going to capture the attention. So a query letter is going to pitch the premise and the back cover, essentially, of your book. It's the sales pitch. So you're giving us enough to hook our interest, to give us a taste, but not give away the whole prize. And the sample pages prove that you can write. And I think that is a really important piece because when you're getting rejections, if you do get rejections, and it's inevitable, you need to assess what is holding me back. Is it the query letter or is it the sample pages or is it a combination? Right. Because the goal here is to have a knockout, you know, opening manuscripts. But I also say you have to make sure that the whole manuscript is the strength of your opening pages. Right. Because that's something sometimes writers faster, so much attention and time over their first pages, as they should, because it is going to be what determines if a reader continues reading. But if they don't fulfill those expectations for the remainder of the manuscript, that's going to lead to rejection. Right. Yeah.

Emily:

So many manuscripts that I've read where it's like, the first three chapters feel like a whole different book, you're like, wait a second.

Abigail K Perry:

Right, right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

Right. And that's where it's like. So you have to make sure that you don't only invest in that time, but when it comes to querying. Yes. Like, that's where your time and attention is going to go, or those opening pages, and then in the pitch itself. So reading, I always say, like, the, we'll go over the, for the preferred format of a query letter, but that back cover copy is, or a blurb is what they call it. I call it like, the second paragraph in your query letter. That is the most important part of a query letter because it is pitching what the book is about. And that is going to be, is this something that I can sell the agents thinking? Right. And is this something that I would love to read?

Emily:

Yeah. Awesome. That's so helpful. It's so helpful because I think there's so many different pieces that agents are going to request, but it's also different based on every agent. And so that research that you were talking about before is so important because you need to know not only are they going to be a good match, but what do they want from you, because it's not the same from person to person. And so you really need to make sure that you're not sending someone what somebody else asked for. Right. Or mixing things up in that way. The details are important when it comes to who you're pitching, why you're pitching them, and then what you're pitching them with. And one resource that I wish when I was doing my querying process that I wish I'd known about ahead of time is publishers Marketplace. It's Marketplace, not weekly, right? Yeah, weekly is the newsletter. So publishers Marketplace is, it's a database of information, basically about publishing deals, about agents, where you can actually find information that you can't find elsewhere on the Internet about what deals people are selling and what books they've been involved in and things like that. And so I would highly recommend checking that out if you're starting the querying process to do your research on that. It's not super expensive, I want to say. At least when I did, it was like $25 a month and it was 100% worth it. I put it off because I was like, I don't want, I guess, spend $25, you know, but it was 100% worth it. So do your research for sure.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would say publishers marketplace is the number one database. So, yeah, last I had looked at it, it is $25 a month. You can cancel at any time. So I always tell people, if you don't have it in your budget right now to invest in publishers marketplace, at least open it for like the first month or two when you start to get ready for querying and do your research, and then you can cancel the subscription. But why this is really important is because you need to be considering a few things when you're picking your literary agents. And I like to make a spreadsheet in order to collect data and research before going out on submission with the query letters. And, you know, obviously you want to know the agent, you want to know the agency name. You also want to know, like you said, books that they've represented, right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

Or that the agent and books that the agency represented, if they're new, because it's totally okay to be a new agent, an associate agent. I as long as you're in an agency that has a strong standing, right. That is going to be something that's like, okay. Now I know that they're getting mentorship. This industry is very mentorship based. So if you're in a strong agency, you know that they're probably getting mentored by strong agents and reputable sales. And that's, you know, I always just say, don't shun an associate agent because they're hungry. They want their list, too, and they could be the perfect match for you. Just look at the agency in those situations. And I also would want to be looking at sales. Right. So what is this agent sold? How did they do? How do they perform? Right. You want to look at sometimes who they're selling to, depending on what your vision is for. If you have a strong opinion on how you want to sell your books, you want to be able to communicate that with the agent. You also want to be considering anything that might have stood out to, to connect on a personal level about why you think that you would be good business partners. You're not going to find this on every agent, but a lot of agents these days are out there on podcasts or they've written articles or they've been interviewed, and you might connect with something that they say about how they work as an asian and things like communication. How do they communicate? These are all areas that eventually, if you do get an offer of representation. You get to ask the agents certain questions to see if you align as a business partner. And you should be thinking about this when you're doing the research as well, because you want to be thinking about, I like to say, put them in three tiers. So an ABC or a dream agent, good agent. An agent that fits whatever you want to do. You want to be sorting out your agent's specific names, right? Not a general to whom it may concern. We never say that in a query letter. Specific agents and the reasons why you want to query them, because you should be able to prioritize who your list is. And that is a strategy that you want to consider when you go into submissions on who you query and when you query them. And we can get to that later in the episode if you want. But I think those are key details that you want to be thinking about as you research. You also might want to think about looking on the agency, what is obviously, what are the submission guidelines, because we talked about how they're going to be different, you know? And also, you could be thinking sometimes they list a timeframe, what it is, when you should expect to receive a response. A lot of agencies will say non response after x amount of time is a rejection. And this is important to know because you can follow up after that timeframe has happened politely. And if it's a rejection or if you don't hear anything, you can move on. And I think that that's really important. You don't want to get stuck just waiting around and, you know, putting all your eggs in one agent and not doing that research. There are over a thousand agents, I believe, I think I've heard Carly say lately, over a thousand agents out there in the United States alone. So you want to be considering your options. And sometimes the agent that you didn't even know might end up being the best fit for you if you've done your best.

Emily:

That's what happened to me. And I think that. That it's important to kind of think through. It's like you want to do the research ahead of time, so you know as much as you can, right. And we're just seeing the Internet version, right, of these people who we're then gonna have a relationship with. So, like, keep that in mind. Like, the vision that you have of who this person is is not necessarily exactly who that person is. Right when. And that's why when you get an offer, and then if you get. If you're lucky enough to get multiple offers, right. You wanna be talking to people to really get to know them, to make sure that it's gonna be a good human to human business partnership. But I do think, for me, I found it helpful to have those buckets of what I thought would be the best fits, the second best fits, and things like that. But I think that for some people, it can be really motivating to have three dream agents or whatever, or a single dream agent. But I also think it can be really helpful to not do that, because I found for me that we have such little control over how it's going to go. And my agent ended up being someone that wasn't even on my list, that I ended up getting a referral to from a friend who thought that she might be interested in it. But from what I could tell from her, you know, from her most recent deals and the things that she'd been doing, you know, what I could find about her online, it didn't seem like she would be, like, the perfect fit for me. But once I actually started talking to her and getting to know her more, it ended up being fantastic. And so I think you just don't know, like, you're gathering data, right? It's all data points that you can put in spreadsheets, and you can start to build these pictures of these people. But I wouldn't get too attached, right. To what? To, like, the picture that you're putting together of a specific person or a group of specific people. Like, keep your. Keep your mind open. And, yes, it's important to make sure that people are going to be interested in, like, what you have to offer, but you don't have to stick to people who are asking for exactly what you have. Right. Like, you can. There's no harm in querying people who seem to be somewhat kind of adjacent because you never know what people are looking for or what might pop out to them from the piles of things that they're receiving. So, like, do your research, but also don't limit yourself, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Abigail K Perry:

I love that advice. I support that advice completely. I think that it's. It's the same as with life, right? Like, when you close your doors, when you limit yourself, you're going to miss other opportunities, and it's all about assessing. Is this a right fit for me? And I think that that's a really important idea to reinforce because we've mentioned querying is extremely competitive back in. I want to say it was 2018 or 2019. I'm hopefully not misquoting that. I remember Carleen had shared something on her social media. And basically what it came down to was statistically, she represents 0.01% of all submissions sent to her. You know, so that. And that's one agent of, you know, but ultimately, I would say that's pretty standard across the board for agents. Like, a lot of stories are sent, very few are selected. A lot of it is going to be based on manuscript readiness. And are you having a strategy when it comes to querying? You know, are you pitching your story? Well, so the idea here is to help focus on the query letter so that you can stand the best shot at hooking the literary agent's attention and therefore getting your pages in front of them in ideally, a full manuscript format. Right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

And, you know, I just. I like to reinforce that sometimes there can be a misguided idea on power between the writers who are querying and the agents. And we have to remember that an agent works on commission, so they only are going to represent your book if they believe that they can sell it and that they love it because they earn 15% commission on the books that they sell. They're not going to invest in something that they don't super passionately believe in. And that's okay if you get rejected by someone, because if they're not all in it, that's not going to be a good match for you. Right. And someone else might be all in. And I think that that is what you. The idea of just keeping your options open is important because you want to be in a business relationship with someone who is all in and someone not being all in. It's not a personal rejection. Right. It's not a rejection of you. It's rejection of something based on their sales strategies and what they believe they can sell. And if they are, you know, a lot of agents specialize in certain genres, so sometimes it might just even be. It might just be the market, it might not be the timing for it. It might be that they already have too many clients who are doing something similar to what you're doing. And I. Those could be reasons for rejection. So when rejections come in, because they will, I think that you want to take a breath and remember, this isn't a rejection on you. This is not a rejection of you as a person. We pour our souls into our stories, right? So it can be very challenging to see our babies rejected. You know, our book babies rejected, but it's not anything personal. It's just not the right fit. And you just have to keep going. It's all about resiliency. It's about persevering and reshaping and going back and revising and finding what is not working across the board so that you can find that right agent for you. And when it happens with perseverance, which it will if you continue to keep going. Right. Yeah. You want to hear that yes. They say, like, it only takes one yes. Right. And I say, it only takes one yes. But you want that yes to be a yes for you as well. And that's something to keep in mind as you get into this process.

Emily:

Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing worse than the horror stories of folks who said yes to the agents that they shouldn't have.

Abigail K Perry:

Right. And it just be just not a shared vision. Right. If, you know, on the foundation of it all.

Emily:

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Okay, so why don't we break down real quick. What are the components of a query letter?

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. So when you look at a query leather, I say that there's a preferred paragraph format. You can call this three paragraphs. I've started to call them sections because the back cover blurb, the second section, might be more than one paragraph, but basically you're going to have paragraph 123, or I'm going to call them section one, two, three. And it's the book hook cook method. Okay? So if you listen. If you listen to the shit no one tells you about writing, which is the Carlene waters, Cece Lira and Bianca Murray podcast, they go over this when they do their critique. This is what I worked when I was an editorial intern. This is the format that I was encouraged to do, and I found it just really digestible on being able to, when you get thousands of queries a month, being able to really quickly identify when someone is being able to pitch their story and if it's the right pitch for what someone is looking for. So the hook book cook method, basically, paragraph one or section one, you want to hook the agent. This is only going to be about one to two sentences, and it's quick. A query letter as a whole should always be able to fit single spaced on one page in a Microsoft word document. Times new Roman, twelve point font, single space. Right. If you're going over that, it's too long. So you want to be able to keep it in this and that hook section, the book section. And I'll go into details in a section. The book section is the most important part of the query letter. The book is that back cover copy. So if you were to turn your book over when it's published and you read the back cover, that's what you're pitching. Right. Sometimes people go to Amazon for examples and I just always am careful to say that when books have, are very successful and have been out for a long time, that copy is going to change. It might not be the best example to use. So something like Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets, which is one that I have worked closely on, I would never write that back cover that you read on Amazon for a pitch to an agent because that has already proven that it sells fine, right. So it's like things have been switched up because people basically know what that story is. When you're actually pitching your story, there are specific things that we want to zoom in on and hit, and I'm going to go over those in a second with you. But you were pitching the back cover copy. Most important section of the query letter. Last section is the cook. This is the author bio. And this is another one that I think writers can overthink. You don't need to stress out about this. It could be another, you know, one two sentence type of paragraph. And then we're encouraged also now to have heard a lot of encouragement now to do a call to action at the end. So, you know, I always say saying thank you is always a good thing to do. And then a call to action and then a sign off, you know, sincerely, your name. Right. I always encourage also putting your website in there if you have a website, because that's a good way for them to go check you out quickly. And now let's go into the sections if you want. So the first section, the hook, specifically what you're doing here is you're capture, you're capturing their attention, right. You're getting them to read the next section, which is that back cover blurb. And what you need to do in order to do this is have a connection piece. So this shows that you have done your research on the agent and you are querying a specific. You're querying them for a specific reason. That reason might be just because they are representing your genre and your story does something that they like, like loves redemption arcs. And you mentioned if it applies to your story, you might pull that out. It might be something that you heard them say on a podcast that really resonated with you and you want to share why you like them, just like you would a cover letter. When you're applying for a job, you're looking for the specific reason why you're querying this agent. And when you address the agent, which I skipped over, but you're addressing you know, dear their first name or dear their first and last name. That is, that is just showing that you've done your research and we want to see that. And this is the part that would be fine tuned for every query letter. This is why you never just send out batches of query letters all at one time to ten plus agents, because the query letter should be revised for each. And the back cover is going to stay the same in all your query letters. Right. The bio is probably going to stay the same, but that first paragraph is going to switch up a bit and cater towards that agent's attention. You also need to pitch, sorry, my dog scratching his car.

Emily:

No worries.

Abigail K Perry:

You also need to pitch the book title, which should be in all caps, not italics. And that because you're mentioning your book title and you want to stand out, you should mention the word count, which is going to give us an idea of, is this the right word count, length for the genre that you're pitching, which is the other thing that you need to pitch. You need to pitch the genre. So title, all caps, word count, genre. And you're going to give us an idea, quick idea, of what the book is about. So your premise or your log line. Right. In this first paragraph, you might also include comparable titles. I like to see two comparable titles. If you have them on the. If you, if you're going to pitch them. I have heard that if you, I have heard that bad comparable titles is worse than no comparable titles. So if you're really not confident in this area, it's not going to be something that is demanded in a query letter in order to get someone to read back cover. Sometimes agents don't like them. Most agents do like them because when an agent is selling to an editor, they are pitching comps in order to sell to the editor. So this helps just really give a ground us and give us an idea of where the book fits in the market or book could fit in the market. And if you were to go into a bookstore, imagine this. If you're going to a bookstore, what books are your, what book is your manuscript standing next to? Right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

So you're looking for a specific aspect in a comparable title that is going to also be something that the agent would like. Right. And it's going to show that it sold well. It's going to show that it's recent. So we're looking for comps that have been published in the last one to five years. I actually have heard Allison Hunter is a literary agent at Trellis that came on, on lit match. And she talked about how sometimes now it's even preferred that you pitched a contemporary title with like a podcast or a popular tv show or something, because we're having a lot of medium there, so you can combine them as long as you have a contemporary title as well. And I also think that when you're pitching comparable titles, you shouldn't be pitching the same aspect that you're pulling out in each title. We should see a different aspect for each title in order to give us, really give us the sense of what the story is about.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

So it's all focused on hooking it. Right. And this is done in about one to two sentences. And then you move into the back cover or the blurb. And this is the most important part because this is where you're pitching your book, right? Yeah. And the best way to practice doing this is to go into a bookstore and turn the book over. That is something like yourself, comparable titles, and just see how this is formatted. This can be about one to two, very brief, many paragraphs. You're not giving away the whole story. This is not a synopsis. You're not giving away big plot twists. What you are giving us is grounding us this idea of a sense of character and what makes them ironic for their story. You know, their status quo, their current world. You're going to give them, you're going to identify conflict. So an inciting incident, key conflict that is going to throw their world off course. Right. And then you're going to bring us into this compelling mental picture of what the book is going to be about, what they're going to do once they're faced with that initial catalyst or inciting incident conflict. And this can kind of generalize. Imagine what act two is and where act three might be going, but we're not going to get into act three. Sometimes in the second mini paragraph, you might end with the midpoint because that is going to raise the stakes even. Well, every single child is raising the stakes, but raise the stakes even further. And understanding stakes, what's really at stake in the story is super important in a back cover, because if we don't see stakes, it's not going to work. Right. You also are going to give an idea of plot because you're always pitching what the story is about. Right. And you need to show us that through what you're pitching. So, yes, technically you're telling us the plot, but you're showing us through what the character is doing, how they're responding to conflict and why that's bringing us into the plot and immersed in all of that will be the setting as well.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

So those are the key elements we're looking for for back cover. So you can look at really good examples. I love the. An example would be like the collective, the collective regrets of Clover by Mickey Brammer. Does an excellent job at pitching back cover. H is for Hawk is a memoir that does an excellent job at pitching back cover, something that you can go look at. And it's just a super concise way, bringing us into the story, immersing us in the character, their situation, what they care about, you know, their want. What they want in the story is going to be clear why that's going to be challenging for them and how they're going to go about their plot in order to try to accomplish or achieve that want. And then if you want to, after you pitch the story, you might have a summary quickly to bring it back to why the agent would like it, reinforcing what this story is really about. And I wouldn't go too far into this because what I'm hesitant about is that sometimes writers try to do this and they make the mistake at, instead of pitching plot, telling the agent what the story is about thematically. But you're not pitching theme in the story. Right. Theme isn't going to sell your story. It's going to make your story beautiful. Right. Yeah, but it's not going to sell your story. It's, you know, the manuscript needs to prove that. And this final paragraph might sum up the key selling points as to what this story is really about, what the character is really struggling with, and what they're going to learn. But in a way, that brings it back to why the agent might be interested in it or a reader, a target reader would be interested in it. And the reason why you can do that at the end, again, quickly, like one, two sentences. The reason why you can do that at the end is because you already have proven what this, like, why the story is going to sound, why the story sounds interesting in the back cover.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

So if you only depend on that, like final paragraph, it's going to. It's going to hurt your query letter, right? Yeah, but if you pitch it well, then it's a nice way to sum it up. I don't like rhetorical questions. A lot of writers trying to pitch with rhetorical questions. It's not that they can't be interesting. If you go on Amazon, you might find a lot of rhetorical questions and then, well, they won't.

Emily:

They.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. Why am I not doing the rhetorical question? And my answer to them is because often when writers are writing rhetorical questions, they're using it as a scapegoat from unintentionally, but they're using it as a scapegoat to actually pitch the story. And I always say, if you were to exclude that rhetorical question, would we understand what the story is about? And if the answer to that is no, then you can see that the rhetorical question isn't adding that one two punch at the end. It's trying to hold the whole back cover up. So maybe the rhetorical questions can work. It's not that queries are rejected because of rhetorical questions. What I'm hesitant about is if the rhetorical question is included, but there hasn't been great execution on pitching the back.

Emily:

Covers to work without it.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, you have to be able to take it out and have it still be captivating. Right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

And then you move into the cook section or the author bio. And writers really stress about this because I think that they worry that if they don't have a ton of writing credentials, that they're not going to be appealing in order to represent, and that's not the case at all. So many agents, agents love their slush, right? There's a reason why they're in their slush every day. There's a reason they're always constantly looking for more authors to take on, you know, for the most part, and more books to sell. And the bio here, if you have writing credentials, you absolutely need to include them because you want to include that. If you've written for magazines or if you publish other books, like, definitely include those. But if you don't have them, don't stress about it. No one's going to pass on you because you don't have a writing credential yet. Right. You might have something you just want to share, something simple about yourself. And if ideally, writing focused. But also you might share a little, you don't need to go into, like, way off course, but you might share some personal details, like if you, where you live or your family, or you might have, like, a one sentence that might be a little fun fact that might stand out to someone. I like to say, especially if you're looking at anything that would show why you're specifically anything that would show that, why you're an expert or the ideal writer for your story. And those are the fun facts that I like to look for. So I remember there was a writer I worked with on a query letter once. And a lot of her story was based in Morocco, and she had lived multiple years in Morocco. So she mentions that in her bio because that proves, okay, you're more an ideal writer for this story because you have backbone in understanding the setting. Right?

Emily:

Yeah, that's important, too, when it comes to hot topic issues or touchy things that you want to be able to say, I am the right person to tell this story, or I have expertise in XYZ. Yeah, that can be helpful, but don't overthink that again. If you're just writing a fantasy novel about dragons, let's say you don't have to prove that you're the right person to write that story. You can have a cute little fact in there.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. You can just tell us about what you do. What is your profession? You know, a working mom? Are you full time with the kids? Are you. Do you have a life experience or something that has inspired this story? You know, it's like you can. You can give those in there, but basically, like you said, don't overthink it. Don't. You don't need to. You don't need to basically put fluff details in there just because you're afraid that the bio is too short. Right. Because ultimately, they're going to sell your book because they love the book. Right. They're going to represent the book because they love the book. So the bio is going to make them interesting. I will say it's worth having an author, website and a social media presence. Is that going to make or break your offer of representation? Depends if you're fiction or nonfiction. Right. So if you're a fiction writer, I always say, don't stress about it. It's worth getting a website going. It's worth getting a social media presence going in some way because authors want to see that you're going to have some skin in the game when it comes to marketing, but it's not going to be something that they're like, you have no, you don't have enough followers. So I'm not going to represent you because you're in this to learn and to grow, and you can build that as you're writing your stories. Right. Nonfiction, on the other hand, is a different game because nonfiction sells proposals, they pitch proposals so the book isn't actually completed, and the publisher and the agent offer presentation and purchase the book before the book is complete. So they need to see a strong social media presence. I think Megan Stevenson is an expert in helping people write nonfiction proposals and then pitching to agents. And when I interviewed her, I think she even talked about how she doesn't even, she doesn't even ask people to, she doesn't even collaborate with people until they've built this presence up because it's not going to be successful. So you need to have some proven records that sales are going to come in because of your social media presence or your presence in general, whatever field it is when you're pitching a proposal. But again, that's very different than pitching a fiction manuscript. So it just depends where you are.

Emily:

Yeah. Oh, that's so helpful. It's so helpful to break down those pieces because it's one of those things that's like simple but not right. And so I'm curious, like, do you have a, do you have any places where you send folks when they are first working on their query letter? And they're like, I get the concept, but how do I actually do this? Are there places or resources that you would point folks to? Obviously, you already mentioned reading the backs of other books, especially comparative titles, but do you have any others?

Abigail K Perry:

So I think it depends what you're looking for more information on. So it's like if you want to look for agent research, there my some recommendations that I say is go into a bookstore, go into a library, go into the acknowledgement section and start looking at what agents represent, what books, because that's my favorite way. Because a writer very rarely, if ever, is always going to, and very rarely are they not going to acknowledge their agent. Right. I think it happens one time that I've seen, and that's, that's not a common thing. So an agent's name is going to be in there. They might not represent that writer anymore, but they do represent that book, right?

Emily:

Yep.

Abigail K Perry:

So I think that's the big thing that you're looking for. Why? What agent represented this book? And is that someone that I then go do further research on? You know, booksellers and librarians are the champions of selling books, so talk to them. If you're working for, if you're looking for comparable titles, give some aspects onto what you think stands out about your book and have them guide you in the right direction as to what might stand out for comps. That's a great resource. That way, obviously, there are so many great podcasts out there to get more information on when it comes to query letters. I think the shit no one tells you about writing is going to be the number one that people think about because Carly and Cece literally do a hoax with books segment at the beginning and do live critiques in that way. There's also a lot of people out there. You know, I'm, I'm talking about querying. There's a lot more, a lot more writers and book coaches out there talking about querying. So there's a lot of great blog articles I think, that you can read. I mentioned that I worked as the content blogger at the write practice for a while. They can have some great resources on writing the manuscripts. So if you're finding that there's some manuscript issues, you might go look at some featured blogs there. Their DOI MFA is another great resource that I like to think about. Jane Friedman obviously understands publishing, so she's like, you know, the holy grail when it comes to publishing information.

Emily:

Great information. Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

You mentioned earlier, too, is like publishers Marketplace, right? Publishers weekly, the bookseller, when you're trying to learn more about the business. So these are all areas that you can think about when it comes to querying. Specifically for tips on how to query, I think that you want to also be taking advantage of opportunities. If you ever go to conferences and there are opportunities to pitch, do it right. Because if you, if there's ever an opportunity for you to get some feedback from the professionals, do it because that is where that's going to be, where you get specific, be it subjective, right? Because each agent is going to have some subjective. But in general, if you start to see consistent feedback on things that are not working with your query, then that's going to be a focus that you can concentrate on and ideally turn your rejections into requests.

Emily:

Awesome. I will list everything that you just mentioned in the notes for folks who are listening. If you want to go check out those links, they will be in the show notes. Awesome. We've talked a lot about the rules of querying. There's a standard structure. There are standard conventions for how to do it, how to write the letter, all of those things. Are there ever reasons to break those rules? One of the rules that I think at least when I was creating was really standard, was you want to write it in third person, not first. And so at least the book blurb part. And I know that that's changing in terms of book jacket copy, but those types of things, like the structure of the letter or the point of view of the letter or how folks are writing it, are there ever reasons to break the rules to stand out?

Abigail K Perry:

Generally? I'm going to say no to that, because why break something that works, you know? And I think that this is where it's like, remember that this is sales copy. So I think that when people are doing something like they want to write in first instead of third person, it's because they're thinking, oh, this is going to make it stand out with. With the reader more because I'm really going to immerse them in my character. But the story immerses us in the character. Right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

And this is pitching the book itself, so sometimes we might do something stylistically and it might miss. Right. And I think that you don't need to get. You don't need to get really stylistically. Not that, like, you know, style is not going to help you. Voice is going to help you. You need to sound. You need to be a good writer. Right. But I think ultimately it's this idea of when you are pitching, there is a preferred format for it, and agents are zoning in on, can I sell the story? And what? I like the story.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

And you don't need to get too fancy with that.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

And I think if you overthink it, then it might throw it off versus aid it.

Emily:

Yeah. I think a lot of times that I get that question when folks are worried that their letter is not going to stand out, and so they're trying to think of some clever way to get it to stand out. But I think ultimately it comes down to you need your story to stand out. Right. Like, that's the thing that people. It's not you and your cleverness that your agent is necessarily looking for at first. They're looking for a story that they can sell. And so if you focus in on making sure that your story sounds like something they want to read, like that, that's where you should put your focus, not on necessarily trying to be clever, but I understand where people are coming from. They asked that.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. I mean, it's almost like this. You're just looking for any way that you are going to be memorable. Right. But I think you're memorable through your research. I think you're memorable through. You've proven that the story is interesting. Right. You know, it's the same concept of no story is original. Right. We're all writing a story in some way that has been told before in its own way. So when people say, I don't have any comparable titles, that's actually, you know, there are no comparable titles to what I'm writing. That's actually a red flag to agents because they're trying to say, well, if this hasn't proven that it can sell before, why are we going to be able to sell it now. Right. So it's like that. You need to have a target readership now. They're, you know, for a long time, the publishing industry, industry has been very white. So when it comes to more diverse books, it might be more challenging to find comparable titles because unfortunately, there aren't as many out there on the market. Luckily, things are shifting and there might be more comparable titles now, but there might be exceptions in that case. But ultimately, as a whole, you usually can find those comparable titles. And I think that it's the same concept. It's that prove it by the story. Right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

And if you can pitch the story, that's going to be ultimately what gets offers of representation and what's going to allow you to stand in your own 2ft in a way that makes you stand out because you've already done the work.

Emily:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, a couple more questions before we wrap up. This has been amazing. I think listeners are really going to love this conversation. So something that I keep hearing all over the place from, like, all kinds of different corners of this industry lately is that querying is harder than ever right now. People keep saying that. And so I'm curious, like, do you think that that's true? If so, you know, why and is there anything we can do about it?

Abigail K Perry:

So this, I've heard this question a lot as well, and I don't know if it's harder than ever. I think that the industry is very competitive and maybe more people are pitching more books, and maybe that is why it's becoming harder than ever. I do think that. I guess I'm going to. I might backtrack a little bit on that answer. I think that it might. It might be a little bit more difficult because we've seen less editors. So, you know, so writers are pitching to editors and their publishers might be taking on, there might be like fewer spots per book. So that's where it might be getting more competitive. So the querying might be getting more competitive or harder than ever because there are less spots when it comes to selling to the publishers. Now, I think that ultimately it's about research and having strategy when it comes to the query package. When I hear that it's harder than ever. It's always been hard. Yeah. Right. And I think that that's the thing, is, like, do I have factual evidence on is it harder than ever? You'd need to probably talk to a literary agent to get that information. I don't have those statistics, but I think that ultimately, I think it's always been hard. And I worry that people ask that question because they're looking for validation or they're feeling insecurity and their ability to dive into this process and they're, they're already fearing rejection. And rejection is going to happen, unfortunately. Right. It's going to happen for the majority of your queries. And I think that you would just have to keep asking yourself, not what you know, I think you just need to keep asking, just reinforcing that idea of this isn't the end. Like this rejection isn't the end. It's only the end when you decide that you're done querying and you might reach a place where it's time and you just say like this, either this book needs to be shelved, it's not, this book needs to be shelved, it's not the right timing for it, or you might be exhausted. Right. You know, emotionally exhausted with it, and it's, okay, maybe traditional publishing isn't where you want to go. I always say that if you want to try traditional publishing, you try traditional publishing first because you can't self publish a book and then traditionally publish it. There are the outliers. We have the Colleen Hoovers and we have, you know, Andy Weyer, but, and we have 50 shades of gray. But I think that ultimately most agents, they don't want to touch copyright material. So if you want to try traditional publishing, then do it. Give it a go. And just know what your boundaries are, know what your limitations are. And if you're ready, if you just want to keep persevering and persevering and persevering, there are tons of success stories, too. It might take time, right? It might, it might take, it also kind of takes luck sometimes, right? But if you go into this strategy and preparation, you're already going to exceed the majority of people who pitch because you did your research. And I think that's a big thing. Like people, when they hear that querying is harder than ever, when I say it's always been hard, a lot of the times people don't prepare and really understand what it takes for a query letter to stand out or what it takes for a synopsis to stand out, or they don't do their work on the sample pages. They don't go to the conferences and try to make the networking. Not that you have to do that, but it's another, you know, it's another strategy that you can take is trying to get in and get these, get this feedback, this professional feedback. And I think that the more prepared that you are, the better you're going to perform in the actual query process because you've done the work.

Emily:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great answer. Okay. Last but not least, are there any common pitfalls that you see authors make in the querying process or in their query letters that you would just kind of red flag? Don't do this.

Abigail K Perry:

Yes. Yes. So I actually, I wrote this down, so I'm going, I love it. I want to pull this up. Before I do that, I also wanted to say when you were asking for resources, I mentioned Savannah. Savannah Gilbo. She is absolutely phenomenal. Fiction writing made easy. If you want to learn how to write a manuscript that works like listen to fiction writing made easy, go, I always say go to fantastic podcast and take any of her courses. Sorry. And take any of her courses because she is amazing and you're going to learn a lot with her. I also really love Daniel David Wallace.

Emily:

Yes.

Abigail K Perry:

And he is amazing. I love his summits and I think that he, there's so much to learn from. They're probably two of my favorites out there who are doing work. And I mentioned author accelerator. So author accelerator does a ton of with, with, uh, with valuable information and resources. So those are my three big plugs.

Emily:

Because I love them.

Abigail K Perry:

Um, for the pitfalls, going back to the pitfalls. Easy query letter don'ts to avoid, I say, so don't use gimmicks. This kind of goes back into like, trying too hard. Right. Yeah. Um, you don't, you don't want to be desperate, basically, when it comes to querying, but you want to be passionate about what you're pitching. Right. So don't tell an agent where it fits in their, listen, a lot of agents know their list. They don't need to be told where it's going to fit. It might not fit where you think it's going to fit. Right. Don't tell an agent how they feel. They'll feel about it because you don't know how they're going to feel about it and you don't want to basically ensure something that you can't insure. Right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

Don't exceed submission length requirements, don't add attachments. A lot of times, right. And a lot of the times now it's going to be most people are doing query, query manager, query tracker. I forget which one it is.

Emily:

Query tracker. Yeah.

Abigail K Perry:

Yeah. A lot of people are doing query tracker. So you're actually submitting in that. So you have to see how, what the submission guidelines are follow. Submission guidelines right. Like, make sure that you follow the submission guidelines. Pay attention to that. Avoid grammar mistakes, but don't stress about this. Yeah. You know, I think I'm gonna make a break it. No. Like, one copy, like, one typo is not going to be what.

Emily:

Especially your first pages. Like, that's not, that's not what I'm looking for.

Abigail K Perry:

Right, exactly. Use present tense. So, I'm sorry. Don't use present tense. So this is something to avoid. Right. So you mentioned this. So don't use present tense. You're writing in third. You're, you know, third person. Um, even if your story's in the past, like, you don't want to do that. Don't oversell it, because you can't promise anything. You don't know how the market's going to work out. Uh, don't over explain the book. So when we talked about length, remember to keep it in that one page. Focus on the big picture, not the subplots. Okay?

Emily:

Yes.

Abigail K Perry:

And that can go into the over explaining. Avoid naming too many characters, places, or groups. Basically, two names is what you want to hold on to sometimes. You might have multi pov, and you might need to name multiple point of views, and you need to name those characters if you need to do that. But ideally two names of maybe three names over three names, it gets to a lot of names, and they just won't be memorable. You're going to start to lose what you're selling. Skip rhetorical questions. I mentioned that already. Be specific and concise, not vague. So the more specific you can be to set the stage of who the character is, the setting, what the, what they're actually doing in the plot. You don't need to generalize, necessarily unfancy words like pitch the story. So get as specific as you can. Don't write in the character's voice. Write in yours. Right. Don't give everything away. It's not a synopsis. And don't be a jerk.

Emily:

Don't be a jerk.

Abigail K Perry:

Right. There's no reason to lash out on an agent. I know that rejection can be hard, but there's no reason to lash out an agent. They're not doing anything personal. They spend, actually, a lot of time and heart and passion into reviewing manuscripts and often giving feedback on something that they're not even going to sell. So please, please, please be respectful of that. And, you know, that's, it's just the publishing world is small as well, so you want to just there people too. Good literary citizen as you go out and pitch.

Emily:

Awesome yeah. Well, this was fantastic. Everybody go check out lit match for resources. And then also, I'm going to put all the all the wonderful resources that you listed in the show notes. But this has been fantastic. Abbie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been so, such a pleasure.

Abigail K Perry:

Of course. Thanks, Emily. And I hope that this helps writers. Thanks so much for inviting me on.

Emily:

I have no doubt that it will. Thanks so much. Okay. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list. Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night. Link in the show notes. We'll see you there.