How To Write The Best Query Letter In Three Steps: The Book, The Hook, and the Cook

Writing a query letter is intimidating. This is the fool-proof way to write one in three easy steps.

In the writing world, if you want to get your novel published, you need to write a query letter to an agent, and that agent is going to take your query letter to write a pitch letter to an editor, and then hopefully your manuscript is going to get published. All of that means literally nothing if you have no idea how to write a query letter in the first place.

And the internet gives you jack all on how to write a query letter well.

Well, my gentle readers, let me give you my quick and dirty way to write a simple, easy query letter after my year-long dig through two novels in the query trenches that got me my agent. After countless classes and chats with agents this is, from my best understanding, what agents are looking for.

The BOOK, The HOOK, and the COOK. What is your novel, why should we be excited about your novel, and why should you write your novel. They all seem like very simple things to you, the author, but they’re things you need to explain to your agent (and subsequently your editor in your pitch letter) to get published.

Let’s start with the BOOK, your first paragraph: This is your “metadata”, or your information about your book. It contains very simple information: Your title, your genre…