The “Why Me” Section.  Many agents want to know why you are querying them instead of another agent.  They won’t be impressed if you’re randomly querying every name you found on a website.  There are two main ways to answer this question.

First, you may have a personal connection to this agent.  Perhaps you met at a writing conference or communicated with them on social media.  Or maybe someone they know read your manuscript and recommended that you send it to this agent.  If you have that type of personal connection, definitely mention it up front at the outset of your query letter.

Most of the time, though, you won’t have anything like that.  Don’t despair, there’s a second way to answer this “Why me?” question.  On their websites, most agents tell you which genres they’re interested in representing, what writing styles or plots they enjoy, and some of the authors / books they’ve represented.  You can also check websites like Manuscript Wishlist, where agents provide specific updates about what they’re looking for right now.  Using that info, tell the agent why you think they’d be a good fit to represent your book.  E.g., “You’ve had great success representing other legal thrillers.”  Or, “You mentioned that you like neuro-diverse protagonists.  My novel realistically portrays Max’s struggle with schizophrenia.” 

Is this section mandatory?  There’s a split of opinion on that.  Some agents insist you include it.  Others don’t feel it’s ever necessary.  My advice?  First, check the agent’s website for their submission guidelines.  If they address this issue, do whatever they say.  Otherwise, use your judgment.  If it’s obvious why you’ve queried someone, maybe you can omit this section (e.g., they only represent cozy mysteries, and you’ve written a cozy mystery).  If it’s less obvious, spell it out explicitly.  For example: “I think you’d be a great fit to represent me because your profile says you’re interested in books with neuro-diverse characters and twisty plots.”    

Your Author Bio.  If you’ve published other novels, mention that, and include how well your book(s) sold.  Otherwise, if this is your first novel, this section will be very short (one or two sentences).  Tell them something that provides reason to believe you’ve written a good novel, especially about the subject matter you’ve tackled.  Maybe you have expertise in this field (e.g., I’m a lawyer writing a legal thriller), or perhaps it’s an “own voices” situation.  Maybe you’ve won a writing award or taken advanced writing classes.

If you have a platform you can use to market your book to a particular audience, make sure to mention that.  For example, do you have 50,000 followers on social media, or are you the author of a widely read blog?  Anything that suggests you can pitch your book to a decent-sized audience will do.  This is more of an issue for non-fiction; agents don’t expect first-time novelists to have a big platform.  But if you do, so much the better.

Finally, agents aren’t interested in your life story, but if you both attended the same university or both have the same hobby, it can’t hurt to mention things like that.   

The Basic Data.  You must include the following info, preferably in the first paragraph:  (1) your book’s title; (2) your genre; and (3) your word count.  If you omit any of those items, many agents will instantly stop reading your query letter. 

The title must be in ALL CAPS.  It’s fine to put the genre and/or word count in parentheses.  For example:

“Please consider my legal thriller, THE LAWYER WHO HEARS VOICES (95,000 words).”

Sequence:  Putting It All Together .  We’ve now talked about the five major sections, but how do you piece everything together? 

Your opening paragraph should be short, usually just a couple of sentences.  It should include either your hook + the basic data, or the “Why Me” + basic data.  If you have a great personal connection (e.g., you met this agent at a conference and they invited you to query them), lead with that.  Likewise, if someone famous or well-respected gave you a great review or endorsement, put that up front.  Otherwise, I’d generally recommend starting with the hook, but there’s no hard-and-fast rule.  My query letter starts with the hook + basic data:

Meet Maxwell Grue, a brilliant attorney with schizophrenia. When his first love suffers a tragic loss, they reconnect to seek justice, but soon she’s the one on trial—for murder. Please consider my legal thriller, THE LAWYER WHO HEARS VOICES (95,000 words).

If your hook doesn’t appear in the first paragraph, it needs to go at the beginning of the second, before the Overview begins.  The hook provides context for the Overview, so it must come first. 

The second paragraph is normally the Overview (which can be one or two paragraphs).  After that comes anything else you haven’t included yet:  the “Why Me” section, your author bio, and any comps or other items you elect to include.  There’s no rule about which of these sections should go before the others.  Common sense suggests that you close by thanking the agent for their time and consideration.  

You don’t have to mirror the sequence I chose, but here’s my full query letter just to show you an example of one way you can fit all the pieces together:

Meet Maxwell Grue, a brilliant attorney with schizophrenia. When his first love suffers a tragic loss, they reconnect to seek justice, but soon she’s the one on trial—for murder. Please consider my legal thriller, THE LAWYER WHO HEARS VOICES (95,000 words).

Max is resourceful, fights for his clients, and always thinks two steps ahead. He has bounced back so strong, hardly anyone knows that he still hears venomous voices in his head. One day, his high school sweetheart reappears, twenty years after their bitter falling-out. Widowed by a mass shooting, she hires Max to sue the weapon’s manufacturer. But Crystal is no longer the girl next door, she’s a movie star trying to take down a powerful corporation—the one with secrets worth killing for. Her case thrusts Max into the limelight, threatening to expose his mental illness and destroy his career. And then the cover-up escalates, people are killed, and Crystal is arrested for murder. Now, convinced she’s been framed, Max must risk everything to unravel a diabolical conspiracy—but what if he’s in bed with a killer?

Max is an authentic fictional version of high-functioning, neuro-diverse professionals such as Elyn Saks, and this book “realistically captures the effects of the condition … with great sensitivity.” (Kirkus Reviews said that—although my novel has not previously been published). Its courtroom scenes, which are “remarkable” and “thrilling” (Kirkus again), will remind fans of Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer. And it explores a timely issue, showing how gunmakers can be held accountable for mass shootings, as Max employs the same groundbreaking legal theory that worked in the real Sandy Hook case. You’d be a great fit to represent me because __________ [personalize].

And me? An attorney who’s been featured in the National Law Journal, and still undefeated in court (90 wins, 0 losses), I’m using the same storytelling and trial skills that won all those real cases to transition to a second career as a novelist. If you’d like to know more, please visit my website: marty-harris.com.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

For those who are visual learners, here’s a depiction of each section in my query letter without the words.  This should give you an idea of their relative lengths and how they fit together:

Misc. Other Advice.  Here are a few additional do’s and don’ts:

1.  Read Each Agent’s “Submission Guidelines.”  Not all agents want the same thing in a query letter.  Some have idiosyncratic preferences, and they say so in their posted submission guidelines.  If you ignore those instructions, your query will quickly be deleted.

2.  Avoid Self-Praise.  Your query letter must avoid offering your opinion about the quality of your own writing or the ingenuity of your plot.  Show them that you write well (by writing well in your query letter), don’t tell them your book “contains magnificent prose reminiscent of Hemingway.”  Show them that the scenario you’ve created is interesting (by providing the details we’ve discussed), don’t tell them that your book “has incredible plot twists with a shocking ending that you’ll never see coming!”  Agents want facts in a query letter so they can judge for themselves.  They don’t want your self-opinion.  Exception:  if a respected, independent reviewer praised your writing or plot, you definitely should quote them.

3.  Write in the Present Tense, Third Person.  No matter what tense or POV your novel is written in, query letters are expected to use third person, present tense.  I have no idea why, but it’s a “rule.”  Failure to follow it will scream to agents, “This person doesn’t understand our industries conventions, so their manuscript is probably riddled with rookie mistakes.” 

4.  Use the Same Voice as Your Novel.  If your novel is written in plain, accessible prose, don’t use poetic language in your query letter—and vice versa.  If your protagonist has an attitude and tells his story in that voice, show some of that attitude in your query.  Here’s an example from Joshua Lisec’s query letter for his first book, The Phoenix Reich:

Max Meyers can’t make the grade. He can’t get the girl. And he can’t be the jock. The only thing going for him is his father’s status as hotshot politician. But when Max finds his house engulfed in flames and his dad with a bullet hole in his head, the ruling of suicide sucks worse than the Calc exam he failed last week. Suicide? No flippin’ way!            

Similarly, if your novel’s voice is tongue-in-cheek, show agents some of that humor in your query letter.  E.g.:

MAGIC, SPELLS and ILLUSIONS, INC. is the story of an ordinary young woman who gets a job at a company that turns out to be essentially Magic, Inc., and who finds herself in the middle of a brewing magical war that’s really going to complicate her dating life…. Dating in New York was hard enough before she had magical co-workers meddling in her life and a job she can’t discuss when her date asks, “So, what do you do?”

5.  How Long should the Entire Query Letter be?  When you combine all five sections (hook, overview, author bio, personal connection, and basic info), it should be 250 to 350 words.  Again, less is more, so aim for the lower end of this range.  Nathan Bradsford, a query letter editor who has studied successful queries, found that they almost never exceed 350 words. 

6.  Make sure it’s Addressed to the Right Agent.  When we query, we often send the same letter to dozens of agents.  In the course of copy-and-pasting, some authors carelessly forget to change the salutation.  If you’re querying Andrea Somberg, don’t start the letter with “Dear Timothy.”  This should go without saying, but enough agents mention it in their blogs that this mistake must happen more than you’d think.  Don’t be one of those careless authors.  It makes a terrible first impression and may lead to an automatic “No.”   

That’s it.  I hope this helped, and good luck with your querying!