Please read these essential documents before the session!
Query Letters for Fun and Profit
Your query letter can be an essential step in writing your book and building your career. The attached four-page handout describes how to convince agents and editors to see your work. Your letter gives you the chance to distill your goals as a writer. One reason why now is the best time to be a writer is that you have more options for publishing your book than ever. Even if you self-publish, writing a query letter will enable you to plan your success.
Also included is “Setting Yours Goals”–a 1250-word excerpt from Mike’s book in progress—Writing Success Guaranteed: 9 Superpowers for Making a Living and Changing the World. You and Mike will co-create this lunch with a fun, interactive discussion by volunteering to discuss your goals and how you will write about them in your letter.
You may also write to Mike after lunch with questions or your letter at epml@aol.com.
Bio
Mike Larsen is an author coach who loves helping writers reach their goals by adding value to their readers’ lives. Mike and his late wife Elizabeth Pomada worked in publishing in New York before moving to San Francisco in 1970 and starting Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents in 1972. They were charter members of the Association of Authors Representatives, and sold hundreds of books to more than 100 publishers and imprints, before they stopped seeking new clients.
The agency’s bestsellers include A World Full of Strangers by Cynthia Freeman; The Complete Guide to Disco Dancing by Karen Lustgarten; and Get Anyone to Do Anything and Never Be Lied to Again by David Lieberman. After Cherie Carter-Scott appeared on Oprah, If Life is a Game, These Are the Rules shot to the top of the New York Times list. The book has sold 5 million copies and was published in more than forty countries. First published in 1980, Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives, an international bestseller, continues to sell.
Mike’s books include How to Write a Book Proposal, 5th Edition, by Jody Rein with Michael Larsen (previous editions by Mike sold more than 100,000 copies); How to Get a Literary Agent, now in its third edition; and Guerrilla Marketing for Writers: 100 Weapons for Selling Your Work, coauthored with Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, and David Hancock, now in its second edition. Mike’s next book, Writing Success Guaranteed: 9 Superpowers for Making a Living and Changing the World, is in progress.
Elizabeth and Mike are coauthors of the six books in the Painted Ladies series about Victorian houses, which sparked a national movement and sold more than 400,000 copies. The trade journal Publishers Weekly chose the second book in the series, Daughters of Painted Ladies: America’s Resplendent Victorians, as one of the best books of 1987.
Mike and Elizabeth were cofounders of the San Francisco Writers Conference and the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference. He is eager to offer free consulting to writers about books for change.
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The Hooks, The Book and The Cook
The Three Parts of an Irresistible Query Letter
A query is a one-page, single-spaced letter with three or four indented paragraphs with a space between each. Without sounding self-serving, it explains why, what, and who:
- The Connection Hooks
- The Book
- The Cook
- The Connection Hooks
Being with whatever will best justify reading your work
* A quote about your book (or a previous book) from someone whose name will give it credibility and/or salability. The quote could also be about you.
* The reason you’re writing the agent or editor:
— the name of someone who suggested you contact the person
— a book in which the author thanked the person you’re contacting
— where you heard the person speak
— where you read about the person or something the person wrote
- The Book
The essence of your book:
* Whatever will most excite agents or editors about your book:
— the opening paragraph
— the most compelling fact or idea about your subject
— a statistic about the interest of people or the media in the subject or the number of potential readers
–your book’s depth, scope, or relevance
* A sentence with the title and the selling handle for the book: up to fifteen words that will convince booksellers to stock it and consumers to buy it
* The model(s) for it: the two most similar successful books or published in the last three years (not bestsellers which may sound like overreaching) that prove the market for your book and convey your literary and publishing goals.
* An overview of the book and with its biggest benefit promise to readers
* The book’s biggest markets
* A round number for the actual or estimated word count of your manuscript
* The number of pages in your proposal and sample chapter(s) and how many additional pages of the manuscript, if any, you have ready to send
* (Optional) A list of back matter and how many manuscript pages they will be
* (Optional) The names and/or credentials of people, whose names will give your book credibility and salability, who will give you a foreword and cover quotes
* (Optional) The number and kind of illustrations you will provide with samples in the sample chapter(s)
* (Optional) If you’re proposing a series or standalone books that will sell each other, the subjects or titles of the next two books
* (Optional) Information about a self-published edition of the book that will help sell it
* The Cook
Why you’re the person to write the book:
* Your platform: the most important things you have done and are doing online to give yourself continuing visibility with potential readers, with round numbers if they are impressive: your online activities, links to impressive published work, and media and speaking experience with links to audio and video
* Your promotion plan: the one-to-three most impressive things you will do to promote your book, online and/or off, with numbers, if they’re impressive
* Your credentials; years of research; experience, positions, prizes, contests, and awards in your field
* (Optional) A link to a video query up to two minutes long in which you make the case for your book
Baiting Your Hooks
Here is how to make your hooks effective:
* Assemble your building blocks in the most effective order. Frontload your letter by putting what is most impressive close to the beginning. Include anything else that will convince agents or editors to ask to see your work.
* Rewrite the letter until it’s as convincing as you can make it.
* Get feedback on it, and have someone proofread it.
If your query is as effective as it needs to be, your book is well on the way to a sale.
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Setting Your Goals
When a friend of author Dorothy Parker had a baby, Parker sent her this telegram: “Dear Mary: Good work. We all knew you had it in you.”
What have you got in you? You can’t control the winds that are buffeting writing and publishing, but you can set your sails. You can point your craft in the right direction by having literary, publishing, and personal goals that are in harmony, keep you motivated, and that you align with what it takes to achieve them:
Success is achieving your goals, so your first superpower is setting inspiring goals:
- Your Literary Goals
- Your Publishing Goals
- Your Personal Goals
There is a t-shirt that says: “The unaimed arrow never misses.” The only foolproof way to hit a target is to shoot and call whatever you hit the target. In the 40-million-copy-plus bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey provides a better idea: “Begin with the end in mind.”
The more clearly you see your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them. Make your goals as big or small as you wish and change them whenever you wish.
“If you can see it, you can be it.” —Billie Jean King, tennis pro
- Your Literary Goals
“People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy—and I keep it in a jar on my desk.” —Stephen King
Bestselling literary author David Foster Wallace said: “Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Literary writers trade commercial success for devoting themselves to their craft and writing about what’s important to them and their readers. But literary books also hit bestseller lists.
“I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved, which a cow enjoys on giving milk.” —H.L. Mencken, critic and author
Herman Melville wrote: “I earnestly desire to write the kind of books that are said to fail.” He succeeded with Moby Dick. When he died forty years after its publication, it had sold less than 4,000 copies.
Of course, as comedian George Carlin asked: “If you want to fail and you succeed, which have you done?”
Create a portrait of the writer you want to be. List your short and long-term literary goals, and how you will achieve them by answering these questions:
* What do you want your readers to understand?
* What do you want them to think?
* What do you want them to feel?
* What do you want them to do?
* What are the books, movies, TV shows, or videogames that are models for your books?
* What would you like readers to say to you about your book?
You may aspire to comments like these:
–“Your book is the best book I’ve ever read.”
–“Your book changed my life.”
–Your book is the book I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
–“I’m going to tell everyone I know that they must read your book.”
–“You make every word count.”
–“I couldn’t stop reading.”
–“How soon will your next book be out so I can tell my friends?”
–“I was transported into another world on page one, and I never wanted to leave.”
–“I felt the love you put into your book on every page.”
–“I want to see everything you write.”
–“If you need another early reader for feedback, I’d be honored if you asked me.”
* Which author would you most like to be?
* How many hours a day will you devote to developing your craft and building your presence as a writer?
* What literary legacy do you want to leave?
When you can, start your answers with the word “I.” Get feedback on your goals. Join or start a writer’s group that you can discuss your goals with. Put your answers to these questions on the wall where you write to inspire you and keep you focused.
- Your Publishing Goals
“I am interested in art as a means of living, not as a means of making a living.” —Robert Henri, artist
Setting your publishing goals gives you the chance to envision the success that you want by answering these questions:
* How do you want to publish your books?
* If you want a publisher, what size publisher do you want?
* How big an advance do you want?
* How many books do you want to sell?
* What subsidiary-rights sales would you like?
* How many books do you want to write a year?
* How much money do you want to earn a year as a writer?
* What will you do to achieve your publishing goals?
Pick a Number
Writers have different reasons to take up their calling—to express themselves, to share their work, to create a legacy, or to build their business. Those who also want to make a living balance self-expression with exciting their readers.
Bestselling novelist Jacqueline Susann once said: “Money is applause.” Do you want standing ovations or would you prefer to hear the answer to the question posed by the Zen master Hakuin Ekaku: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Comedian Jackie Mason said: “Money is not the most important thing in life. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.”
How much money you want to earn a year from your writing is a goal that clarifies your other goals. It determines what you write, how you write, and how you promote your work.
Comedian Joan Rivers said: “They say money isn’t the key to happiness, but I always figured that if you had enough money, you could have a key made.”
How much money do you need for the key to your happiness? Would you be happy earning no money, just writing for the pleasure of it? If so, that’s wonderful and liberating. You can write whatever you want, keep it as a legacy or publish it, promote it if you wish, and let readers determine the fate of your work.
If you want to earn a million dollars a year, the only kind of books you can write are bestsellers. Pick a number and write to reach that number. But if you want to earn a million dollars a year writing haiku, you’ve got a problem.
- Your Personal Goals
You are also entitled to a fulfilling personal life, but you need a vision of your personal life that answers these questions:
* Are your personal and professional goals in harmony?
* Can you achieve them without compromising your values?
* How, where, and with whom do you want to live?
* Do the people you care about support your choices?
* What do you want your life to be like in five years?
* What other goals do you want to achieve?
I hope that you will keep growing and evolve in the service of meeting your goals, but the more clearly you can see where you’re going, the more likely you are to arrive.
Stating Your Mission
Capture the essence of all of your goals with a mission statement. Mine is: “My mission is helping writers achieve their goals by bringing their values to their work and adding value to their readers’ lives.” Put your goals and mission statement up where you write.