Agents & Editors Recommend

To capture an agent’s or publisher’s attention with your query letter, begin with the end in mind. The best queries irrefutably answer the most critical question for any book published today: Why should someone pay up to $28 for your book?

With this end result in mind, you can reverse-engineer: First identify, then highlight the key components of your book that will stop a reader (or agent!) in their tracks.

One thing I’ve learned in my time as an agent is that there is only one thing that an author can truly control: the work. Editors leave, publishing houses merge, trends shift, and—in the middle of that hurricane—there’s always the work. No writer can control their reviews, how many copies bookstores order, what awards they might win. Even the best books do not always get the accolades they deserve.

Working in publishing, in my experience, provides an opportunity to think about what it means to be “independent” in a way that supports the life of the mind and of the writer. Although I’ve been an editor for nearly ten years, I still think of myself as a writer first. From both of these perspectives within the publishing industry, I sometimes think too much can be asked of writing: to make a writer’s life easier or their career more sustainable.

I edit fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narrative, and what unites all of these projects that I’ve had the pleasure of working on is a really strong point of view. My job is not to interfere with that and to protect voice above all else. It’s important for the author to remember that the editor is a proxy for their future readers. Editorial feedback is the opportunity for the writer to hear an unfiltered, immediate response to the work, which reveals not only what requires revision or restructuring but also what is working. Of course, the book is the author’s work.