From the course: Sell Your Novel to a Major Publisher

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Part 1: Hook their attention

Part 1: Hook their attention

From the course: Sell Your Novel to a Major Publisher

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Part 1: Hook their attention

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- [Jessica] Anyone reading query letters at an agency, whether it be an intern, assistant, a hired reader, or the agent himself is guaranteed to be reading hundreds of query letters a day. So many in fact, that their eyes start to glaze over. I spoke to an agent about this once. She told me how boring it can be to read query after query after query, most of which she admitted were terrible. So there lies your first job. Write a query letter that is not boring and not terrible. It should jolt the reader back awake. It should have an introduction that causes their sagging eyelids to snap back open, and their body to be at full alert because hey this one looks interesting finally. In my query letters, I always like to start with a snappy opening line, tag line, provocative question, or sometimes even an interesting statistic or quote to grab the reader's attention. Something that makes them immediately say, oh this is going to be good. A tagline is a catchphrase or snappy slogan often…

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