How to Write Quality Query Letters: Write a Great Headline

The first line of your query letter is the most important line you’ll write. If you capture the reader’s interest with the first line, your chances of selling your article will improve dramatically. Every writer should take at least a little time to study copywriting and sales letters, because a query letter is essentially a sales letter. You are attempting to sell an article by writing a custom sales letter to a single potential publisher.

The best way to start off a query letter is to treat the first line like it was the headline for your article. Center it above the rest of the text and make it as provocative as possible. Try to match the style of your target publication when you write the headline. Cosmopolitan and Woman’s Day are both publications aimed at women, but their style and content are different. In most cases, you would want to write a different headline for your query letter if you were pitching it to one magazine rather than the other.

Beyond being provocative, the headline should give the editor some idea of the format and style of your article. For example, “Ten Ways to Smash Christmas Debt” would clearly be a list article while, “Do You Blow Your Christmas Budget?” could be a list but sounds more like a quiz or a series of questions and answers. Here are some provocative headlines from recent articles on the web. Note that the style of headline matches the style of the publication. Also remember that I am discussing the headlines, not the content of the articles.

• Beat the Holiday or Financial Blues: 9 Tips for Making Yourself Happier in the Next 30 Minutes — Zen Habits
• How to Deal with Cranks, Flamers and Trolls — Men with Pens
• I Got Off My Ass and Did It –  Someday Syndrome
• What Freelancers Can Learn From The Dog Whisperer — Beyond the Rhetoric
• The 10 Free Resources Every Writer Needs — Write to Done
• When witnesses take over the news — BuzzMachine
• Doctors Observe First Known Case of Sleep E-Mailing — Techcult
• What Do Prostitutes and Rice Have in Common? — Freakonomics
• Social Media Bought My Car — Remarkablogger

After your headline, consider writing a subhead that provides additional information and clarity. A headline that is meant to attract attention is not always as informative as it is provocative. The subhead gives you a chance to explain the content of your proposed article. You want to capture the editor’s attention, and then you want to give them the essential flavor of your article before you move on to the meat of your query.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Offer them what they don’t have

The best way to convince a publication to purchase an article from you is to offer them something new and interesting. If you pitch them an article that sounds similar to a previous article in their publication, or something similar that ran in a rival publication, you probably aren’t going to make the sale. Most publications aren’t in the business of repeating the same material over and over again.

It can be difficult to come up with truly original ideas, especially when you are dealing with a publication that caters to a narrow topic. A magazine about model trains or a web site about search engine optimization doesn’t have much new ground to cover after a while. Still, if you consider yourself a knowledgeable writer about one of those subjects, you should be able to find a fresh approach to the material. You may not come up with an idea that has never been used before, but at least try to find a new way to present the material. Often, it is a good idea to get more specific. There may be many search engine optimization articles about using keywords, but if you take the time to discuss a small part of a specific technique, you might find some ground that has not been covered.

When you do have a new idea, or a new take on the subject, make sure that you emphasize that early in your query letter. The fact that you aren’t offering the same old story should be one of your key selling points in your query letter. Your goal is to stand apart from everyone else. It is worth spending a little extra time thinking about how to make your idea original. Another good way to do this is to add a little personal experience to your pitch or to pick an overriding metaphor that hasn’t been used before, such as comparing model train enthusiasts to politicians. No matter how you go about it, find something new to say if you want to make a sale.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Do your research

A good query letter can mean the difference between a rejection and a sale. In the days of email and web clients, many writers have lowered their standards. They dash out quick notes rather than make formal queries. They use casual language and give only brief explanations of what they plan to do. For some people, this works. Two dozen quick, badly written queries may be more cost effective than one well-crafted query. If you do care about quality though, and want to show that you are a quality writer with a solid idea, than this series is for you. Part one is all about getting to know your potential client. 

Look for submissions guidelines 

A magazine or web site’s submissions guidelines are the best advice you are going to get about how to approach the potential client. They may have a format they prefer, or they may let you know what topics they are looking for and what topics to avoid. They might also tell you what they pay, who the appropriate editors are, and what lengths are preferred. Some magazines may still prefer printed and mailed submissions over email. Whatever the case, the submissions guidelines are your first, bet advice about how to approach your potential client.

Read the articles 

You need to get to know your potential client. Read through their articles. For web sites, it is generally easy to find archives and review past articles. For a magazine without a web presence you may need to pick up several issues and examine them. You don’t have to read every word of every article, but you want to familiarize yourself with the writing style and the sorts of subjects they write about. You also want to be sure that your idea won’t be identical to something they have published recently. 

Figure out who is who 

You need to identify the appropriate person to receive your query. Sometimes you can get this information from the submissions guidelines, but in many cases you are going to have to actively look for the appropriate person. With magazines, there is generally a masthead somewhere in the publication. The masthead is a list of all the relevant people at a publication, from the publisher to the editors to the writers. You want to look for the editor that best seems to match your submission. For example, if you wanted to submit an interview with an artist to a regional publication, you would look for the arts editor or perhaps the lifestyle editor. 

When searching a web site for the appropriate person, the best places to check are the “about” page and the “contact” page. If you cannot find an appropriate person, it is acceptable to email the publication and ask for the name and title of the person who can review your submission. Using the correct title for a person is important. Identifying a person by the wrong title is bad. If you are unsure, just use their name.

I See Dead Projects

One of the great things about blogging is that, for the most part, there is little lead time. You write something and then you publish it. If you’re lucky, you get feedback and if it is particularly good you get repeat visitors. You might write ahead, gathering several days or even weeks worth of posts in advance, but for the most part you are writing as you go.

In the world of technical writing, you are often assigned to projects that last for months or even years, and in many cases the material you write today may not be read for a long time. Occasionally, it won’t get read at all, at least not by the people you intended it for. This has been a fairly regular occurrence in my career. My first major project lasted a year. At the end of that year, the company was part of a merger and moved to the other company’s software platform, negating all of my work.

Later on in my career, I documented what was expected to be a major product for a very large hardware/software company.  Because of the lead time for localization, I had to complete the documentation two months before the product was to be released. I had just finished up and sent off my work to the translators when word came down that the project was being scrapped due to a poor business case. Poor business case was code for, “our competitors decided to include this tool for free in their new operating system”.

My most recent bout of deadprojectitis hasn’t been quite as severe. The product I have been working on for the past two years was released and most of my documentation is at least available to customers. Nonetheless, the product is on its way out. It won’t be gone today or tomorrow, but it is being replaced by something newer and shinier and almost certainly better. The change came suddenly. Just a month ago, it looked like the product would be getting a major overhaul that would have me up to my armpits in documentation for the next six months, but things change.

In all of these cases, far more than my own efforts were negated. There were programmers, engineers, project managers, product managers, business analysts and a host of other people who had their efforts negated. These things happen. Companies change direction, market forces change people’s needs, competitors beat you. This is the world of business and it is frustrating. In some cases people don’t just see their hard work pushed aside, they actually lose their jobs. There isn’t always another project waiting around the corner. These are the realities of the business world. In the current economy, it is something you’ll see more and more of. Companies will be cutting expenses, and often that comes in the area of new development, or the elimination of existing products.

There is no magic solution to this problem. It helps if you can be assigned to more than one project, so that you aren’t defined by a single product, but those choices aren’t always your to make. This is the business world. When things do wrong you pick yourself back up, dust yourself off and get back in the game.

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