How to Write Quality Query Letters: Give yourself credit

A great article idea is the most important aspect of a good query letter, but it isn’t the only thing that matters. You don’t just need to sell the publication on your idea; you need to convince the publisher that you are the best person to write the article. Part of this process has to do with your overall writing style and the professionalism of your presentation. The other part is your discussion of your experience, writing credits and other qualifications. You need to show your potential publisher that you are a great writer. This is not the time to be humble. This is the time to brag a little about your abilities and experience.

Before I discuss what you should tell a potential publisher, I should make sure you know what you should NEVER tell them.

• Never tell them that you are a first time writer who is looking for a break
• Never tell them about your personal or money problems
• Never tell them you don’t know the subject well but are looking to learn more

Publications don’t care about your problems. They are looking for good writers. The last thing a publisher wants is to take a chance on someone who may not be able to deliver what they promise. Your goal should be to fill the publisher with confidence, not pity.

The best spot to discuss your qualifications is just before the concluding paragraph of your query letter. You don’t want to waste time or space, so limit the discussion of your qualifications to those that are most relevant to the article you are proposing. For example, if you are proposing an article about the financial impact of divorce, it is relevant to mention that you are a financial advisor and a divorcee, but those same facts would be irrelevant in a query for an article about living with chronic back pain.

You will want to mention a few of your past article credits. Again, they should be the most relevant credits you have. If you have nothing relevant, go with the most prestigious credits that you have, but relevancy trumps prestige. If you are employed as a writer for a particular publication, be sure to include that. If you have very few credits, just include the best that you have and don’t apologize for them. Just put them in and move on. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Here is a sample paragraph from a query letter:

I have been a professional investment counselor for the past fifteen years and was one of the earliest adopters of Internet trading. As a former state representative, I authored several investment fraud bills that are still on the Arizona law books. For the past two years I have written a weekly investment article for Phoenix Business Insider. I have also published investment-related articles in Worthwhile Investor, Smart Stock Analyst and Fund Advocate.

Finally, you should include, along with your query letter, from one to three writing samples. If you are emailing your query, it is acceptable to include links to articles, but if you are sending a query by regular mail, you need to include the actual articles. Remember that you want to include whatever samples are most relevant to your query.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Be real, specific

When a potential publisher reads your query letter, you want to excite them, but don’t promise something you can’t deliver. Not only would this make it difficult for you if you did get the assignment, but a good editor can easily spot ideas that are too broad or unrealistic to make it into their publication. The best query ideas are specific and achievable. For example, if you were pitching an article for a men’s magazine, How To Make Any Woman Go Home with You is general and unrealistic (not to mention creepy) but Six Pickup Lines that Won’t Make You Look Like a Jerk is a little more specific and a little more realistic.

There are two advantages to pitching very specific subjects. The first is that it makes you look more knowledgeable. Specificity and knowledge go hand in hand. Anyone can pitch an idea about picking up women. Even “six pickup lines” is general. If you dig deeper, you might find a more unique perspective. For example, if you have studied linguistics, you might pitch, Why Your Pickup Lines Don’t Work, Six Tips from a Cunning Linguist. If you used to be a bartender you might pitch, The Bartender’s Guide to Picking up Women: Six lines that never work (and three that do).

The second advantage of specificity is that it reduces the risk of you pitching the same idea as someone else. The last thing you want is to pitch a topic your potential publisher has seen (or even published) before. There are limits to how much research a writer can do into the past topics at a magazine, especially if you want to spend more time writing articles than pitching them. Specificity gives you the best chance at originality.

Realistic ideas are the other side of that coin. If you don’t know anything about pickup lines, don’t pitch an article about them. Your query letter should start with some flash, but the body of your letter is going to have to back up that flash. You will need to give examples of what you intend to write about. You not only have to convince your potential publisher that your idea is perfect for them; you have to convince them that you can turn that idea into a great article. If you can’t convince them you are the right person to write the article, your great idea won’t help you.

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.

How to Write a Query Letter

Query letters are a much-debated practice in the writing community. The majority of writers swear by them, but others feel they are a waste of time. There are many successful writers who stick to sending completed manuscripts or informal, ultra-brief queries. This practice has especially grown in the age of email, where a less formal writing style has taken root. See Bob Sassone’s article The Query Trap if you want to look further into that strategy.

Here are some advantages to writing a formal query letter:

• A well-written query letter helps prove to an editor that you are qualified to write the piece.
• Sending completed articles blindly can indicate to an editor that you either failed to sell the article before, are submitting an article that was not written specifically for their publication or are attempting to resell a previously published article.
• Short, informal queries will often go unread or will be given less weight by an editor if they are a stickler for the formal process.
• A formal, detailed query gives you the opportunity to do preliminary research for a piece that can then be quickly converted into an article.
• When submitting a query to an online publication, your query will look better than 90% of the other queries being submitted to that publication.

In the age of email, much can be said for the ability to quickly send off a brief query. This is very possible these days, and may result in more sales than writing a formal query for each publication you wish to write an article for. Still, if you want to impress an editor, online or otherwise, a formal, well-written query letter is a way to do it. Below is a point-by-point description of how to write a query letter.

Know your target

• Study any publication before you submit a query letter.
• Get writer’s guidelines for the publication if they are available.
• Study the publication’s masthead to identify the appropriate editor for your query. Do not rely on Writer’s Market. Editors change jobs frequently.
• You may send the same subject query to more than one publication, as long as they do not compete and you have taken the time to make sure the subject is appropriate for both publications.

Your query letter should have a professional look.

• There should be no spelling or grammar errors.
• Be sure to include the date on your letter. This can be important if you feel later on that your idea has been stolen.
• It should be addressed to the appropriate editor. Use their full name and do not use Mr. Mrs. or otherwise. The exception to this rule is Dr. or other professional title.
• The publication name and address should be correct.
• The salutation should be formal.
• If mailed, the paper and the letterhead should be clean and professional. Standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper should be used.
• Single-space your paragraphs and double-space between paragraphs.
• If mailed, the Query should include Self Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE)so that the editor can return your article or reply to you conveniently.
• Include your name, postal address, email address and phone number in the letterhead or at the bottom of the letter.

Your query letter should be interesting

• Your query should introduce a fresh idea/topic/angle.
• The idea should be set off in the type so it is easily viewed.
• Your idea should be presented at the very beginning of your letter.
• Your lead-in should excite the editor.

Your query letter should be specific

• Keep your query letter to a single page in length.
• Lay out exactly what you intend to include and exclude from your article.
• Give a proposed article length. Round to the nearest 100 for under 2000 words and to nearest 500 for articles over that length. The length should be appropriate for that publication.
• Identify which section of the publication you believe your article fits within.

Your query letter should be persuasive

• Include writing samples that are appropriate to the publication, article topic, and writing style you believe the publication is looking for.
• Present any credentials or awards you have that show you are qualified to write, especially about this subject.
• Identify other similar publications that have published your work.
• Identify any sources you have that you feel would help persuade the editor.
• Your article should show why you are the best and only person to write this article for them.
• Close your letter with a phrase such as: “I look forward to hearing from you. Please write or call if you have any questions.”

Respond promptly when a query is accepted

• When an editor expresses interest in (solicits) your article, send it to them promptly. In your cover letter, remind them of their request.
• You do not need to enclose an SASE when sending your article.

What you should not do in your query letter

• Do not mention who has rejected the piece before.
• Do not include other people’s statements about your article.
• Do not tell the editor how long and hard you have been working on this article.
• Do not mention the assistance of others.
• Do not tell them that the piece still needs work.
• Do not request advice, comments, criticism or analysis.
• Do not talk about how thrilling it would be to be published.
• Do not include inappropriate or off-subject information about yourself.
• Do not discuss the rights you wish to sell.
• Do not discuss price or payment.
• Do not give your social security number.
• Do not give or discuss copyright information.
• Do not wear out your welcome by writing too much or failing to get to the point.
• Do not query without studying the publication enough to know whether your idea is appropriate.
• Do not waste your time querying an unreceptive editor over and over again.
• Do not present ideas for several different articles in the same letter. This can be done once you have established a rapport with an editor, but should not be done in a blind query.
• Do not use obscenities or inappropriate content.
• Do not send inappropriate, off-subject samples.

Sample Query Letter:

Max Swift

Securities Editor

Money Bucks Magazine

1010 E. 10200^th Street

New York, NY

August 22, 2000

Dear Max Swift,

Proposed Article:

You’ve Got Fraud! How Internet con artists can crush your portfolio

Last Monday, the Enforcement Section of the Massachusetts Securities Division ordered a temporary cease and desist order against three men it accuses of manipulating the stock market by flooding Yahoo.com with tens of thousands of false and misleading statements about Biomatrix Inc (BXM.N) and Genzyme Corp (GENZ.O). This is the latest in a growing series of civil and criminal lawsuits against people who manipulate stocks through mass emails or in this case, by posting misleading statements on financial discussion boards. My article will detail the trend from the perspective of three people.

• A securities trader whose legitimate stock analysis email newsletter has contended with fake announcements by people who acquired his mailing list.
• A lawyer who represented a client in a case similar to the Massachusetts case.
• An investor who blames her loss of $70,000 in the stock market on fraudulent discussion-board posting.

In my article I will discuss the negative effects of fraud on investors and companies. I will also discuss how you can protect yourself from fraud. More importantly, I will show how you can be victimized by the trend even when you don’t receive a fraudulent email or read a misleading post. Because such fraud can cause an individual stock to both rise and fall dramatically, investors who never see the misleading information can still end up investing in a bad stock or dumping a good one.

My article would be an excellent fit in your Caveat Emptor section’s ongoing coverage of investment potholes. As is customary for that section, I will include a sidebar of ways you can protect yourself from Internet investment fraud. My advice will include: verifying any news through conventional sources, keeping an eye out for any unusual email from online newsletters, never trusting blind e-mails, and carefully watching or avoiding discussion boards altogether. The last point, that discussion boards rarely result in good investments, will also be a focus of the article. If you would like, this can also be turned into a sidebar.

In addition to the three sources above, I have access to dozens of other securities professionals, legal authorities and investors. I have been a professional investment counselor for the past fifteen years and was one of the earliest adopters of Internet trading. As a former state representative, I authored several investment fraud bills that are still on the Arizona law books. For the past two years I have written a weekly investment article for Phoenix Business Insider. I have also published investment-related articles in Worthwhile Investor, Smart Stock Analyst and Fund Advocate.

Enclosed are reprints of three of my recent articles covering investment and the Internet. These articles will demonstrate both my knowledge of the subject and my ability to convey that knowledge to the reader. Your readers need to know about this looming crisis and how it can affect their investment strategies. Please call my office to discuss any further details or resolve any questions. Thank you for your consideration.

Regards,

John Doe

Box 901010

Scottsdale, AZ

85528

408-101-0011

Enclosures:

Clips

SASE

About the letter

This author of this query letter may or may not have some advantages over you. The author is someone who has all of the experience and credentials necessary to write the article, and has already secured sources. You may not have everything he has, but you need to know how it sounds when you do.

Note that the query is timely. The author may have been researching Internet fraud for months, but he went out and found an article that ties his research to that week’s news. Also note that none of his sources are from the particular case he mentions. Instead, he uses that case as a selling point for his research. Quite possibly he has already written a related article for his column, and he now wants to reuse part of it to make a national sale. There is nothing wrong with this practice. Selling similar articles (not just reprints) to different markets is perfectly acceptable.

For more information:

• 10 Ways to Make Editors Hate You Before They Even Know You
• 5 Ways to Start Making Freelance Money TODAY!
• Super Simple Submissions Tracker
• 40 Fabulous Faults of Freelance Failures