Imagine you are a big-time agent off in publishing land. You get 300 emails a day from aspiring authors who want you to represent them and find them a book deal. Would this letter intrigue you?
Seriously. Be harsh. This is no time for "oh, you're so great" -- tell me where I lose your interest or what you'd recommend to make it stand out more.
August 10, 2012
Dear Ms. Sherman,
$5000. A car named Cherry Cherry. A sarcastic thirty-five year old woman. A date in every state. A diamond ring at the end of the road. This, in a nutshell, is Fifty Dates in Fifty States: a Rocky Road Trip in Search of Love and Adventure.
I’d done a fair amount of traveling in the past, including volunteering at an orphanage in Ghana and hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. I had not, however, seen much of my own country. It was time to remedy that. And since I hadn’t found the man of my dreams by my mid-thirties, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to open up the dating pool, either.
The end result is this: a fifty-chapter memoir highlighting the unique dates I went on around the country, such as skydiving in Vermont, swimming with dolphins in Hawaii, and kayaking around icebergs in Alaska, plus snicker-inducing tales from my cross-country adventure, including being terrorized by a raccoon in a Florida campground, resisting the urge to punch a bitchy German tourist in NYC, and trying to convince a woman in North Carolina that I did not need to be rescued from an abusive relationship, but had, in fact, just gotten a particularly bad facial. The icing on the cake? I ended up marrying one of those fifty dates.
Every woman in America had a look of envy in her eye when I explained the dating part of my project; every man I met wanted to quit his job and road trip around the country, too. I hope you’ll be as intrigued as they were! Thank you so much for taking time to read my query, and please let me know if I can send sample pages.
Sincerely,
Me and my contact info, yadayadayada
Rip away. Constructive criticism over cheerleading!!
OK, you KNOW I'm not a prude, but the word 'bitchy' kinda caugt me off guard. Not that you need tone it down, but that just seems so.... Jerry Springer.... so....teenagish ... so un-snarky.... so first option in the thesaurus.
ReplyDeleteRip her apart, by all means..... tell us how you REALLY felt about her.
-Andrew
I think it is hilarious! I want to be your agent..except I can't offer you any cash. Boo. Well even if I can be your agent put me down as someone to review your book WHEN it is published!! :) I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteOk, and maybe add some suspense at the beginning... And a quest for diamond ring." I don't know how the whole "Dear Publisher" letter is supposed to look, but I would want her/him to at least pick it up and flip to the last chapter to see.
ReplyDeleteAlso, can you include one or two pages with the letter? "Let me know if" is a request for THEM to put forth effort.
I liked the idea of leaving the diamond ring up in the air more too...if he/she knows the end of the story, they might not be as likely to give it a look.
ReplyDeleteI liked the first half of this sentence, but after the comma, it didn't sound as catchy, "And since I hadn’t found the man of my dreams by my mid-thirties, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to open up the dating pool, either." I don't know what it should say, just that the dating pool didn't sound right...
And how many miles did you put on your car (this is a Ryan question)?