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First, read "How to 'Pitch' Your Book."

Second, go to your local bookstore.  Read the back covers, or the inside flaps, of as many books that are similar to yours as possible.  Though it is the editors of these books who have written this copy, the purpose of the copy is to interest the reader, to get the reader's attention and get him to purchase the book.

Now, pretend you are writing the back cover information for your own book. 

Intrigue the reader.  Grab the reader's attention.  Don't let that reader leave the bookstore without a copy of your book in hand. Remember not to tell the reader how your book ends or he won't buy it.

Condense that "cover copy" into a one-sentence pitch that doesn't reveal the book's ending and that makes us desperate to "open" the book and read the first sentence.

Now, give us your attention-grabbing first sentence.

Then give us the title.

That's all we want: the one-sentence pitch, the first sentence of your book, and the title.

If we like it, we'll ask for a portion of your manuscript, 10-25 pages. If we like what we read there, we'll ask for  more perhaps even for the entire manuscript. If we don't like it, we won't send you a form letter: we'll tell you why we don't like or why it doesn't work for our house. If we know of any other houses for which your book might be more suitable, we'll let you know that, too.

That's all there is to it.  If you want to tell us that you have an agent, fine, but we'll wonder why your agent isn't pitching us the book.  If you want to tell us you've been published before, that's fine, too.  It won't influence our decision to look at your manuscript. 

 If you want to send us delicious foreign chocolate, dark and bittersweet, in an attempt to bribe us, we'll appreciate the gesture, but we won't be able to eat it, and it won't affect our opinion of your ability to get us interested in your book. You can tell us about your children, grandchildren, hobbies, career, education, etc. We'll probably find it interesting, but it'll have no impact on our decision to accept or reject your manuscript since we never read about an author's career or background (or look at enclosed photos) until after we've read the manuscript (and made a decision on it).

And your ability to follow instructions.

As in, writing the query letter the way we want you to, not the way you want to do it.

So, there you have it.  RockWay's ingredients for a fantastic query letter:

• brilliant, engaging, riveting, intriguing back cover copy that would make a reader buy your book  BUT reduced to the one-sentence pitch that does NOT reveal the ending and makes us desperate to "open" the book and read the staggeringly interesting

•  first sentence that's so unique one of our editors wants to pick up the phone and tell you to send

• your title, which has so much urgency we wouldn't even have to worry about thinking about a better title in order to sell your book, your title is that good.

If you don't understand the concept of "urgency," or "hook," or "attention-grabbing," read Alexandria Szeman's article from The Writer (reprinted in The Writer's Handbook 1997) about how to get urgency into your work: "Urgency: Good Writing Needs It."  And by the way, urgency applies as much to non-fiction and poetry as it does to fiction.

Please note that any queries that do not follow our required guidelines are discarded unread.

Yes, our query format is a test: of your writing skill, your ability and willingness to work with our editors, and your ability to "pitch" your book (which you will constantly be required to do if your book gets published and people come up to you and ask, "What's your book about?")

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