USING AN E-MAIL QUERY TO SELL YOUR BOOK OR SCREENPLAY

Sending an e-mail query to agents and publishers is an increasingly effective way to sell your book. It is also a way to directly market your book to even the biggest publishers – even if it’s your first book. Use it to pitch scripts to film producers, production companies, and agents, too.

I have found this out personally and also as a result of working with about 400 clients over the past two and a half years through Publishers And Agents. Net (with a Web site at www.publishersandagents.net), a query service I set up to connect writers to agents and publishers. In the course of testing out the database when I first set up the service, I sold two books to top publishers – Do You Look Like Your Dog to Broadway Books/Random House and A Survival Guide to Working with Humans to AMACOM, and since then have sold two more books this way – From the Pens of Kids to Sasquatch Books and Homicide by the Rich and Famous to Greenwood Press. I found an agent who sold a third book: A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Party Plan Selling to Alpha Books.

Also, after I expanded into pitching scripts and TV projects to film producers, production companies, and agents, I found a TV producer, Indigo Films to turn Do You Look Like Your Dog into a TV game/reality show. And other authors have gotten top agents and made sales to top publishers, including Random House, Hyperion, Sourcebooks, Simon & Schuster. Even one of the agents I work with has used the service a half a dozen times to expand his contacts to new editors for both fiction and nonfiction, as well as pitch producers and production companies on turning novels into screenplays.

On the average, writers who send out queries get about 15-20 requests to see their material within a day or two, sometimes within a few hours, and some with especially strong projects have gotten 50-60 responses. One even got 350 responses, including calls from the top executives at major publishers, and is now the top agent she obtained through the query is finalizing a deal with a major publisher.

The key to doing a query successfully is writing a good query letter that quickly explains what your book or script is all about and including some short, relevant bio information about yourself. You also need a strong subject line, so that the editor, agent, or producer who gets your e-mail will open it and read it. The letter has to be a strong marketing and sales letter, but can’t sound too hypy.

Not all writers, even those who have previously published books and articles, can do this successfully, however. For example, often writers will include too much detail about their book, use phrases that give them away as an amateur, such as “I’m really excited to present a proposal which I have just finished polishing,” or use language that sounds too academic for a popular book. So now PublishersandAgents provides guidelines for how to write a good letter, plus I review and edit all letters before they go out, and make suggestions for changes and additions. And now about half of the clients ask me to write their letters.

Another key to sending out an effective query is having current information on editors and agents, the type of books they are interested in, and their e-mails – not always an easy task, since there are frequent changes in the industry, particularly among editors. That’s why I regularly update the database, usually every week or so, using industry sources. Commonly writers look for information on editors and agents in the popular writers’ guides like Writers’ Market that are published annually. However, the information in these books is already several months old by the time the books first appear in bookstores, and this information is increasingly out of date as the months go on. Also, these books tend to feature the smaller publishers and agents who are receptive to newer writers, while the biggest publishers and agents don’t want to be listed. By contrast, Publishers and Agents focuses on the larger publishers and agents.

Finally, given the competitiveness of the industry, you can increase your chances for a sale if you view pitching your project to editors, agents, or producers as a numbers game, just like making most types of sales. Sometimes writers contact just a few publishers or agents at a time and then wait. But given the small number of new projects that are accepted by any editor or agent and the time for consideration, this approach is usually a mistake.

Generally, it is more effective to send out multiple queries at the same time, which is why I use a special e-mail program to do this. So queries go out under the client’s e-mail (unless I am doing a query for myself) and to hundreds of agents, editors, and producers at the same time, though they are targeted based on the type of project. For example, a non-fiction history book will go to editors interested in history and related topics; a self-help book will go to editors with that interest; and so on.

For more information, you can visit www.publishersandagents.net for details on contacting editors and agents and www.screenplaywritersconnection.com for pitching a screenplay to producers, production companies, and agents.

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Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., J.D. is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and workshop/seminar leader, who has written over 40 books. Her latest include Homicide by the Rich and Famous (Greenwood), A Survival Guide for Working with Humans (AMACOM), Do You Look Like Your Dog? (Broadway Books/Random House), and From the Pens of Kids (Sasquatch Books). She has a TV reality/game show Do You Look Like Your Dog under option with Indigo Films. www.giniscott.com; www.giniscott.net; www.publishersandagents.net