I got a lovely shout-out on Nathan Bransford’s blog for my presentation at Saturday’s Agent’s Day, and I wanted to follow up some of his comments about using blurbs in your query letter. Nathan describes four possible tiers of blurbs, with an actual personal referral from a client as Tier 1 down to praise from random children as Tier 4. He was very polite, however, in not sharing one of my biggest reasons for not caring too much for blurbs in your queries — sometimes, they make me feel dumb.
Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world. I’ve got Rexroth, and Trixie, and two of publishing’s cutest dogs, plus some of the greatest clients an agent could ask for. I get to go to fun conferences in great places like San Francisco and enjoy the company of my peers, while sharing my insight on the publishing process with eager authors who welcome my opinions. But that’s not why I feel so particularly lucky today.
I left my heart… In San Francisco, of course. Or, ok, maybe not my heart, but certainly a bit of skin off my toe as my sweet little espadrilles rubbed my foot raw as I climbed up and down a few hills today. I’m in town for the San Francisco South chapter of the SCBWI’s Agent’s Day, and will be speaking tomorrow with a number of my esteemed colleagues.
Ok, so these Louboutin fish shoes aren’t truly scary unless you’re an Ichthyophobe, but they are kinda cute. And thus for Brenda, who writes, “I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve put off querying KT Literary with my middle grade novel, because I saw that you want a synopsis with the partial if the query draws your interest. I don’t like my synopsis, although my query is good. How important is a synopsis in determining whether or not you request the full?”
I’m heading out to San Francisco this weekend for a one-day conference, where I’ll be giving a presentation on query letters. To that end, although my presentation will differ, I thought it might be interesting — both for my readers and for me — to break down my reaction to a specific query. Diane wrote in some time ago looking for help with her letter. While it’s not in a genre I’m specifically looking for, as with any query, it’s about hooking the reader’s attention and getting them to want to read more.
