How to Write a Query Letter: 7 Tips to Grab a Publisher’s Attention

A query letter is one page. That is the entire design constraint, and it is also why so many writers stall in front of one: you get roughly 250 to 400 words to convince a literary agent to ask for the rest of your book, and one attempt to write them before your name lands in a folder marked pass.

Agents read hundreds of these a month, and most decide in the first paragraph whether the next three hundred pages are worth their time. That math sounds brutal, but it is also clarifying. A query letter is never judged on how much of your book it contains. It is judged on how precisely you can describe what your book is and why it matters to the one person reading it right now.

Below are the seven things a query letter has to do to earn that request, a full example you can study line by line, and the format questions (length, address, comp titles) that writers search for most.

Understanding the Importance of a Query Letter

A query letter has exactly one job: convince the agent reading it to request your full manuscript. Nothing else on the page matters if that sentence isn’t true by the time they finish it. It isn’t a formality or a cover note. It’s the only piece of your book most agents will ever read before deciding whether to read the rest.

There’s a reason this exercise is harder than it looks. Writing a query letter forces you to describe your book the way a stranger will eventually encounter it, not the way you experienced writing it. That’s an uncomfortable shift for most authors, and it’s also the most useful editing test available before publication. If your story can’t survive being compressed into one honest paragraph, that same problem is usually hiding somewhere in the full manuscript too.

What Literary Agents Look for in a Query Letter

Agents check a query letter against four things, roughly in this order: a personalized opening, a clear premise, relevant credentials, and whether you followed their submission guidelines. Miss the first one and the other three rarely get read carefully.

The opening paragraph needs your book’s title, word count, and genre stated plainly, along with a specific reason you’re querying that agent (their client list, a recent sale, an interest they’ve stated publicly). The story summary that follows should introduce your protagonist and the central conflict without flattening into a full plot recap, since that belongs in a synopsis, not a query. The bio should include only what’s relevant: prior publication credits, an MFA, or a background that gives you real authority to tell this particular story. None of that is required for a debut, and agents don’t reject writers for lacking a resume.

Get those four elements right and the letter does what it’s supposed to do: it makes an agent think, I need to read more.

1. Start with a Strong Greeting and Introduction

Address the letter to one agent by name. “Dear [Agent’s Name]” or “Dear [Agent’s Title]” works. “Dear Agent” and “To Whom It May Concern” don’t, because a generic greeting is the fastest way to signal this letter wasn’t written for the person reading it.

A few things to keep in mind as you open:

• Use a formal greeting. Skip anything casual; this is a business letter.
• Address the agent by name. Double check the spelling before you send anything.
• Keep it short. One or two sentences of introduction is enough.
• Show you’ve done your research. Mention how you found their name or why their list caught your attention.

Example:

“Dear [Agent’s Name], I am writing to submit my novel, [Book Title], for your consideration. I came across your name while researching agents who represent [Genre] and was drawn to your work with [Similar Book or Author].”

That single paragraph does the job: it names the book, states the genre, and proves you didn’t pull the agent’s name from a random list.

2. Personalize Your Query for Each Agent

A query letter written for one agent should be unusable for the next one. If yours could go out to fifty inboxes without a single word changing, an agent will clock that in the first sentence, and a form letter earns a form rejection.

Research each agent before you write to them: their agency page, their client list, and their Manuscript Wishlist for the themes and comps they’ve said they want. If they’ve represented something adjacent to your book, say so directly: “I’m querying you because you represented [Comparable Title] and have mentioned wanting more [specific theme or genre].” That one line does more work than an entire paragraph of general flattery, because it proves you read past their name.

None of that personalization works if you’re querying blind, so if your list is still thin, start by learning how to find the right literary agent for your genre before you write a single letter.

3. Hook Them with a Compelling First Paragraph

Your first paragraph needs to state your book’s title, genre, and word count, then land one sentence that makes the agent want the next page. It is not the place to summarize your novel; that’s what the synopsis is for, if they ask for one later.

Lead with the title, genre, and word count, then follow with a single line that introduces your protagonist and hints at the conflict without giving it away. Think back cover copy, not table of contents. That opening line does the same job as a strong book pitch: one or two sentences built to make a stranger want the rest immediately.

Example: In my 90,000 word speculative fiction novel, Echoes of Tomorrow, seventeen year old Mara discovers she’s the only person who can stop a fractured timeline from destroying reality, but saving the future means erasing her own past.

One or two sentences is the whole assignment here. If it takes longer than that, the hook probably needs another draft, not more words.

4. Summarize Your Story with a Focus on the Main Character and Conflict

This paragraph exists to answer three questions and nothing else: who is your protagonist, what do they want, and what’s standing in their way. Everything that doesn’t serve one of those three questions can be cut.

Resist the pull toward subplots, secondary characters, or worldbuilding detail. An agent needs the stakes and the tension, not the full architecture of your plot. Structure the paragraph around:

• Who is your protagonist?
• What are they up against?
• Why should an agent care?

End with a glimpse of the story world and the stakes, without spoiling how it resolves.

5. Highlight Your Writing Credentials and Bio

Your bio paragraph should include only what’s relevant to this book: prior publication credits, an MFA, a writing conference, or professional experience that gives you real standing to tell this specific story.

If this is your debut and you don’t have publishing credits yet, a single line confirming that is enough. What agents are actually evaluating here is relevance, not length.

Example: I am a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and have published short fiction in The New Yorker and Tin House. This is my debut novel.

Keep it professional. Your love of cats doesn’t belong here, unless your novel happens to be about cats staging a quiet takeover of the world.

6. Use Comparable Titles to Position Your Book

Comp titles tell an agent where your book would sit on a shelf that already sells. Use one or two books published in the last five years, and skip anything so massive it reads as a boast rather than a comparison.

Example: Fans of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger will find the same emotional depth and time bending twists in Echoes of Tomorrow.

Done well, this line does an agent’s pitch for them before they’ve even requested pages.

7. Follow the Submission Guidelines for the Letter

Every agency sets its own rules for what a query needs to include, and skipping them is the fastest unforced error in the process. Check the agency’s website for their specifics before you send anything:

• How many sample pages do they want, if any: five, ten, or none?
• Do they take email queries, a submission form, or postal mail?
• Should the book title go in the subject line?
• Do they specify a font, file type, or formatting standard?

Ignoring a guideline this small signals something bigger to an agent: that you might not be careful with the parts of publishing they can’t see either. The same attention to detail matters further down the road too, since submitting a manuscript to a publisher comes with its own formatting and etiquette rules to track

A Query Letter Example That Actually Works

Here’s what all seven of those elements look like assembled into one real letter.

Dear Ms. Alvarez,

I’m querying you because you represented Where the Crawdads Sing and have mentioned wanting more literary fiction with a strong sense of place. My debut novel, Salt and Marrow, is complete at 92,000 words.

When a hurricane strands three generations of women in their grandmother’s flooded house on the Georgia coast, Delphine Boudreaux discovers a box of letters that unravels everything she thought she knew about why her mother left home at seventeen and never looked back.

Told across three timelines spanning sixty years, Salt and Marrow explores how families inherit their silences as much as their stories. As the floodwaters rise, Delphine has to decide whether the truth she’s found is worth the relationship she has left.

Fans of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake will find a similar interest in the weight ordinary families carry across generations.

I hold an MFA in fiction from the University of Georgia, and my short fiction has appeared in Oxford American. Salt and Marrow is my debut novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration. The first fifty pages are pasted below per your submission guidelines.

Sincerely, [Author Name]

Notice what this letter doesn’t do: it doesn’t summarize sixty years of plot, it doesn’t apologize for being a debut, and it doesn’t oversell the comps. It states the facts an agent needs, in the order they need them, and gets out of the way.

Keep It Professional and Polished

A query letter is a formal business letter, so it should read like one: clear sentences, a polite tone, and nothing casual or slang. This isn’t the place to experiment with voice the way you might inside the manuscript itself.

Proofread it more than once. Better yet, have another writer or a professional editor look it over, since agents read hundreds of these and a typo in the first paragraph is often the reason a good manuscript never gets requested. If you don’t have a writing group to lean on for a second opinion, it’s worth learning how to find an editor for your book who can catch the errors you’ve stopped noticing. Close with something simple and direct: Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to the possibility of working together.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

Writing a query letter can feel intimidating, but it’s also the first real test of whether you can describe your book the way the world will eventually meet it. Personalize the letter, hook the agent early, and let your bio do exactly as much work as it needs to and no more. A query letter is just the opening move in a longer process, and if you want the full picture of getting published for the first time, that road map is worth reading before you send anything out.

Traditional publishing is one path, not the only one. If you’re ready to skip the query stage entirely and put your book into readers’ hands directly, Spines gives authors the tools and guidance to self-publish without waiting on an agent’s yes.

Whichever path you take, the letter you just learned to write is really a smaller version of the same task every author eventually faces: convincing a stranger, in as few words as possible, that your story is worth their time.

FAQ: How to Write a Query Letter