Querying is Hard Work

by Betsy Ashton

Betsy Ashton, born in Washington, DC, was raised in Southern California where she ran wild with coyotes in the hills above Malibu. She protested the war in Vietnam, burned her bra for feminism, and is a steadfast Independent. She is a writer, a thinker, the mother of three grown stepchildren, companion and friend. She mentors writers and writes and publishes fiction. Her first mystery, Mad Max Unintended Consequences, was published in February 2013. The second in the series, Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, came out in April 2015. In her spare time, she is the president of the state-wide Virginia Writers Club. She loves riding behind her husband on his motorcycle. You’ll have to decide for yourself if and where she has a tattoo.

August 6, 2009

Okay, I began my marketing research by sending the short query letter to three agents today.

This is hard work. One wanted a letter only. One wanted a letter, a synopsis, and the first chapter, the synopsis and chapter as attachments. And the third used an e-form. Cut and paste chunks of the query letter into various boxes. Then add 50 pages in the final box. Only problem with the 50 pages is they had to be reformatted from Word into plain text.

I copied the material from Word and pasted it into Notepad. I added all the line breaks and then pasted it into the form, only to have odd lines added in mid-sentence. So, I had to rework the 50 pages into plain, plain text, checking each line break to be sure it fell in the right place. And since I couldn’t send it to my other e-mail address first, I have no idea what the final will look like when it arrives.

Three agents for three said, “If you don’t hear from us in X weeks, we aren’t interested.”

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