Queries & Synopses

A well-crafted book blurb gives us just enough to care, to empathize with the protagonist’s plight, and leaves us wanting just a bit more.

When a query letter receives conflicting feedback from professionals, how does an unpublished writer decide what to believe?

When choosing comp titles, try envisioning your book as an entry on a family tree to help identify both close and distant relations.

If your query letter isn’t standing out from the pack, consider leading with what makes you, not your story, compelling.

These five steps will help you find your ideal comp titles for your query letter or book proposal, using ChatGPT. Includes sample prompts.

Jeff Herman is the author of Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, 29th Edition.

Even with an excellent query and opening pages, you’ll still get rejections. A lot of them. Success comes to those who refuse to give up.

More than just a tool to sell your book, your synopsis is a roadmap to making the next draft of your manuscript much stronger.

Whether you’re a planner or a pantser, this brainstorming document can take your story to places it might not have gone otherwise.

Two literary agents discuss the usefulness and limits of assigning a genre to writing, and how it’s perceived by publishers and readers.

Identifying comparable titles helps agents and publishers understand where your book fits in the market and who your most likely readers are.

Learn how to craft a strong novel synopsis, while avoiding the most common mistakes, including the dreaded "synopsis speak."

The query letter has one purpose, and one purpose only: to seduce the agent or editor into reading or requesting your work. The query letter is so much of a sales piece that it's quite possible to write one without having written a word of the manuscript. All it requires is a firm grasp of your story premise.

When novelists struggle to pitch their work, it may have more to do with the book itself than the query letter. Editor and book coach Susan DeFreitas discusses three reasons why a promising work never lands a traditional deal.

At its core, a query letter is a sales document, and so it’s meant to sell. But opinions differ on the best possible sales approach in a query.

In my many years of critiquing queries, I see the same weaknesses again and again. Here are the biggest issues that afflict novel queries and how you can fix them.

Some agents and editors say that personalizing a query letter can backfire. Others say the opposite—that it's mandatory. What should you do?

Learn how to pitch your nonfiction book to agents and publishers—whether you're writing memoir, narrative nonfiction, or prescriptive nonfiction.

Asking an editor or agent to sign a non-disclosure agreement is not part of traditional publishing business practice.