For a novelist, there’s no feeling like finishing a manuscript. We’ve lived with the characters in our heads for so long, and now we’re ready for readers. If our goal is to become traditionally published (where a publisher takes on the costs of production, marketing, sales and distribution), an essential step is to get a literary agent, which means the next thing to write is the query letter. It should feature an introduction to our story and ourselves, all told in a way that makes the agent keen to know more.
Here’s where things might well go awry. All writers have one thing in common: a talent with words. It’s exactly that quiet confidence that hamstrings us when we write to the agent to tell them about our book — it’s what tripped me up, too, when I first queried. There’s a very specific approach that’s mandatory if you want to write a brilliant query letter, but for me, learning how to query was a years-long scavenger hunt, picking up scatterered clues about how to hook an agent with just that simple letter.
That’s why I’ve written my new book, Pitch Your Book: How to Write the Letter that Hooks an Agent on Your Novel. It aims to help querying novelists avoid common mistakes that consign most query letters to the agent’s trash within seconds (you can find the three biggest mistakes here, by the way). For a novelist it’s heartbreaking to receive rejections; learning the right way to query can’t eliminate that pain, but it can minimize it.
Like a lot of authors, my path to publication was lengthy: 17 years, seven manuscripts and more than 100 rejections from authors and editors before seeing the impossible magic of my debut, Friend Me, appearing in bookshops. Along the way I cracked the art of pitching, and in 2015 I was named the first pitching champion of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in the UK — a terrifying, live-pitch experience in front of a panel of literary agents. The pitch I developed formed the heart of my query letter that year; the letter got me four offers of representation and, ultimately, a publishing deal.
Something miraculous happened on the way toward publication — even more miraculous than seeing my book in a London Waterstones: I started to love the art and craft of pitching. I began to work with other writers to develop their own pitches.
You’ll find the same insights that I share with these writers in Pitch Your Book: it explains my method for turning a manuscript that’s tens of thousands of words into a 250-word summary that intrigues the agent.
Querying agents will always be a stressful experience, but do remember this: despite rejecting tens of thousands of queries per year, agents are scouring their in-boxes for promising novelists to represent and bring to publication. The method I use is called the Four-Part Pitch, and it lets you zero in on the following essential elements of the query letter:
- a memorable, shorthand way to describe your protagonist
- a concise statement of their objective
- the most harrowing obstacles they face
- the impossible choice they must make (or what’s at stake if they fail)
Pitch Your Book publishes on 3 June 2025, and I’ll also be running webinars where you can work with me in small groups to learn and practice the steps of the Four-Part Pitch.
If you’re a querying novelist, don’t lose hope. The agents I’ve interviewed for the book are among the busiest working in publishing today, and if you have written a great story in a genre they represent, they want to hear from you. Learning to pitch your book in a way that intrigues them is the most important writing skill that querying authors need to learn.
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