This is a query? Really?

In the course of the past few weeks, we’ve been getting more than our share of really awful purported “queries”. This was probably the worst, and so I am going to use it as an example of WHAT NOT TO DO. I mean it. Don’t do it.

From: Company Name [mailto:companyname@generaldelivery.net]
Sent: Date is irrelevant
To: submit@canonbridge.com
Subject: submission query

Query Letter

Dear Editor:

My novel, xxxxxxxxxx, is a fantasy/mystery which students ages 8 through 12 will enjoy. [5 sentences then followed about the story, none of which were really “hooks” of any kind.]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is a story I have told to children over my several decades as a storyteller and [profession I chose to eliminate for the sake of anonymity]. For some reason unknown to me, they liked it.

[Unsigned, no address, nothing.]

**I replied as follows:

From: Maggie Stewart-Grant [myaddress@canonbridge.com
Sent: Date is irrelevant
To: Company Name [mailto:companyname@generaldelivery.net]
Subject: RE: submission query

Dear [Company Name],

Thank you for your query. What is the length of the book? Could you give us a little more information about you? If you need some assistance with details that might be missing from this query, here’s a site to help. There are loads of others, too.

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/844651-How-to-Write-a-Query-Letter

I’m sure the story is interesting. Please resubmit your query with a little more information.

**Within one day, an email came with attachments. We did not ask for attachments, and so the following email was sent in return:

From: Maggie Stewart-Grant [myaddress@canonbridge.com
Sent: Date is irrelevant
To: Company Name [mailto:companyname@generaldelivery.net]
Subject: RE: submission query

Dear [Company Name],

It is our policy, when attachments are not requested from an unknown party, to delete the email. Your mail with attachments was, therefore, deleted. Our reply to your original mail did not request attachments. When we ask for attached materials, we give specific details as to what we want.

When we replied to your original email, we asked for more information. We sent a link that explained how to write a query letter. The response should have come in an appropriate query within an email. This is why we sent the link. If this one was confusing, there are several others, if you do a search on the Internet for “How to write a query letter”.

If this is difficult to manage, we suggest that you seek other avenues.

Best of luck.

A couple of things were wrong with the sender’s original email. One is obvious, in that this was not an appropriate query letter. The other is that whoever this is did not spend time reading the guidelines on our website.

1. The person to whom queries should be sent is named in our guidelines – a human, not “dear editor”.
2. The guidelines specifically state that queries with attachments will be deleted.
3. It says right in the guidelines that we will identify the documents we want in attachments, when we ask for attachments.
4. A separate paragraph tells people to learn how to write an appropriate query letter before they send one.

I am always amazed by how people, especially professionals, have made it this far in life without reading, comprehending and following instructions.

It’s not rocket science. Really.

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