The Writer's Digest Guide To Query Letters

And the reason is that most query-writing books are heavy and soooooo serious. But in "The Writer's Digest Guide to Query Letters" Wendy Burt-Thomas tackles query writing from all angles--for articles, for nonfiction books, for novels, and for agents--with a sense of humor that is not only refreshing, it's good medicine. TWDGTQL is a reference shelf must for writers of all levels of experience. You won't get half-way through the book before you are putting it down (nearby) so you can jot down that query letter you've been MEANING to write but just hadn't gotten around to. And if you are one of the many writers intimidated by query-writing, all I can say is, read this book first. Yes, Wendy Burt-Thomas has probably written a million queries by now and this may be your very first. But her attitude to just do it and have fun with it is contagious. So have a ball writing queries...I promise you will after you read this book.

One of the country's most in-demand non-fiction writers has shared her knowledge with the rest of us, and what a gem this book is. I read it in one sitting and found myself both informed and entertained. A non-writer friend picked it up from my coffee table and, after an hour's reading, commented how easy it was to understand, how clearly it was written (even for novices and non-writers), and how the humor made a potentially boring topic come alive. Now that friend wants to buy Wendy Burt's two chick-lit humor books, O Solo Mia and Work It, Girl! This Guide to Query Letters is a dynamite resource book that can help both inexperienced and established writers see where they've sometimes missed the boat, and more importantly, it will help them fix it so they make more sales.

What makes this book good, is that it gives you room to be yourself when writing a query letter by not having an author's "this is exactly how it's supposed to be done," atttude because we all know that every writer has a different voice. The book has great examples of what not to do. For the writer who needs to see what not to do this is the book for you. I used sections of the fiction query letter to help fine tune my query letter. I may not have used all of the book but it will always remain on my shelf as a great resource. Every writer should have one.

Writing query letters doesn’t seem like a fun task, but all of the great examples in this book cannot fail to inspire writers of all kinds. This is a useful and valuable resource. It makes me want to query!

If I had been looking for help with non-fiction queries, especially for free-lance articles, I'm sure this book would have been very helpful. But what I was looking for was examples and advice for queries to agents for fiction, for which their were few examples and not much help. This author appears to have written primarily from her own experiences (not to say she hasn't had great ones to draw from) and did not do much research in areas where she had little interest. I will need other sources before I can craft a decent agent query for my sci-fi.

My copy of this book just arrived two days ago. It is so worth the few bucks I spent on it. In a very conversational, easy-to-follow fashion, the author takes readers through the querying process...for magazines, novels and non-fiction. I suppose I could've spent a million hours on the internet and found out some of this stuff myself, but it's much nicer having it all in front of me, with plenty of "in-the-know" examples. It's like I paid a really great researcher about a penny per hour to dig the info up and write an entertaining, useful report for me.Five stars for sure.

If you want to get deeply depressed, go ahead and buy this book. The so called query letter samples are basically useless, since what got those people published was their fame, awards, and media connections. If you have none of the above, you will find this absolutely useless - other then, as I said, making you depressed and thoroughly discouraged. Just stay away from this book and find a more useful guide. My worst buy on Amazon ever.

I was really disappointed with this book. I am trying to write a children's fiction picture book and I had trouble just getting past her table of contents. It is organized into a series of headings titled "thou shalt not" and other ill attempts at humor that are super confusing. I couldn't even find information on query's for fiction children's book in the table of contents. I then proceeded to read the book and again the ill attempts at humor are really frustrating. I am just looking for a professional book that outlines the basics of query writing for fiction children's books. There is some useful information in her book but the copy write date is 2008 so I am not even sure how relevant the information is.

Accurate description, quick delivery

Very helpful. Just what I needed.

Helpful, but it's a tough wall to climb.