Rock Your Query: A Simple System for Writing Query Letters and Synopses

Rock Your Writing #3

by Cathy Yardley

Having a hard time writing your query letter? Is the idea of condensing your novel into a few pages of synopsis making you tear your hair out? Are you wondering if your opening pages are punchy enough to land a literary agent and, hopefully, a book deal?

ROCK YOUR QUERY presents a simple system for:

- Writing a query letter using a basic (but customized) format
- An easy approach to writing a synopsis that emphasizes the important plot points
- A quick checklist for making sure your opening hooks a literary agent or editor

Cathy Yardley has sold over sixteen novels to publishers such as Avon, Harlequin, and St. Martin's. She continues to publish both fiction and non-fiction, as well as coaching other writers and teaching at Savvy University. Her proposal critiques and Submissions That Sell class often result in full requests and book contracts. ROCK YOUR QUERY encapsulates her simple approach to writing query letters, synopses, and partials that generate results.

Genres: Writing

Audible Audio

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Cathy Yardley is an award-winning author of romance, chick lit, and urban fantasy, who has sold over 1.2 million copies of books for publishers like St. Martin's, Avon, and Harlequin. She writes fun, geeky, and diverse characters who believe that underdogs can make good and that sometimes being a little wrong is just right.

Reviews

[J.R. Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge champion of Cathy Yardley's "Rock Your Writing" series, but this one fell a little flat for me. For one, a lot of the phrases in this are outdated ("save your postage" comes up at one point, but most agents don't accept submissions by mail at all anymore). I get the idea in theory, but a lot of this information feels out of date. This is someone who landed an agent 20 years ago, and it appears at this point she's giving great advice on a query, but also maybe has queried in a different time of querying.

Are the tips given about the queries themselves good? Yes. She's got some solid information on how to break your synopsis down concisely and in a well-written manner that will attract an agent. I'll definitely be applying those tips to my future queries. But out of the entire series, this book offers the least information, much of which overlaps with the information about querying that is widely available online, and you have to pry past outdated terminology to get to those solid advice gems.

[Irena Pasvinter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short, but all to the point -- as writing advice books go, this one is distilled to the highest concentration of excellent practical advice for writers in search of a literary agent. If you are in the so-called "query trenches" -- lost, bewildered, enraged, stressing out, losing hope, desperate, hallucinating, having a major bout of wishful thinking, knocking your head on the wall... you name it -- "Rock Your Query" is for you.

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Image credit:The original uploader was Chris-martin at Wikimedia Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

[Maggie Larche · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very helpful step-by-step guide to selling your manuscript. It is short, but I liked how it wasn't full of unnecessary fluff. Just good, practicable advice to get you creating a query and synopsis in record time.

Also, if you started with Rock Your Plot, you've got a great foundation to tackle the exercises in this book. They go together nicely.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise, practical guide to creating a query package

I’m getting ready to query for the first time, and I’ve been overwhelmed with all the information and advice out there. Rock Your Query does a great job of distilling the process into clear, practical steps that even a newbie like me can follow. Highly recommended.

[Wilani Wahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not at this stage in my writing yet, but know this will help when I get there.

[Maureen Sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick helpful guide to putting your best foot forward when submitting your book. Very helpful. I highly recommend.

[Sandy Hogarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Useful

Writing a query letter and synopsis that gets an agent’s attention is tough. This is a short but very pragmatic and useful guide.

[Phyllis Shearer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I found Rock Your Query offered some helpful suggestions in a different way from other books on this subject. That we need to come up with a fetching tagline to open our queries is not new. I don't know that any book could help with writing that specialized letter. I certainly know more about how literary agents view queries and the importance of telling that agent or editor "that you have something worth investigating further." You can't stress that one enough! Still I'm not sure what the author meant in saying it's the Wild Wild West in publishing these days. An example or two might have helped that metaphor. Yet, the book is nicely organized, short, and in the author's words, "action based." Good for a quick read at your fitness center while you're plugging along on the treadmill.

[Troy Blackford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much as she did in 'Rock Your Revision,' author Cathy Yardley places a lot of emphasis on plot in this book that is ostensibly about query letters. However, this is more understandable here, as finding out how to write snappy synopses is one of the keys to an effective query letter. A very, very brief book that would have seemed less light if it were merely a section of a larger book on writing overall, this is nevertheless useful to anybody interested in the topic.

[Iola · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little less comprehensive than I'd hoped/expected.

[Carmilla Mayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely easy to use and understand

I have implemented these strategies and sent out several queries. I started seeking help when I realized my query letter and synopsis were less than satisfactory. This book along with the guided hand of a great marketing professional got me sorted. I will update my 4 stars to 5 if and when I finally get that request for more pages. Then I can properly prove that it was 5 stars and worth every penny.