 Hello, my name is Jackie, and welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, I'm an aspiring writer, and I want to query my YA Superheroes Meets the Russian Mafia book, Powerless. And the thought of querying, actually the thought of querying doesn't terrify me, but the act of writing a queried letter is just, like, I don't know how to turn this book that I love and every time I read it I have so much fun and I've got a feedback about, you know, the reveals being so unexpected. I don't know how to translate that into 200 to 300 words. And even though I've done a bit of research into querying, I've looked at the query shark blogs, I've looked at some of the different query letters that some of my favorite authors have written, I don't know how to do what they've done. Like, I read some of these queries and go, oh, that sounds really cool. And I don't know how to make my book sound really cool in that amount of space. So if you're not a writer or not familiar with the query process, basically when you want to publish your book with a traditional publishing house, most publishing houses do not accept direct submissions. So you need to go through an agent. It's sort of like how a movie star has an agent for finding roles for them. So a book agent goes and submits your book to publishers on your behalf, and they also do things like negotiating the contract for you. They also generally already have a lot of connections in the publishing industry. So even if a publisher accepted direct submissions, you have a very small chance of getting your book seen, whereas if an agent goes to an editor they're already familiar with and says, look, I've just taken on this new client, this book is totally up your alley, they're far more likely to look. So you definitely want to have an agent. Now, the way you get the agent is by submitting a query letter. And sometimes it's synopsis and usually a sample of your book. This can range from the first five to the first 30 pages from what I've seen. Now the query letter is where you entice them to keep reading your book. It generally covers it. He's about your book, why you think it would be a good match for them, and who you are as the author. Now the second two bits, why I think it would be a good match and who I am as an author. I'm really not too worried about the bid on why it's a match. That needs to be tailored for every agent, the bid on who I am as an author. I think the most interesting thing I can say is that I've been living in Estonia for over two and a half years and that is what I've based the word of power list on. So I'm not too worried about doing those bits. The bit that really worries me is the bit about the book because I've tried a couple of different drafts and each time it just feels really flat and that's not how the book feels. But how do you convince 79,000 words into 200-ish? So I have a list of agents and I thought why don't I look at some of the books that they've accepted and see if I can find the query letters for those books. And I put together a document with 13 different query letters from my favourite agents in order to learn what works. And what was interesting is that the style of these queries is often quite different. So one of the agents I would love to work with is Root Literary and one of their authors is Victoria Schwab and her query letter for her first book went like this. Dear Ms Tipton, I understand from your agency's website that you enjoy young adult fiction and so I hope you'll consider representing my 56,000 word YA novel, The Shadow Mile. When their car hit the river three years ago, Nell's mother died and Nell went to sleep. A deep, dreamless sleep. The doctors called it a coma, she called it coping. But when Nell woke up a week later, something stayed behind. Since the accident, shadows have begun to bend the wrong way, the seams of the world glinting on the edges of her sight. One day, a shadow peels itself straight off the wall and flutters away like a moth. Even to Nell, this is a bit peculiar. A world away, death is growing restless. Bound to the shadow mile, the place between a living world and the one beyond, the reaper has grown sick of its mundane occupation. When the reaper decides it wants out, it calls in a professional. Death endless recently departed scholar Lucas Bradley Link to devise a plan that would not only free the reaper but ultimately lead to the downfall of the living world. Step one, lure a living soul into the shadow mile and steal their life. When Nell stumbles into death's trap, she finds herself in the dreamlike mile where doors on one way, people are shadows and when it rains, the sky actually falls. A shifting space where getting out is much harder than falling in and the price for staying too long is steep. The shadow mile is a cat and mouse game that forces Nell to confront her mother's death and her own disconnection as she tries to find a way back home before the reaper steals her life. I'm a rising senior in college and this is my first novel. Thank you for your time. So that is 307 words and now Victoria Schwab has written over 20 books. I think the biggest thing that works about this is that her voice is very clear. We get a sense for what the book will feel like and the detail she gives it interesting, like the details about the mile, doors on one way, people are shadows, when it rains the sky actually falls. These are just very specific details as opposed to the shadow mile is a dark, desolate place where evil resides or you know something like that that doesn't really tell us anything. What's interesting though is that not all of the letters I found follow this layout. So another root literary author is Victoria Lee, can tell I like my victorious and her query letter feels quite different. Dear Holly and Taylor, 16 year old hacker No Malvaro has spent years trying to take down the corrupt leaders of Carolinia who deport refugees like his parents with deadly efficiency. But when a magical viral outbreak kills his father, destroys his home and infects him with technopathy, Noam's best chance of survival is to accept help from the charismatic Minister of Defense. Minister Lara wants Noam to join his elite military group. With his criminal record, Noam has no place in high command, but taking Lara's offer would give Noam access to government servers and the opportunity to leak the Carolinian Chancellor's secrets. He could make a real difference, finally, for the refugee cause. So he'll let Lara teach him the science necessary to perform magic. He'll become the powerful technopath Carolinia wants him to be. And then he'll use that power to tear Lara's government apart from the inside. But when Noam learns Lara's planning his own coup to overthrow the Chancellor, he wants to trust him. Lara could be a powerful ally and as a last survivor of the genocide against witchings, Lara understands what it's like to be oppressed. Yet Lara's own son, the boy Noam loves, insists that Lara is not as virtuous as he seems. As Lara's plan unfurls and Noam realizes he may have to kill for the cause, he must decide how far he's willing to go for the greater good. Shadow and Bone meet Santifa and the Fever King, a YA fantasy complete at 109,000 words. The Fever King will appear to fans of vicious, with a diverse cast of characters and own voices representation of Jewish, diaspora and bisexual characters as well as characters with mental illness. It was featured in Pitch Wars 2017. I think the Fever King will appear to you in particular due to Taylor's interest in character-driven twisty fantasies with unique settings. An alternate speculative North Carolina seems to fit that. Also, Holly has expressed interest in genre-bending stories. The Fever King is a blend of fantasy and science fiction, as magic in this world can only be performed if one understands the scientific principles behind it. For example, telekinesis would require knowledge of physics. Like Noam, I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and have an enduring fondness for computers and collared greens. This is my first novel. Per your guidelines, I've included the first 10 pages in the body of this email. Thank you for your time and consideration. So you can see this is very different to Victoria Schwab's. When it comes to what works about this one though, some of the things are the same. I think the specificity is really interesting when it comes to he doesn't just get magic, he gets technopathy, we understand who the enemies are, we understand that he's against the government and doesn't know whether to trust minister Lara, we understand the decision he needs to make, how far will he go, and we get a sense of what the stakes are. So does he need to kill? And we also know there's someone he's in love who's probably going to come in to play at some point. And in fact, Victoria Lee did an awesome blog post on her query letter, which I'll link below, where she breaks down why she thought it works. When it comes to the stuff after the description of the book, she does a few things that Victoria Schwab doesn't, including she makes comparisons, so Shadow and Bone, and the Fever King. She talks about some of the big selling points, so own voices representation, and she talks about why she thinks it'll appeal to both of the agents she's contacted. So in a little bit of an unusual approach, Victoria emailed two people at the same agency. She lists what Taylor is interested in and how her book addresses that, and she also lists what Holly is interested in and shares how her book addresses that. And as I mentioned earlier, I have more query letters than just this. Generally, I've tried to stick to, like, YA fantasy slash sci-fi type of books, because that's where my book falls. And what I find interesting is that these are two very different approaches, but they were both accepted by the same agency. And that gives me a little bit of hope, because it means that I don't need to write a query letter that's exactly like someone else who has already achieved success, because clearly, different things can be successful. However, I don't know about you, but when I just look at, like, pages and pages of information, it does start to feel overwhelming. I'm a very active person. I need to be doing stuff. So I thought, why don't I try writing a query letter for powerless in the style of each of these authors? So I went and did that. I did 10 different versions of the query letter for the same book, trying to emulate the style of these different authors and what worked. So these are not final by any means. God, I'm feeling quite nauseous about the thought of reading what I've written, but let's do this. So we're going to look at the same two authors in my attempt to write a query letter in their style. Note that I've only looked at the book summary part of it. I haven't been looking at the, I think you'd be interested in this because, and this is who I am as an author. So Victoria Schwab version of the query letter, what I noticed about Victoria Schwab's query letter was that she had a paragraph about Nell, her main character. She had a paragraph about death and Lucas Bradley Link, which are like the antagonistic forces. And then she sort of had the, what happens? So she stumbles into the dreamlike mile. And what she needs to do, she needs to confront her mother's death and her own disconnection to find a way back home before the Reaper steals her life. So those are the stakes. So I tried to follow a similar approach and caveat, I have not done it nearly as well, but in the interest of transparency, here it is. And maybe if I do get agented at some point in the future, I'll share whatever the final query was that got there. So my book summary in that style is one of Hannah's sisters can spontaneously combust while the other can dissolve concrete with her bare hands. One brother can rip streetlights from the ground and throw cars 50 feet. And the other always carries a knife, ready to project his pain onto others. Hannah, on the other hand, is disappointingly ordinary. Though she tries not to dwell on the fact as she works in her father's lab. Her father, Artem Super, is the world's leading specialist in the super gene mutation, and he has wasted enough time and money on Hammer. When he suspects someone has been leaking his research, that's all the reason he needs to kick her out. But he gives her one way to redeem herself. If she gets superpowers, she can come back. Knowing the stress response can trigger latent powers, Hannah goes looking for trouble and stumbles upon the brotherhood, Sudovia's largest Russian crime family. Now she must decide whether to join forces with the brotherhood or to use this opportunity to find intel that is valuable enough to convince Artem to take her back, even without powers. If she joins team brotherhood, she will lose any chance of proving herself to Artem. If she becomes a spy though, there's no guarantee that he will take her back. And if she gets caught, the brotherhood doesn't leave survivors. So first time reading that out loud and I'm realizing it's actually hard to switch between like, Estonian words and then English, like you move your mouth in different ways. But anyway, so I tried to follow Victoria Schwab's approach. Obviously my voice is quite different, but we've got a paragraph about Hannah, a paragraph about Artem, the antagonist. We've got what happens. So she gets kicked out and goes looking for trouble. And then we've got something which is a bit different to Schwab's query letter, but something very common in a lot of the others I looked at, which is the decision she needs to make. Now one of the things I was struggling with before I looked at other query letters was where do I stop? And why does it feel so mess, so passive? And one of the things I realized is most of them have something like the person needs to choose this or this, and this is what the consequences are of each of the actions. And one of my challenges was the plot isn't actually kicked off by Hannah. It's kicked off by Artem and her family. She is kicked out of home, which gets things started. It's not her decision to leave. So it's only once she's been kicked out that she's in the position of making a decision. And I felt like, I don't know how accurately this encapsulates the book, but it's the only one I could think of, which is does she continue trying to work with Artem or does she side with the brotherhood? So if we look at the Victoria Lee one in comparison, what I have is 16 year old geneticist Hannah Super has spent years working at her father's side trying to crack the code of the super gene mutation. More specifically, why she has the mutation, but she doesn't have any discernible powers. In a family where one of her sisters can spontaneously combust and the other can dissolve concrete and marble with a touch, it's a little odd. And that doesn't even touch on what her brothers can do. When her father, Artem, accuses her of leaking his research, he and her superpowered siblings force her out of his complex with the ultimatum, don't bother coming back until you have powers. Hannah knows the stress response can trigger latent powers. So the most logical first step is to go looking for trouble. What she doesn't expect is to stumble upon the brotherhood, Sadovia's largest Russian crime family, and Artem's nemesis. Joining their ranks would give Hannah access to secret intel, intel that might just be valuable enough to persuade Artem to take her back, even without powers. But then she discovers that Artem has twisted her research to weaponize super DNA and she must choose sides. If she joins team brotherhood, she will lose any chance of proving herself to Artem. But if she continues supporting Artem, there's no telling what his technology might mean for Supers. At best, Supers continue to live under tight restrictions. At worst, they are harvested for their DNA. And then I've got a note to myself going, I need an ultimate stakes line at the bottom, so because the one in Victoria Lee's was, as Larry's plan unfolds and Noam realizes he may have to kill for the cause, he must decide how far he's willing to go for the greater good. So mine is probably either going to be like the, and if the brotherhood discovers she's working for Artem, they don't tolerate traitors. Or maybe where's, I had one that I did for someone else and now I can't find it. Oh, Hannah must choose what she is willing to sacrifice her family and the dozens of Supers in Sadovia or her life. So I don't love either of those, but in the style of Victoria Lee does have this ultimate stakes question. Aside from the ultimate stakes line though, what is different about this query letter? Well, first there's more on Hannah at the beginning and what she's been doing up to now. So Victoria Lee started with Noam and how he's spent years trying to take down the corrupt leaders of Carolinia. Mine has, she's been trying to crack the super gene mutation. And then we have the same stuff. So she gets kicked out. She goes looking for trouble and finds the brotherhood, but I actually went further into the book in this one. So in the previous query letter, it was just, she needs to choose between the brotherhood or Artem. Does she become a spy for Artem or does she work on the brotherhood side? In this one, we actually get to like the midpoint, which is when she discovers that he's decided to weaponize super DNA. And I felt like one, I need more detail in this one because the base letter was a longer one, but two, the stakes are also higher then because there's the idea that supers can be harvested for their DNA. So I thought this was a really interesting exercise. And I do still have a long way to go, but even like trying to mold the same story and same events into someone else's query style did force me to try thinking about things a bit differently. Though I think by the time I got to like the fifth or sixth one, I just started doing the same thing again and again in different orders. So I've put everything into a PDF in the description below with one side where I've got the original query letters that I was modeling it off, not the full letter, just the description of the book. And then on the other side, I've got how I tried to emulate that style for powerless. Please take a look and let me know what you think. In fact, in the comments, let me know which is your favorite query letter. And of course, if you're an experienced writer, please let me know if you have any ideas for how I can improve it because this is something I'm really struggling with. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, like, subscribe, hit the notification bell, and I will see you next time. Bye.