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A dependable source of professional and creative advice, this regular series features anecdotes, insights, tips, recommended reading and viewing for writers, and more from leading agents and editors.
To capture an agent’s or publisher’s attention with your query letter, begin with the end in mind. The best queries irrefutably answer the most critical question for any book published today: Why should someone pay up to $28 for your book?
With this end result in mind, you can reverse-engineer: First identify, then highlight the key components of your book that will stop a reader (or agent!) in their tracks.
One key lesson I’ve learned from working with the Adroit Journal is that the taste of any given editor is never universal. Our team of poetry editors consists of five people, and our discussions of submissions also include the editor in chief and the executive editor. When we review the list of submissions that have made it to the final step before publication, we have active, passionate conversations about each poet’s work. We often disagree, argue, and even attempt to convince one another that our favorite work should be accepted.
One thing I’ve learned in my time as an agent is that there is only one thing that an author can truly control: the work. Editors leave, publishing houses merge, trends shift, and—in the middle of that hurricane—there’s always the work. No writer can control their reviews, how many copies bookstores order, what awards they might win. Even the best books do not always get the accolades they deserve.
Extending rejection is my most upsetting responsibility as a poetry editor; as a poet, I know rejection is daunting to face because of the negative feelings it stirs in us. Consider all that care and conviction poured into the ink: It is so easy to feel that we, personally, are being excluded, diminished, ignored when our work is not accepted—because is that not us on the page? Undoubtedly it is, and that is why we need discernment in choosing who we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with, so to speak.
Working in publishing, in my experience, provides an opportunity to think about what it means to be “independent” in a way that supports the life of the mind and of the writer. Although I’ve been an editor for nearly ten years, I still think of myself as a writer first. From both of these perspectives within the publishing industry, I sometimes think too much can be asked of writing: to make a writer’s life easier or their career more sustainable.
When I start editing a poetry or story collection, I’m immediately curious about energy and momentum. How is this writer using their unique style and craft to propel me through their manuscript? What holds me close to the page and makes me eager to read more? What causes me to get stuck?
I edit fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narrative, and what unites all of these projects that I’ve had the pleasure of working on is a really strong point of view. My job is not to interfere with that and to protect voice above all else. It’s important for the author to remember that the editor is a proxy for their future readers. Editorial feedback is the opportunity for the writer to hear an unfiltered, immediate response to the work, which reveals not only what requires revision or restructuring but also what is working. Of course, the book is the author’s work.
I’m going to be super granular here: Poets, when you are composing or formatting your work on a word processor with book publication in mind, please set your margins to approximately two inches on all sides and make sure your poems look the way you want within those margins.
For me, the most important thing is the writer’s voice. A synopsis and outline for a nonfiction submission can be very helpful, but a proposal should have a sample introduction and at least a chapter to communicate the quality of the writing—if the finished manuscript isn’t available. With fiction, however, although a sentence in a cover letter regarding the subject matter is welcome, nothing causes me to glaze over more quickly than a plot summary. I read for style, not for plot. If you’re submitting a novel or a story collection, I will want to have full access to it.
When I’m reading submissions, I’m searching for a writer who trusts their own voice and their grip on the craft. I’m looking for work that feels fresh and wildly new, that feels like no other author could have written this particular piece, that makes the familiar deliciously unfamiliar and unique. I want characters who bounce off the page and sound, talk, and act like fully fleshed out people whom I might someday meet—or might not want to meet. I’m hoping to truly “see” the setting and note how lush and immersive it is.
