While waiting for a report on my current WiP I have busied myself working on the synopsis and query letter.

There seems to be a different approach to query letters on both sides of the Atlantic. US agents seem to prefer a blurb in the letter, while in the UK they seems to prefer if a short synopsis is attached. Would I be right? And if so, (as I will be approaching UK agents) how much about the novel do you put in the letter? Surely not much as otherwise you risk repeating what's in the synopsis.

Ben Yezir

In the UK it's called a covering letter, in the US it's called a Query letter, and although there are similarities they are different animals.
Both include your contact details, details about the mss - title, genre, word count - and a brief bio. and mention of any writing credits (comp. wins/placements, publications), but there the similarity ends.

In a covering letter include an overview of the novel, summarie to a paragraph, which introduces the mc, the setting, the chief antagonist/conflict, which shows it fits that genre.

In a Query you're Pitching the novel in the hope that the agent will ask to see a 'partial' or 'full' mss, plus synopsis.

It's not necessary to pitch your novel in a covering letter because you're already including a 'partial' (1st 3 chapters and synopsis), so it's best to avoid having anything in a covering letter that'll STOP them from reading on. Keep it simple and buinesslike.

- NaomiM

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More detail here http://www.writewords.org.uk/archive/22925.asp plus advice on writing a 'targetted covering letter'.

Thanks Naomi - very useful and funny you mention Nathan Bransford, as he has just retired for agenting.

There's a lot of good, common sense in what Naomi says. However, I'd warn against being too prescriptive about how you construct a query or cover letter. When you talk to editors about this kind of thing, they often answer from, on the one hand, what they don't want to see, i.e. how they can avoid all the crap that comes their way; while on the other, they simply say, "Wow me - and if you really want to score points, wow me in such a way that makes it easy for me to wow my editorial team and then the sales team in turn." In other words, put together a ready-made document she can wave at others and/or quote from to convince them that this book she's so excited about will sell oodles too.

Terry

Hi Ben

I queried both US and UK agents over the last year. For UK agents I took the mini-synopsis from my US query and used it as the synopsis on a separate sheet of paper for UK agents. I did feel that this left me with not quite what UK agents wanted as it wasn't really a full synopsis, but more of a back of the book blurb style thing. A couple paragraphs and no reveal of the ending. For the UK cover letter I kept it very basic. Genre, word count, my background etc. I had interest from both sides of the Atlantic, so it seemed to work ok.

Oh, I will add that even though many US agents don't ask for sample pages I always included my first chapter (about 2500 words.) All my US submissions were via email, so I figured it would be ok.

Best of luck to you!