Comments on Nathan Bransford, Author: Example of a Good Query Letter III

Ok I got it. To have Nathan respond to your query...

2010-07-03T13:15:48.312-07:00

Ok I got it.

To have Nathan respond to your query letter...You have to

1. Address him as Mr. Bransford
2. Get to the point immediately
3. Be a chick ;) cos he likes to respond only to queries from women ...LOL...just kidding.

Thanks for your useful post. It did give me some good ideas. BTW if you have some examples of good query letters for non-fiction work, please share them.

Nathan, Have been hooked on your blog since I fou...

2009-12-04T14:28:17.974-08:00

Nathan,

Have been hooked on your blog since I found this entry in my online search for query answers, and there's one question I can't seem to find the answer to:

Are there any do's and don'ts for an E MAIL query, and the pages that follow?

Thanks for all the help.

-Michael

Hi Nathan, Greetings from London, England! I ha...

2009-10-13T11:46:33.947-07:00

Hi Nathan,

Greetings from London, England!

I have to say it was a real treat coming across your hilarious and informative blog last week - and one from a lit agent, too - haven't come across any from the ones in London yet!

I've almost finished my literary novel and have a question which I'd be eternally grateful if you were able to answer for me:

Is it possible to write a personalised query letter to an agent, yet also tell them that you're submitting to other agents...?

Many thanks for your help, and keep writing the awesome blog!

Best,
Davina

you go girl!

2009-09-23T18:06:06.016-07:00

you go girl!

I am behind reading this but since I have...and yo...

2009-09-14T06:31:14.788-07:00

I am behind reading this but since I have...and you have no doubt been inundated with "I hate the Lakers" How about if I close with....

I don't give a flying crap about basketball or any other sport. Most are overpaid jocks with a secret life.

Thanks for your time.

Hi Nathan, can you elaborate on the categorization...

2009-09-13T06:57:44.820-07:00

Hi Nathan, can you elaborate on the categorization: 'mainstream novel' used in the query? Is this another way of saying literary fiction?

Agent likes query. Agent requests material. Agent ...

2009-07-26T20:42:08.475-07:00

Agent likes query. Agent requests material. Agent uses query letter as example to the world. Agent rejects author.

Schizophrenic are we? :)

Nathan, First of all, congrats to Lisa on her boo...

2009-07-26T10:02:34.980-07:00

Nathan,

First of all, congrats to Lisa on her book. It was a fun query to read.

Secondly, the more I read of your blog, the more I'm convinced my husband and you would get along (he hates the Lakers, as well).

Thirdly, thank you for writing your blog! It's been most helpful and interesting.

StillAlive, unpublished novelists do get angry whe...

2009-07-23T09:53:54.447-07:00

StillAlive, unpublished novelists do get angry when their work gets rejected.

Ernest Hemingway, when he received his first rejection in the mail, reread the letter twice, assuming there had been some kind of mistake.

Subsequent rejections caused him to 'pound his fists against the walls' and to 'throw furniture across the room'.

A female friend of mine, now published, once said to me that 'she didn't take the rejections very well'.

I asked her to clarify that.

She said that the day of receiving a rejection she would get so worked up that she would have to phone her mom - at which time they would have the same conversation they had had a dozen times: my friend would wonder if she was ever going to get published, and that maybe it was time to pack it in and to try something else. She said that on one occasion she got so angry that she was literally almost sick because of it!

Another friend of mine after having received a rejection letter for a submission that he felt had not even been read, sent that same agent a submission for E.M. Forster's "A Passage To India".

He had changed the title, of course, but he had submitted the first three chapters exactly as Forster had written them. The submission was rejected, with a note from the agent saying that 'he did not feel confident enough about this work to provide representation'. My friend said he got so mad about it that he had fantasies about phoning the agent up and telling him that he had just rejected one of the greatest novels ever written.

I wish I had the web-link for it, because I remember visiting a forum for writers one time in which somebody asked the question: do you get angry when you receive a rejection letter? The answers were laugh out loud funny. It was a great thread because it re-assured people that they weren't alone.

You need that in your life sometimes. Sometimes, when life is difficult, you just need to know that others are experiencing, or have experienced, the same thing. There's a wonderful moment in the movie 'Shadowlands' (about the life of the novelist C.S. Lewis) during which one of the characters says: "We read to know we're not alone."

I have no idea why that lessens the pain - but for some reason it does.

Yeah, writers get angry when their work gets rejected.

There's some hard evidence there.

The Goose.

(Also, is that what you have to do to register a name here - get a Google account? I think that I'm just going to sign my own name instead. I can't keep track of all these accounts. I can't even order from Amazon anymore, for that reason. Technology inconveniences me.)

I want to apologize for my last posting's erro...

2009-07-23T07:04:12.727-07:00

I want to apologize for my last posting's errors. I couldn't get the "preview" feature to work and so didn't see them until they posted.

Briefly, I think some on here do suck up; I think Nathan breaks more hearts than he angers; I deliberately didn't say how I got hold of Lisa so that I wouldn't have thanked her by siccing a hundred people wanting her help on her.
StillAlive--anonymously

If I may step into your discussion with anonymous-...

2009-07-23T06:31:44.635-07:00

If I may step into your discussion with anonymous--

I agree with him in one particular and that is that I'm diabetic and often I have to quit reading the comments from fear of sugar shock! Too much kissing up.

On the other hand, he's dead wrong I feel personally that your rejections cause anger. More likey, since the worst to the best writers suffer insecurities of one kind or another and from what the world calls "super-sensitive" (and what kind of writers would we be if we weren't sensitive?), a rejection from you is more like being crushed. I know first hand. No matter how polite your rejection, it is still pretty much a form rejection. I'm sure not all but I'm speaking in generalities (worst, best).

So you needn't fear pitchforks--from humans at least.:)

Now a few lines about Lisa. She's a one in a trillion (a figure we're all very familiar with hearing about!)We were total strangers and I cried to her for help, and she was there immediately and now my query, once almost from hell, is almost as good as hers. Only my creds are blank where hers are over-whelming! :)

Whatever success she achieves, she'd not only earned but deserves a thousand times over. Still alive.
PS I had to use anonymous because i don't have a google acc't.

Okay, fair enough. I'm not happy with some of...

2009-07-22T21:56:57.743-07:00

Okay, fair enough.

I'm not happy with some of the stuff that I wrote earlier anyhow.

And of course some of it should have been deleted right away. I mean, obviously.

I'm not going to withdraw all of my remarks, though - some of it I stand by.

And again, to repeat myself, it's damned nice to see a literary agent who is actively making himself available. This is incredibly refreshing, and I only wish that more agents would do likewise.

anon- If I rejected manuscripts with the tone you...

2009-07-22T19:56:31.035-07:00

anon-

If I rejected manuscripts with the tone you used I'd have an angry mob with pitchforks outside my office.

There's a difference between expressing a contrary opinion constructively and expressing a contrary opinion rudely. If you stick around you'll see that people do disagree with my opinions, but they tend to do so in a way where everything is polite and above board.

But yeah, I'm the one with the delete button, so ultimately I decide what goes. I know full well that not everyone feels comfortable disagreeing with me publicly because they worry they may need to work with me someday and think I might take offense, which is why I allow anonymous comments. Sometimes though, people abuse the anonymity. It's not intended to be a cover so people can speak without propriety.

But I don't consider what I initially wrote to...

2009-07-22T19:49:51.432-07:00

But I don't consider what I initially wrote to be rude - the stuff afterwards, yeah, it was pretty rude.

But again, my initial remark was just an opinion - and opinions are easily ignored.

And as I wrote earlier, you probably make this same point every time you reject a person's work... right? It's just your opinion that their work isn't worthy of publication. Do these people get angry with you - of course they do!

And of course they think that you're being rude - you've just rejected their work, which they think the world of.

I like what you're attempting to do with your blog though - it's nice to see an agent at least communicating with writers.

That said, I don't see too many people disagreeing with you here - it appears that most people are buttering you up, and that's just not realistic. My apologies if you have had discussions in this section of your blog - but that's not what I've witnessed in this thread, or the others you've posted recently.

Again, apologies if that has happened here.

The problem with engaging in interchange when it's being moderated, of course, is that the moderator gets to decide what's acceptable and what isn't - and that often destroys it, for the obvious reason that typically the moderator is unable to remain detached enough to moderate objectively.

anon- The problem isn't that you expressed a ...

2009-07-22T19:20:39.732-07:00

anon-

The problem isn't that you expressed a contrary opinion, the problem is that you did so in a rude fashion and continued to be hostile, which I don't allow around here as it doesn't lend itself to productive conversation.

It's also condescending to suggest that authors need conditioning on the treatment they're going to receive from similarly rude people as yourself.

You may not like the rules around here, but you're welcome to start your own blog for the rude anonymous comments in the world. It will probably be very popular.

There's one thing I'd like to add though -...

2009-07-22T19:12:55.352-07:00

There's one thing I'd like to add though - because I feel like I've ended up becoming the villain here, when all I did was post what I thought was a fairly harmless comment.

Stephen Spielberg, when he was waiting to film in the same studio in which Stanley Kubrick was presently filming, was shown an early version of 'The Shinning' by Kubrick himself.

At the end of the screening, Kubrick asked Spielberg what he thought of the movie, and although Spielberg tried to be complimentary in his remarks, Kubrick saw right through him:

"Well I can see that you didn't like my picture very much," Kubrick said to Spielberg. "So what was it that you didn't like about it?"

And Spielberg said: "The Jack Nicholson performance. I thought it was over-the-top. It was like Kabuki theatre almost in that it was just so exaggerated."

This is Stanley Kubrick we're talking about here - arguably, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

So was Spielberg's comment constructive here? No it wasn't. Not at all. Essentially, Spielberg was saying that Nicholson's performance sucked. And yes I realize that Kubrick had asked Spielberg to speak his mind, but I honestly don't see much difference there.

I suppose you could accuse me of presenting a two-wrongs-don't-make-a-right argument, but the point is that Spielberg was only speaking his mind, and of course Kubrick accepted such. Most great artists, I find, tend to take criticism pretty well - even when it's 'non-constructive criticism'.

Spielberg added that he had since seen 'The Shinning' 14 times, and that he now believed it to be a great picture.

Honestly, I wasn't trying to be antagonistic when I wrote my comment. I was just speaking my mind.

My mind, by the way, changes all the time.

I'm perfectly willing to admit that when I read this novel I might end up loving it.

I still believe that far too many people here are trying to 'butter up' the literary agent however - people should post their feelings, and not be so political. This section of the blog could be so much more, if only people were less inclined to suck up so much.

(And it's a shame too - because most literary agents don't expose themselves the way this guy does. When you expose yourself, though, you have to accept what comes along with it - or else it isn't exposure. Sorry, but I speak my mind, and I encourage others to do likewise.)

Okay, then I'll apologize for having spoken my...

2009-07-22T18:12:40.775-07:00

Okay, then I'll apologize for having spoken my mind, and for not registering my name to post a comment.

Good luck with the novel.

@anon, I didn't actually see your comment. But...

2009-07-22T17:06:57.024-07:00

@anon, I didn't actually see your comment. But people are going to say what they're going to say, and while I won't claim to have a rhino hide, I pretty much shrug it off. What else can you do?

It's hard for me to weigh opinions coming from "Anonymous" too heavily though.

Hey, OtherLisa, I'll bet that you've devel...

2009-07-22T16:49:56.624-07:00

Hey, OtherLisa, I'll bet that you've developed a pretty thick skin. Right?

I mean, you must have by now?

Anyhow, did you find it offensive when I wrote that I thought your novel sounded a bit cheesy?

I mean, wait until it gets submitted on Amazon for The Great Unwashed to leave their comments - in all likelihood you're going to end up reading comments that will blister the hairs off a dog's back... it's inevitable... this is the internet.. people tend to say what they feel, and they're usually pretty brutal about it.

Obviously I haven't read your novel. I was just saying...

In fact, I kind of do want to read it now, just to find out if I'm wrong - I love being wrong about stuff.

Still, an opinion is an opinion, right, and if I were a novelist, like yourself, I think I would rather that people be allowed to express those opinions.

Ah, but maybe that's just me.

Yay! My comment didn't get deleted. So it'...

2009-07-22T16:36:28.117-07:00

Yay! My comment didn't get deleted.

So it's one of two things: Either the so-called blog administrator has decided to allow me to speak, in the hope that it will shut me up.

Or he's in a meeting.

I'll be looking for that one in Publisher'...

2009-07-22T16:36:00.170-07:00

I'll be looking for that one in Publisher's Lunch any day now, Anon.

I'm thinking about writing a new novel and sen...

2009-07-22T16:15:30.553-07:00

I'm thinking about writing a new novel and sending it to you:

Here's my super fantastic query letter:

Joe Simpson, an ex-CIA agent, has found himself in China, working at an internet website - Joe's singular purpose: to read people's blog comments sections, and to delete any antagonistic comments that might crop up from anonymous sources. The word 'cheesy' in particular will be viewed as being highly offensive, and its usage might even necessitate an intervention from Interpol.

The novel will be titled:

"This Post Has Been Removed By A Blog Administrator."

It'll be to die for!

To die for!

2009-07-22T15:59:50.597-07:00

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

anon- The general policy around here is that cons...

2009-07-22T15:38:57.660-07:00

anon-

The general policy around here is that constructive and polite criticism is completely fine -- everything else is deleted. Your comment was neither constructive nor polite. Hence that and everything else you're writing is getting deleted.

Is this really how you want to spend your afternoon? Time to go enjoy the sunshine or something.

2009-07-22T15:32:43.424-07:00

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.