I've had a spate of query letters recently using the phrase "so and so referred me to you." Normally of course, that means I pay closer attention to the query letter. These letters however used the name of someone I didn't know.
Rather than help the querier's cause, it made me wonder about what they were trying to do. Were they writing to the correct agent? Maybe they had been referred to another agent here at FinePrint. Did they know what "refer" means in terms of a query letter?
I wrote back to one such querier and said "I don't know this person that you're citing" and the author wrote back to me telling me who the person was. Ok, I still don't know him even though I now know he's on the faculty at the Write Bite and Fight Vampire MFA program at Bloodsucker U.
Think of it this way: I know who George W. Bush is but I don't know the man personally or professionally.
Referrals need a couple things to be actually helpful to you.
First, I need to know the person you cite. If someone says "oh you should query Janet Reid, she's just the coolest thing since KelvinZero, I heard her speak at CrimeBake" that is NOT a referral. That is a suggestion. That's how you phrase it too: So and So heard you speak at CrimeBake and suggested you'd be a good agent to query.
Second, the person you cite should actually have read, or be familiar with your work. I get referrals all the time from someone that I know hasn't read the work. I know this cause she actually told me she just tells people I'm an agent. Ok, that's fine, but it means that citing her as a referral is useless.
There's a lingering sense that you need to be "introduced" to an agent in order to query. That is just flat out wrong. EVERY agent I know who is looking for clients will read query letters. If they are NOT looking for clients, they may limit what they read to referrals only but that is NOT the norm. And it's certainly not what I do. I read all my query letters. Whether I read further depends on one thing: your writing. It's the only thing you have complete control over. Make your writing as good as it can be and leave the introductions to the Freshman Mixer at Vampire U.
3 comments:
This is good to know because I've told a couple people whose prose I think is exceptional that they should query you. But they are people who write the kinds of books you represent. I've also told people whose writing I think is exceptional that they should query someone different, because you don't represent what they write. I want to query you myself because I think you'd be a wonderful agent, except that I know you have absolutely no interest at all in what I write, darn it. I've just learned the difference between a recommendation and a suggestion, though, which I'd never really considered before. Thanks for the enlightenment.
I've been referred. I've met dozens of agents in person. None of them took me on. So, I sent out queries. That's how I came to work with my fabulous agent. (Not Janet, someone equally fabulous.)
It absolutely can happen with a query and you don't have to know someone.
Dear Ms Reid,
This Pixie I know said you're an agent with great taste. Okay, she actually said, "Janet Reid has better taste than that!" Now, the way I take that is this: You taste better than say ... a salt lick. So you're discriminating. So, you like goats. So you like goat-fiction. Ergo, id est,ipso facto, ibidum or which ever Latin thingie is appropriate, the Pixie referred me to you.
Read my book, The Dark Shadows of Goat Glade, or How I Lost my Innocence Fighting Against the Herd Mentality, Solved the Cold Case of the Murder of C. Little, and Saved Ten Dollars on eBay. It's by me.
Yours truly and with flatering solicitations and one gooy goat lick,
Bill E. goat
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