Query Letter Upgrade

I stumbled upon the best query letter advice in awhile through the Manuscript Academy. It’s called key selling points. Sounds super business fancy I know. But don’t let that freak you out. I’ll break it down for you super easy.

If you want to watch the original clip or to see the whole video you can find it HERE.

Basically, I’m going to adding in a small paragraph to my query right between my pitch and my bio. I mean small too, like 2-3 sentences. Don’t go too crazy.

When you think about selling points you want to hit three audience groups:

1. The Media Outlet- this is promotion and who will talk about it online and elsewhere
2. The Consumer- this is your readers at the bookstore or online market
3. The Sales Person- this is the person selling your book to the bookstore

These three outlets care about certain things about your book. What they all have in common is knowing that their is an audience for your book. So we as author’s need to tell them.

1. Your book’s topic/theme is important because?
2. What makes the reader want/like your book?
3. How many of those readers are there?

You know these answers because you wouldn’t have written it without this in mind. Often the answer is someone like yourself, because most of us do write for ourselves. Use a website like Statista to find some numbers and use them. For example, my story is about racing and the 2020 projection for US households that will attend a race event is over 1.4 million! You bet I’m using that statistic because those are my target audience, those are my readers. The folks selling the books would want to know how huge that market it.

Here is how mine turned out and I hope you are able to upgrade your query letter too!

Thanks to Disney, Cinderella is an ever-green fairy tale that families love. GREASELLA’S CHOP SHOP brings a new market to an old tale, the motorcycle and racing community. Statista.com estimates the number of US households that will attend a racing event in 2020 is over 1.4 million. I have another story for this same market called MONSTER TRUCKIN’ GIRL STYLE if you are interested as well.

Happy Questing!