Dear Mr. or Ms. Agent,
Hello! You probably don’t know me, but you’re about to. Biblically. Ha ha, get it? No? Your loss. Well. Moving on.
My name is Suzanne J. K. Veronica Green Meyer, and I’m thrilled to announce that you’re one of many specially-selected agents who have been invited to fight for the right to represent my heartbreaking work of staggering genius, A Staggering Work Of Heartbreaking Genius. Congratulations! Read on.
A Staggering Work Of Heartbreaking Genius is a YA/NA crossover post-apocalyptic dystopian romance novel with a paranormal twist. When Tris, a vampire with a heart of gold, meets Edward, a zombie who somehow retains his love of literature and looking at himself in mirrors, the hallowed, deathly spark between them is instantaneous. But Draco, a wizard-scientist with a deep, dark past, also has his eye on Tris. Meanwhile, in a steampunk alternate-history plot twist, Winston Churchill’s arrived via a time-traveling red phone box in the present day with a squadron of zeppelins to blast the zombies into oblivion. Can Edward save his brain-eating kind from certain death and win Tris’s heart while fighting off the sexy-but-evil Draco? A sure hit with fans of Twilight, Harry Potter, The Fault In Our Stars, Khaled Hosseini, Mac and Cheese, Food, Puppies, the Internet, and Breathing, ASWOHG is sure give even the hardiest of stone hearts paroxysms of ‘the feels’.
I already know what you’re thinking: “Dear God, I must represent this genius, heartbreaking work!” Rest assured, dear agent, you are not alone. Indeed, now that you’ve found next year’s #1 New York Times Bestselling title, all that remains for you is to defeat your fellow agents in a competition to the death that bears absolutely no resemblance to Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’. The victor will win the rights to represent my nine-figure book deal and subsequent translation, film, comic book, action figure, and Disney theme park rights sales.
Will you participate? If so, please respond to this email, and you will be given the GPS coordinates of a small, hitherto-undiscovered island off the coast of Alaska. The inaugural challenge will be to craft a ship with your bare hands that will take you to said island, which is conveniently also the site of an active volcano. Once you’ve arrived (assuming you survive the journey) the real competition will begin. Extra points will be given for each murder done in the style of ‘The Lord of the Flies’. Only the last agent left alive will win the rights to represent my soon-to-be trillion-dollar franchise.
May the odds be ever in your favor,
S. J. K. V. G. Meyer
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This is what a greatly-exaggerated version of what query letters would look like if the power was in my hands, rather than with the agent. I was inspired to write this post when I saw an agent (who I shall not name) saying that “it’s never been harder to get your work published” than the present time. All I could think was, “Really? You mean it’s harder now than it was two hundred years ago when you had to hand-write everything and burn your pages instead of hitting ‘backspace’? You mean it’s harder now than it was when print books were a luxury item, instead of trash to be thrown away after you get off the plane? You mean it’s harder now to get published than it was five years ago, before you could sell your manuscript with the push of a button through Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and more?”
I call bullshit, Ms. McAgent Lady. I. Call. Bullshit.
The Z-Axis 
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I mean the book. I would read that in a millisecond. 😉
Haha! We just need someone with lots of time on his hands to write it, then 🙂
If only there were a person like that out there…
The revolution will not be televised, but will be blogged.
CNN is sending in Anderson Cooper to report, but the NYT and WSJ are stoically avoiding the entire thing.
Some agents are cool and down-to-earth, I’m sure, but the overinflated level of self-importance I see in many of the agents on Twitter is nauseating. I can possibly see myself working with an agent at some point, maybe, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when I go around begging for representation like they’re doing me some huge favor. It’s a business deal. That’s it. Please to check your ego at the door, Mr. Agent, Ma’am.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to write fake pitches for things like #PitchMad, because that seems to delight the fun people and annoy the ones with a stick up their bum—and that’s basically the only reason I’m on Twitter: to delight and annoy.
That’s precisely my issue, too, the “overinflated level of self-importance”. Some of them see themselves not just as facilitators in a business deal but also as arbiters of quality, the sole determining factor in whether or not a writer has talent or a book will sell. Of course, this is a generalization, as you pointed out. Some are chill and funny. Some are not. I’d love to work with an agent, but the querying process feels exactly like begging to me.
A friend posted this so I clicked, natch, and what do I find? AMIRA! Perfect letter, by the way – wish I’d get one of these!
Haha, glad you enjoyed it! Cheers & hopefully one day we writers will hold the reins of power 🙂
Where else can you find good agents though? I can’t imagine what kind of a soup nazi I’d be if I had to read crappy queries for 8 hours a day, or 4, or even 2. By the end of the first week, yeah, I think I’d be ready to start ripping these people to shreds who can’t get to the point of their story quickly. That said, I’m having a hard time with the ones who’ll pass on your query if you mess up the subject line or the first two lines of the pitch. THAT is overinflated self-importance.
You’ve got a fair point, but that’s sort of my problem. You CAN’T find a good agent, except through the query process. And that, to be honest, is incredibly frustrating. I generally strain against authority and rage against processes, and I can’t bring myself to voluntarily submit to the query process – even though I would love to be represented – because of the sheer stupidity of the process.