The Two Things Agents Look For in a Query Letter
What agents notice in the first 30 seconds of a query.
When I was a book editor, I would occasionally start to feel overwhelmed by the number of submissions I had to respond to. Fun fact: You rarely read submissions in the office when you’re an editor. You usually don’t have time to edit in the office either (thanks, meetings!). You tend to do both your reading and editing at home on nights and weekends.
One day, at lunch with a literary agent friend, I was complaining about this perpetual game of catch-up when she told me how many queries she received every week. Not ten, or twenty, or even fifty—a hundred. A week. I shut up and ate my California roll.
It’s been years since that lunch, but based on recent conversations with agents, the number has only gone up. Which is exactly why a strong query letter matters so much. You’ve got half a minute, at best, before the agent moves on to the next letter.
So, how do you make the most of those thirty seconds?
In last week’s Author Insider Q&A, novelist and Pitch Your Novel creator Karin Gillespie explained just how. Specifically, she said that there are two elements that are essential to the modern query letter:
1. A clear one-sentence pitch
2. Strong, recent comp titles
Do these things right, and the agent will be able to decide, almost immediately, if the book has potential. It doesn’t guarantee representation, but it gives your book its best chance to stand out in a crowded inbox.
OK, let’s get into it…
The one-sentence pitch
This is the line that distills your story into its most essential elements. Ideally, it tells:
Who the story is about
What disrupts their life (the inciting event)
What they want (their goal)
What stands in their way (the obstacles)
A classic story like The Wizard of Oz can be reduced to something like this:
“When a restless young woman is swept away by a tornado to a magical land, she befriends a scarecrow, a tin man, and a cowardly lion and sets out on a dangerous journey to find the wizard who might send her home.”
You’ll notice this is a very plot-oriented approach. Atmosphere, themes, big sweeping commentary—none of that belongs in the pitch. The character’s name isn’t even supposed to be in it.
The goal isn’t to capture every nuance of the book. (It’s one sentence, so it couldn’t even if you tried.) Instead, you want to pull out the core story engine. This is the pitch at its most pared down.
Why does this matter so much? Because if an agent decides to represent your book, they’ll eventually have to pitch it to editors. If an editor likes it, they’ll pitch it in an acquisitions meeting. If the book gets bought, someone will pitch it to the sales team, who will pitch it to booksellers… and on and on. At every stage, someone has to explain—in one sentence—why your book matters.
A strong pitch sentence makes that job much easier.
Comp titles
Comp titles, short for “comparative titles,” have also become more important in recent years. A comp title helps answer a simple question: Where does this book fit in today’s market?
Good comps usually have a few qualities in common:
They’re recent (generally from the past two to three years)
They share something meaningful with your book: tone, structure, audience, or theme
They help an agent quickly understand how the book might be positioned
Bad comps are either too old, too massive, or too vague. If the book came out in another decade, the market has already moved on and the comparison is ineffective. If you claim that your book will be the next Gone Girl or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, no one will believe you (you might even get dinged for hubris). And saying that your novel will appeal to “fans of great storytelling everywhere” is like telling someone you like “good food” when they ask where you want to eat.
The right comps immediately situate your book in the current publishing landscape.
Why these two elements matter to agents
Taken together, a compelling pitch and smart comps do something critical: they show that you understand not just what the story you’re telling is, but how it fits into the publishing ecosystem.
In a business where agents are rapidly evaluating hundreds of submissions, that kind of clarity can make a real difference.
If you’d like to hear Karin break this down in more detail, including examples from real query letters, you can watch the full conversation here:
Video Replay: How Do You Write a Query Letter That Gets Read?
Until next time,
—Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director at The Next Big Idea Club