Your query letter, rewritten.
For novelists querying literary agents, the people who sell your book to publishers. $49, back in 1 day.
- A plain diagnosis of your draft: hook, stakes, genre line, comps, bio
- The rewritten query, plus a shorter version for strict word limits
- A check of your comparable books and a template to personalise it for 3 agents
$49 · £39 incl. VAT · A$75 · C$65 — back in 1 day
The story first. Everything else, short.
An agent reads a query in about a minute and asks three things: what is the book, why this book, why me. A draft that opens with the word count and ends with an apology answers none of them.
Dear Agent,
I have written a book called The Salt Orchard which is a literary novel with some mystery elements and maybe magical realism, about 97,000 words although I could cut it if needed. It is about a woman named Ines who goes back to her family's farm in Portugal after her mother dies and finds out some secrets about her family and the land and has to decide what to do. It deals with themes of grief, identity, inheritance, language, and what we owe to the people who came before us. I think it would appeal to fans of literary fiction and book clubs.
I have been writing for many years and this is my first novel although I have written short stories. I have a degree in English. I would be honored if you would consider representing me. I can send the full manuscript at any time. Thank you so much for your time and consideration, I know how busy you are.
Dear Ms. Okafor,
When Inês Carvalho inherits her mother's failing salt-marsh orchard on the Algarve, she expects to sell it inside a week and fly home to Toronto. Instead she finds the ledger her mother kept in a language Inês was never taught, and a buyer who already seems to know what it says.
The ledger records forty years of water rights traded between three families, and one entry, in her mother's hand, that is not about water at all. To read the rest Inês needs the only neighbour who still speaks the old marsh dialect, a woman her mother spent a lifetime avoiding. Each page she translates puts a price on something Inês thought was hers: the house, the name on the deed, the version of her mother she grew up with. When the buyer's offer turns into a deadline, she has to choose between the clean sale she came for and a claim she can only prove by admitting what her mother did.
THE SALT ORCHARD is an 88,000-word literary novel with a mystery spine. It will appeal to readers of Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These for its scale and restraint, and of Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait for a woman reading her own family through a found document. I am querying you because of your interest in inheritance stories set outside the US and in fiction in translation.
I grew up between Lisbon and Ontario and worked for nine years as a court interpreter; the marsh dialect in the book is invented, but the work of translating a parent is not. My short fiction has appeared in two Canadian literary magazines. This is my first novel.
Thank you for your time and consideration. The full manuscript is available on request.
Warm regards, Marta Reis
Sample: the novel, the writer and the agent are made up. Every real query is rewritten only from what you send us. Read the full sample with the diagnosis.
Three steps. One day.
Send us your draft
Ten questions, ten minutes: your draft query (any state), the first 300 words of the book, genre and word count, the books you think it sits beside, who has passed so far, and your bio.
We rewrite it
Within 1 day: a diagnosis of the draft, the rewritten query, a shorter version for agents with strict limits, a check of your comps, and a personalisation template for three agents. Nothing invented about your book.
You hit send
You paste it into your own emails and QueryTracker and send it yourself. We never contact agents for you.
$49one query, 1 day
- One query letter for one manuscript, rewritten
- Diagnosis, rewritten query, shorter version, comp check, personalisation template
- Written only from your draft, your pages and your answers
- Back in 1 day. One free second pass if 20 sends bring only form rejections. Late means a refund.
Also £39 incl. VAT · A$75 · C$65
Read a whole rewrite first.
The full before and after for a made-up literary novel, with the eight-point diagnosis and the checklist we run every query through. Use it to fix your own if you would rather not pay.
Read the sampleDiagnosis · sample
The hook arrives late. The draft opens with the title, the genre and the word count. The first sentence should be the story: a person, a want, and the thing in the way. The rewrite opens on Inês, the orchard, and the ledger.
Three genres in one line. “Literary novel with some mystery elements and maybe magical realism” reads as undecided. One label with one modifier: “a literary novel with a mystery spine”. Nothing in the pages is magical, so that word goes.
Stakes are described, not shown. “Has to decide what to do” is not a stake. The rewrite names the choice (the clean sale vs. a claim she can only prove by exposing her mother) and the clock (the buyer's deadline).
The word count. 97,000 “although I could cut it” tells the agent the book is not finished. We used the count after the cut you told us you had already made (88,000) and stated it once, plainly.
Send us your draft.
Ten questions, ten minutes. You get an order code at the end, then pay. Your rewrite arrives within 1 day.
Do you send the query to agents for us?
No. You send it yourself, from your own email and QueryTracker account. We write it; you keep control of who gets it and when.
What if I don't have a draft yet?
Send us what you have. A messy paragraph plus your first 300 words and the answers on the form are enough. The rewrite is built from your book, not from a template.
Can you promise an agent will request pages?
No, and nobody honest can. A clear query gets the book read; the pages do the rest. If the rewrite goes to 20 agents and brings only form rejections, we do one free second pass.
Pay by card after you get your order code: $49 · £39 incl. VAT · A$75 · C$65. Late means a refund. A synopsis edit is available on request at checkout.
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