This series is called "Successful Queries" and I'm posting actual query letters that succeeded in getting writers signed with agents.  In addition to posting the actual query letter, we will also get to hear thoughts from the agent as to why the letter worked. 

The first installment of this series is with agent Michelle Wolfson (Wolfson Literary), and her client, Mark Di Vincenzo, and his book, Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That and Go There.

Dear Ms. Wolfson,
 
Have you ever wanted to know the best day of the week to buy groceries or go out to dinner? Have you ever wondered about the best time of day to send an email or ask for a raise?  What about the best time of day to schedule a surgery or a haircut? What’s the best day of the week to avoid lines at the Louvre? What’s the best day of the month to make an offer on a house? What’s the best time of day to ask someone out on a date?

My book, Timing is Everything: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That and Go There, has the answers to these questions and hundreds more.

As a long-time print journalist, I’ve been privy to readership surveys that show people can’t get enough of newspaper and magazine stories about the best time to buy or do things. This book puts several hundreds of questions and answers in one place -- a succinct, large-print reference book that readers will feel like they need to own. Why? Because it will save them time and money, and it will give them valuable information about issues related to health, education, travel, the workplace and more. In short, it will make them smarter, so they can make better decisions. 

Best of all, the information in this book is relevant to anyone, whether they live in Virginia or the Virgin Islands, Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine. In fact, much of the book will find an audience in Europe, Australia and Latin America.

I‘ve worked as a journalist since 1984 and have made a name for myself as someone who exposes wrongs, such as rampant abuses at mental hospitals and decades of neglect by government agencies that monitor the environment.  I've won numerous awards, competing against reporters from The Washington Post, The Washington Times, the Associated Press, the Richmond-Times Dispatch and The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot. In 1999, the Virginia Press Association created an award for the best news writing portfolio in the state – the closest thing Virginia had to a reporter-of-the-year award. I won it that year and then again in 2000. The next year I beat out reporters from The Charlotte Observer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to win the Southern Environmental Law Center’s first-place journalism award. I then became metro editor at a 100,000-circulation newspaper in Newport News, Va. Over the years, I’ve honed my long-form writing skills by doing magazine cover stories and writing short stories. During the summer of 2007, I left newspapering to pursue book projects and long-form journalism.

I saw your name on a list of top literary agents for self-help books, and I read on your Web site that you're interested in books that offer practical advice. Timing Is Everything offers plenty of that. Please let me know if you'd like to read my proposal.

Sincerely,
Mark Di Vincenzo  

Commentary from Michelle:

This query caught my attention and I requested it less than 3 hours after I received it.  I’m pleased to say that Mark became my client and his book, with the new title Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That, and Go There will be coming out from Harper Collins in October.

I loved the opening to Mark’s query.  I tend to prefer it when authors jump right into the heart of their book, the exception being if we’ve met at a conference or have some other personal connection.  Otherwise, it’s safe to assume I know you are looking for representation and I like to get down to business.

Mark chose clever questions for the opening of the query.  All of those questions are in fact relevant to my life—with groceries, dinner, e-mail, and a raise—and yet I don’t have a definitive answer to them.  Then the next paragraph he got a little more offbeat and unusual with questions regarding surgery, the Louvre, buying a house and dating.  This showed a quirkier side to the book and also the range of topics it was going to cover.  So I knew right away there was going to be a mix of useful and quirky information on a broad range of topics. 

The next sentence was great.  By starting with “As a long-time print journalist,” Mark immediately established his credibility for writing on this topic.  While I needed more—which he provided later—this was great to know right away that he had experience researching topics.  And the second half of that sentence helped show that there is a market for this book.  This established the need for such a book.

And what do you know? Mark had the solution!  A book that answers that need.   And he does, in the rest of that paragraph.  I think he could have shortened it a drop maybe to “…hundreds of questions and answers with valuable information about issues related to…”  I would also be careful not to be too specific about how you envision the final book, and this is something I am always changing with authors in their proposals, since if editors see it differently, you may turn them off by having such a rigid format already described.  Why large print?  Who knows.  I would not put that in a query.

Mark’s next paragraph is interesting because I like it if an author can describe his target audience.  However, when most authors say their audience is everyone, as many do, I pretty much automatically reject it.  And even as I type this, a query comes in for a YA vampire novel that will, “find a market in most reading ages, similar to the first couple Harry Potter books.” But Mark’s book really does have broad market appeal and he made his point based on a regional basis rather than age, although I think it cuts both ways in this particular case.  But keep in mind this is a reference book—and facts are facts and they really do apply to all people. 

Mark’s bio paragraph is a little on the long side but offers a lot of good information.  Again, I think a journalist is the perfect background for this kind of book since being an expert on any one thing wouldn’t help; you really need to be an expert in researching information and delivering it in an entertaining readable fashion. Overall, I felt I gleaned enough information to feel confident that we could present Mark’s platform in an impressive enough manner to find a publisher.

I liked Mark’s final paragraph, of course, since it’s all about me!  Seriously though, it is nice when I feel like an author has sought me out specifically and thinks we would be a good fit.  Here I am saying Mark is going to be doing a research heavy book and he has taken the time to research agents as well and has personalized his query with a little flattery thrown in.  Always a nice touch.

Of course, now that I’m looking at the query with an eye towards critiquing the query itself, I will comment on the little nitpicky things that I notice, but wouldn’t necessarily stop me from requesting something.  Since I just mentioned personalization, I’ll say that on closer inspection, I noticed that the "Dear Ms. Wolfson," is in a different font than the rest of the query.  Now I don’t expect you to send me an exclusive query; in fact, I hate them since I then feel pressured to respond right away when that’s not how I generally work if I’m not interested.  But you could at least make me feel like you’ve typed it out just for me, and a different font calls attention to a writer's admirable, yet meant to be secret, time-saving methods.


Want more on this subject?

• Successful Queries: (Fiction) "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" 
• Successful Queries: (Kids/YA) "Wake" 
• Successful Queries: (Nonfiction) "Peaches & Daddy"
  
• Confused about formatting? Check out Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript.
  
• Read about What Agents Hate: Chapter 1 Pet Peeves.
• Want the most complete database of agents and what genres they're looking for? Buy the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents today!

GLA: How did you become an agent?

WC: After hitting most of the stops along the editing line—assistant editor, associate editor, project editor, managing editor, senior editor—I think I was done with editing, and it was done with me.  My first job in publishing was at John Boswell Associates, which was a literary agency/book packager.  I really enjoyed that development side of the business.  The idea of dealing directly with writers and helping build something from the ground up is one that has always appealed to me.  So, in a way, this move brings my publishing career full circle.  Also (FinePrint President) Stephany Evans threatened to have my legs broken if I said “no.”  She can be very persuasive that way.

GLA: What are you looking for right now and not getting?  What do you pray for when tackling the slush pile?

WC: I’d love to see some more humor.  Just about every week, I receive three or four web-based bits of goofiness from friends.  Not all of these sites translate into books, but some of them surely do.  Another area I’d like to explore is simple gift books that go after particular niches, such as first-time dads or surfing dogs or alcoholic golfers.  The only thing I pray for when tackling the slush pile is more time.  There are just too many snap decisions to make.

GLA: Can you tell us something that will make you stop reading every time it crops up in a book proposal?

WC: I’m not a fan of the rambling mad scientist types who can write a 10-page sentence on how they’ve devised a formula to turn sea water into gasoline.

GLA: To you, what is essential to a promising book proposal?

WC: In some way, it really has to be entertaining.  I mean, no one wants a proposal that reads like a textbook, even if the book you’re trying to sell is a textbook.  If you’re pitching a humor project, make sure your proposal is in some way funny.  If you’ve got a book on a disgraced college football coach, don’t dwell on his first job in Pop Warner football.  Get right to the moment he started unraveling.  In the end, people want to be entertained when they read, and proposals are no different than the books themselves.

GLA: How much does a writer’s platform impact whether or not you agree to represent his or her manuscript?

WC: Let’s just say, it doesn’t hurt.  Look, if a particular book concept catches my interest, I am not going to turn my back on it because the person doesn’t have his or her own blog.  However, if I am on the fence and the author does appear to have an impressive background, it may be the thing that sways me to take a shot.

GLA: You represent pop culture projects.  In your mind, what defines this subject?

WC: Uh oh.  Someone once asked me this question during a job interview, and I proceeded to ramble on for around a half hour on everything from Quisp cereal to why Taxi was one of the five greatest television sitcoms of all time.  Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.  If I were to take another crack at defining pop culture, I would say it is the non-biodegradable stuff (both experiences and tangible artifacts) that sticks in our collective consciousness both as Americans and, in many instances, as a global community.  Sure, we’re all very different.  But go and recite a line from Caddyshack in a bar or make a bold statement about who makes the best hot dogs, and watch complete strangers line up to put in their two cents.

GLA: Staying with pop culture, can you give some examples of books you’ve repped in this area so writers can get a sense of your tastes in pop culture work?

WC: At my first job, we created an instant book during the O.J. Simpson trial called O.J.’s Legal Pad, which I thought was a brilliant idea.  Henry Beard, John Boswell, and Ron Barrett took this circus trial phenomenon and banged out a very funny book in record time.  But, not all pop culture projects have to be done on the spot.  I love reference guides like Alex McNeil’s Total Television as well as books that dissect aspects of popular culture itself.

GLA: We have not discussed humor projects much in previous agent interviews.  Can you tell us a little bit about what grabs you in this category?

WC: My guess is the reason it hasn’t been discussed very much is that what most people, including myself, are looking for is originality.  For instance, I thought Don Novello’s The Lazlo Letters (1977) was hilarious and inspired.  So when Jerry Seinfeld’s incredibly similar Letters from a Nut came out in 2001, I was considerably less impressed.  Not that I wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to rep Jerry Seinfeld.  I’m not that crazy.  But, I just feel if you’re going to use an existing idea as inspiration, do something different with it.  The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook was both clever and funny, and when Max Brooks came out with The Zombie Survival Guide, it was very funny, too, but in its own right.

GLA: You also seek sports-related books.  Can this be anything?  Coaching?  Memoir?  Weird statistics?  Anything?

WC: Just about anything.  There are subjects that don’t interest me as much, such as fishing, auto racing, and figure skating, but you never know.  Oh, wait, I got one. This is probably a mistake on my part, but I’m really not interested in seeing any books on ultimate fighting or mixed martial arts.  I don’t mean to offend anyone; this is just a personal preference.

GLA: What are three topics you would classify as overdone in sports-related books?

WC: The first thing that comes to mind are the proposals you get after a major sports team wins a championship.  It’s one thing if a coach or player wants to write an account of that magical season, but you also get all sorts of people pitching books who are peripherally connected to the team.  I’m just not sure that anyone wants to read the story of the 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers as told by a guy who plays golf with the equipment manager’s brother.  Another overdone category in sports is leadership books by coaches.  Finally, I’d say anything on synchronized swimming. If there’s even one book on this sport, it’s one too many.

WC: Don’t get too despondent when an agent passes on your submission.  Sometimes the concept just isn’t right.  I usually like to keep a list of writers whose proposals I may have passed on, but who are otherwise talented, so that I can contact them should other projects arise that would be a good fit.  Finally, always wear clean underwear when you’re going to meet with a publisher.

• See a profile of Christian agent Rachelle Gardner of Wordserve. 
• Read an interview with Christian agent Chip MacGregor.
• Buy the memoir guide, Writing Life Stories.
  
• Read an interview with Christian agent Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary.
  
• Confused about formatting? Check out Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript.
  
• Read about What Agents Hate: Chapter 1 Pet Peeves.
• Want the most complete database of agents and what genres they're looking for? Buy the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents today!

"Agent Advice" is a series of quick interviews with literary and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else.

This installment features Alanna Ramirez, of Trident Media Group. 

She is seeking: literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, pop culture and lifestyle books. 

Alanna Ramirez.

GLA: How did you become an agent?

AR: I became an agent by working my way up through various positions at Trident Media Group.  I started here as Ellen Levine’s assistant and had the privilege to work with many of her illustrious clients – Christopher Andersen, Russell Banks, Michael Ondaatje, Louis Sachar, Marilynne Robinson, and Sheila Weller, among others.  Soon after, I became First Serial Associate and sold first serial rights for all of the authors on Ellen Levine’s list while continuing to work as her assistant.  I sold short stories and book excerpts to American History Magazine, A Public Space, BOMB, Esquire, Harper’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others.  In 2007 I was promoted to Audio Rights Agent and also worked as an Associate in Chairman, Robert Gottlieb’s office, working with his elite client list – Catherine Coulter, Dale Brown, T. Jefferson Parker, and Karen Robards, just to name a few.  In January 2009, I was promoted to Literary Agent.  Previous to my experience at Trident, I worked in editorial at Penguin/Berkley Publishing Group, and also spent a year in the publicity department at HarperCollins.  My experiences in the publishing side of the business have complimented my run at Trident.

GLA: What’s the most recent thing you’ve sold?

AR: Most recently I sold a nonfiction book called Saving Cinnamon: The Amazing True Story of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Mission to Bring her Home by Christine Sullivan, which will be published by St. Martin’s Press in Fall 2009.

GLA: What draws you to narrative nonfiction?  What are you looking for in a narrative nonfiction submission?

AR: I majored in history and journalism in college, and I think that when you combine these two subjects you come up with narrative nonfiction.  I enjoy history because I’ve always thought of historical events as stories – little insights into the culture, politics, psychology of a certain period of time.  And I am drawn to narrative nonfiction because the writer will dig deep into history (or a current topic) with an investigative eye.  I’m interested in seeing narrative nonfiction that explores important American figures, historical events (American or European), current cultural trends or events.

GLA: A lot of writers have memoirs, but few make it through the gauntlet to publication.  What sets the best ones apart?

AR: I think the best memoirs are the ones that read like fiction.  The circumstances are so extraordinary (The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls) or so unbelievable (Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs), or so inspiring (Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert) that the reader gets completely lost in the narrative.  For me, a truly successful memoir should take me on a journey that I would not ever experience in my own life, and keep me up reading long into the night.

GLA: You also seek pop culture books and lifestyle books.  Can you throw out some examples of these genres so writers can get a feel for what constitutes a “pop culture” work, etc?

AR: I think of “pop culture” as anything that’s an up-to-the minute trend.  For example, playing off of our current economic situation I sold a book called Bitches on a Budget to NAL.  It’s a smart, witty (sometimes snarky) guide for women to who want to survive a recession in style.  I’m also interested in blog culture, fashion, style, film, and entertainment.

GLA: What are you looking for right now and not getting?

AR: As you know, I’m looking to take on nonfiction authors – memoir and narrative nonfiction.  But I’m also looking for literary fiction that has the ability to cross over into the mainstream market.  Think – The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini); Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen); The Dive From Clausen's Pier (Ann Packer); or While I Was Gone (Sue Miller).  I’m also interested in novels about quirky families that span generations … some of my favorites include Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides); The World According to Garp (John Irving); I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb); The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen).

GLA: Most common problem(s) you see in a query for literary fiction?

AR: The most common problem that I see with queries for literary fiction as that the author has a hard time telling me what their book is about.  The best way to pitch me is with 5 or 6 well-crafted sentences that give me the gist of the plot.  Please don’t forget to tell me if you’ve won awards or have been published in literary magazines, or anything else notable about yourself and your writing.

GLA: Will you be at any upcoming conferences where writers can meet and pitch you?

AR: I’m not scheduled for any conferences yet this year.

GLA: Best piece(s) of advice we haven’t covered?

AR: If you have a really great story to tell, and it doesn’t quite fit into what I’ve described, please pitch me anyway.  It would be great to see a literary crime novel, for example.  However, I’m not considering science fiction, fantasy, or romance.

Want more on this subject?

• If you're interested in Trident Media, check out this post on new Trident agent Stephanie Maclean.
• Read an interview with agent Jessica Regel (Jean V. Naggar Lit) 
• Read an interview with agent Meredith Kaffel (Charlotte Sheedy Lit)
• Read an interview with agent Lucienne Diver (The Knight Agency)
• Confused about formatting? Check out Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript.
  
• Read about What Agents Hate: Chapter 1 Pet Peeves.
• Want the most complete database of agents and what genres they're looking for? Buy the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents today!

"Agent Advice" is a series of quick interviews with literary and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else.

This installment features Ted Weinstein, founder of Ted Weinstein Literary Management, based in San Francisco.

He is seeking: "narrative nonfiction, popular science, biography and history, current affairs and politics, contemporary culture, business, sports, food and cooking, health and medicine, entertainment, and quirky reference books. Please note he does not represent fiction, screenplays, short stories, poetry, or books for children or young adults."

GLA: What's the most recent thing you've sold?

TW: I represent nonfiction in many different categories and I sell new books frequently, so it's best for authors to visit my agency's website for the latest information on our deals, our clients, and their recently published books.

GLA: It seems like if someone wanted to write about cooking or politics or history, it's all been done before.  That said, what stands out for you in a proposal?  What are you looking for immediately to draw you into a project?

TW: There are several factors that can help a book's ultimate prospects: great writing, great platform, or great information, and ideally all three.  For narrative works, the writing should be gorgeous, not just functional.  For practical works, the information should be insightful, comprehensive and preferably new.  And for any work of nonfiction, the author's platform is enormously important.

GLA: Online at your website, people can listen to your speech called "Book Proposal Bootcamp."  To summarize, what do you detail in the speech?

TW: The "Book Proposal Bootcamp" workshop, which I teach frequently at writers' conferences and elsewhere, gives an overview of the whole process from book idea to book tour, but with a central focus on the actual proposal, which is essentially a business plan for a book.  I explain all the elements of a proposal - overview, about the author, target audience, comparable titles, marketing and promotion plans, detailed table of contents, sample chapters - and try to give as much guidance (and true stories) as a 90-minute session allows.

GLA: You look for writers of nonfiction biography.  Are you looking for interesting people who want to write their own autobiography, or are you looking for good writers who can write biographies of famous people?  If it's the latter, how do writers secure the rights to write Mick Jagger's life story, for example?

TW: Memoir/autobiography is a thriving genre (I highly recommend the 826 Valencia Writing Centers' The Autobiographer's Handbook, which I represented), but the appeal of any particular work will come from the literary quality of the writing and the author's ability to make the story compelling to someone who hasn't previously heard of him or her.  We all see too many memoirs where our reaction is either "This just isn't great writing," or "Why would a stranger care about this writer's personal story?"
      For biographies, of course, the writing quality is key, as well as the fame (or infamy) of the subject and the freshness of the material or insights the author presents.  Often an "authorized" biography is more interesting (we all want to read a story where the subject gets to have his or her say, too), but there is no single way to persuade a subject to cooperate.  And nothing prevents an author from writing about a public personality, as long as they don't write anything libelous, of course.

GLA: Can you give me an example or two of where a journalist was working on a topic and made it into a book that you agented?  How did the timeline work?  Did you contact them or vice versa?

TW: Recent examples include Nena Baker, who was a reporter for the Portland Oregonian and the Arizona Republic, and whose current affairs and science book The Body Toxic just came out from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  She and I met at a writers' conference where she first pitched me a different project, but the impact of environmental chemicals had long fascinated her and seemed an important and timely topic to me.  So she and I worked on a proposal, sold it, and although the whole project took several years, she had a wonderful working relationship with her editor, Denise Oswald, at FSG.
      Another client, Eric Janszen, an economics analyst and writer (and former tech executive), wrote the cover story of Harper's Magazine in February 2008, "The Next Bubble," about our current economic situation.  Based on that article, I contacted him and helped him develop a book proposal, and the quality of his insights and the timeliness of the topic led to a frenzied, two-day tour to meet with eight different publishers who were interested.  Adrian Zackheim at Portfolio/Penguin aggressively pre-empted the book on the eve of what was going to be a big auction, and Eric is close to finishing the manuscript now, with publication of The Post Catastrophe Economy scheduled for next spring.

GLA: What are the most common things you see writers doing wrong when composing a nonfiction book proposal?

TW: Professionalism always wins.  A book proposal, as I said earlier, is simply a business plan for a book.  Authors who don't learn all they need to know about writing a great proposal (you know, I heard there's a good "book proposal bootcamp" audio recording available somewhere on the Web...) and then carefully take advantage of what they have learned are much less likely to succeed.

GLA: Will you be at any upcoming writers' conferences where people can meet and pitch you?

TW: I attend a wide range of conferences, which varies each year, and it isn't essential to meet me face-to-face to pitch me a book.  Perhaps a third of my clients are referrals, another third I discovered and contacted myself, and another third I took on from blind submissions via my Web site.  I read every submission I receive, and I'm always looking for that query or proposal where I can say, as in that Tom Cruise/Renee Zellweger movie, "You had me from hello."

GLA: Best piece(s) of advice concerning something we haven't discussed?

TW: Write every day, get in a serious writing group for high-quality feedback, treat writing like the craft and privilege it is.

Blank Spots on the Map

Want more on this subject?

• How to Write a Query Letter. 
• What Should You Write in the "Bio Paragraph" of a Query Letter. 
• Why Your Manuscript Can Get Rejected, by Hallie Ephron.
• 10 Hidden Gifts of Rejection Letters.
• Google Alerts and Agents.
• Confused about formatting? Check out Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript.
  
• Read about What Agents Hate: Chapter 1 Pet Peeves.
• Want the most complete database of agents and what genres they're looking for? Buy the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents today!