Dear Sir or Madam,

. . . will you read my book?

It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

It's the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

This is actually an example of the kind of query that drives good agents to drink. 1000 pages (that makes this sucker a quarter-million words)! Years to write? No personalization! Unsympathetic main character, and so on.

There is nothing here to make an agent or editor ask for more, except for one thing. If it had been a real query, agents and publishers would've been all over themselves to publish anything from one of the Fabs.

It's not like that for the rest of us.

The rest of us have to write a kick-ass query to get a request. We have to reduce an entire book to a few good sentences that include a great hook. And while we wrote our opus (of considerably less than a quarter-million words), that doesn't mean we can write a cohesive paragraph of maybe two-hundred words that garner interest.

Agents know this. To be helpful, many blogging agents post real queries with comments. As useful as this should be, it isn't always--at least not to me. What grabs their attention may not grab mine. The voice they hear might not resonate for me. The conflict of the story sounds intriguing to them and contrived to me. This worries me and has made me wonder if I'm writing the wrong stories, in the wrong genre, or if my writing efforts, hopes, and dreams aren't pure fantasy.

But lately, I'm thinking it's more than a difference in perception, understanding, and interest, and has nothing to do with the marketplace. I'm realizing it's our subjective tastes at play. To take that one step further, because they find something exciting--that to me is a real snooze or eye-roller, it could mean the agent wouldn't be the right agent for me and my work, and that's all there is to it.

Yeah, that's mostly a duh. But sometimes it's the obvious things that trip us up in life--and in art.

Does that mean I won't query these agents when I'm ready? It might. There are other factors at play, always, like whether they have clients whose books I enjoy. Whether I like their blogs and find them helpful. And whether they've done some good deal-making recently.

For those of us querying, it's important to remember that if you've written a good and complete query that makes sense (go read Query Shark to see many that don't), researched the agent and you got a form reject anyway, it's quite possibly they don't represent the kind of stories you write, or they just didn't want to read the book for some personal reason. And that's okay.

After all, not everyone is a fan of the Beatles. Unbelievable, but true.