The Nobodies: Fingers Crossed
I had an interesting dream the other night. One of my closest friends, as close to a brother as could be, had a sudden and insatiable need to help me get published. He came to me with an absolutely brilliant idea for a submission and presented it to me on what must have been a tablet.
He had color coded the text. It looked something like that green Matrix text mixed with a Lite-Brite with a dab of my book.
In the dream, of course, it seemed a revelation. But thinking practically of it in real life, it's nothing more than an indication of how deeply ingrained I've become in the process. Color coding won't do a thing, but my dream-friend did have a point: if I want to land an agent, my query will need some adjustments.
I mentioned last week I was going to commence with some A/B testing. So this past week, I took a few moments to compose the new queries--starting mostly from scratch. Both follow the same general format of the last version (salutation, hook, plot detail, background information, closing) but not only present the material in vastly different ways, they focus on slightly different aspects of the book and my own literary background.
I'm not going to share either of the new versions here today, but may do so in a future post. I admit it'd be interesting, whether I'm professionally published or not, to examine the query's evolution from its earliest versions several years ago through now, but I'm not quite ready for that just yet. I need to give the queries time to marinate, to go out into the wild and fetch me an agent.
Mailings commence Monday night. I had originally intended to start Friday night, but with the holiday giving many a three-day weekend, I feared the queries would be lost in the potential weekend flood and subsequent time off. It's happened to my inbox, so I'm certain it happens to agents' as well.
Wish me luck.
He had color coded the text. It looked something like that green Matrix text mixed with a Lite-Brite with a dab of my book.
In the dream, of course, it seemed a revelation. But thinking practically of it in real life, it's nothing more than an indication of how deeply ingrained I've become in the process. Color coding won't do a thing, but my dream-friend did have a point: if I want to land an agent, my query will need some adjustments.
I mentioned last week I was going to commence with some A/B testing. So this past week, I took a few moments to compose the new queries--starting mostly from scratch. Both follow the same general format of the last version (salutation, hook, plot detail, background information, closing) but not only present the material in vastly different ways, they focus on slightly different aspects of the book and my own literary background.
I'm not going to share either of the new versions here today, but may do so in a future post. I admit it'd be interesting, whether I'm professionally published or not, to examine the query's evolution from its earliest versions several years ago through now, but I'm not quite ready for that just yet. I need to give the queries time to marinate, to go out into the wild and fetch me an agent.
Mailings commence Monday night. I had originally intended to start Friday night, but with the holiday giving many a three-day weekend, I feared the queries would be lost in the potential weekend flood and subsequent time off. It's happened to my inbox, so I'm certain it happens to agents' as well.
Wish me luck.
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