Nonfiction Query Letter
A nonfiction query letter doesn't hit the same points as a fiction query letter. Here are three key elements to include in the query letter for your nonfiction project.
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Nonfiction Query Letter Video Transcript
Hi. I'm Mary Kole and this is the Good Story Company YouTube channel.. And today, I want to talk about how to write a nonfiction query letter.
Now, nonfiction is very different from fiction. In nonfiction, there are certain things that you want to hit with your query letter that don't necessarily matter as much in fiction. And in fiction, there are things that you want to hit with your query letter that don't necessarily matter as much in nonfiction. So for nonfiction, who you are, what your premise is, and what your market is, are the three most important things. This goes for magazine articles, nonfiction picture books, nonfiction for the adult market like business, diet, parenting, romance, meaning relationships, not romance novels. All of these things, they want to know. They're very, very crowded categories.
And so, the people acquiring any nonfiction along those lines, they want to know who you are and the more platform that you can bring to the table, the better. And so, they're gonna be wondering, who are you to write about this? Are you a relationship expert? Are you a family marriage counselor, that sort of thing? Are you a scientist, in terms... Are you a biologist? Is that why you want to write about this element of biology? So you always have to sort of justify who you are and what makes you the right person to write a book, a nonfiction book, or article about XYZ.
You will also want to convey your premise. It has something in common with writing a novel query letter but it is unique in that you really want to be selling them on the need for this book. Now, when I've written a novel, I talk about what my characters are doing, what my plot is, what my worldbuilding is like. Here, you're talking about, okay, there are a million parenting books on the market. This is why mine is going to be the most unique or mine addresses this new category of mindful parenting in a way that my competition doesn't. So you are really going to be carving out what your very, very, very specific premise is. And say for a magazine article, "Hey, Parents magazine, you published 10 bazillion articles about parenting." That is a factual number. No, try to also be professional in your query letter. "Here's an angle that you have not talked about in it. This is gonna blow your readers' minds." Again, probably more casual than you would want to go. But the intention there is to really differentiate yourself and your idea, and your pitch, and your angle, because it's gonna be very, very difficult to get somebody on your team and interested in your project if you say, "This is my parenting omnibus. I am going to write about every facet of parenting and talk about everything from, you know, the toddler years to the teenage years, from sleeping to eating habits, from school to, you know, activities and sports. I'm gonna cover every topic in parenting." We don't necessarily like to publish books like that in the current market. We want to publish, you know, three parenting hacks for the screen-addicted teenager. So it's very specific. Your audience is very specific. Your slant is very specific and also, your opinion. So you could have two completely valid nonfiction articles. One is for getting your teenager to not go on their screen so much. One is for encouraging technology love in your teen. And both would be valid. It's just a matter of how you position your particular article, your particular book idea.
And then, finally, you want to really pay attention to who would use this, so your audience. There are X number of households in the U.S. with teenagers ages 13 to 18 and 85% of them report depression due to social media. I'm going to break down this phenomenon and give you interesting tips for how to buffer the effective social media on your teen. So that's an example of the slant of the book. And you could say, you know, if it's true, obviously, the final piece of the puzzle would be, I've spent 10 years as a Google engineer, dadadadada. So it's who you are, what your slant is, and what the audience is. You want to define all of those things to sort of demonstrate that there's a need in the market for your book and that people will buy it, and that people are dealing with the problems that you are ideally solving in your book, why you're the person to take this on, and what your exact slant is in terms of solving a problem, exposing something, bringing something to your readership that's never been sort of packaged in that way before. These are all things that agents and publishers are going to look for, and even magazine publishers, journal publishers, are going to look for when they're considering a nonfiction query letter.
My name is Mary Kole, and here's to a good nonfiction story.
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