Query Letter for Picture Book
An enticing query letter can be your foot in the door with an agent or publisher. Here are the elements to include in a strong query letter for a picture book.
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Transcript for Query Letter for Picture Book Video
Hello. This is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. I'm here today to talk about query letters for picture books. And this is a very enticing topic for a lot of people.
A lot of people get very, very interesting query letters because this is your foot in the door. This is how you get in front of an agent or a publisher, this cover letter. I would say, of course, focus on the query but make sure that your book is as strong as you can get it because that is the number one thing that agents and publishers are going to be interested in once they read your query. If they feel enticed to buy the query, the picture book is what's gonna make or break your submission. But that being said, I understand that query letters are very, very anxiety-provoking for a lot of writers.
So how do we handle a query letter for a picture book? Your query will be short. Picture books, ideally, are short themselves and for the most part, they will follow the query letter in the same submission. They'll be pasted after the query in an email. An agent will request them in one shape or another. You'll always want to follow submission guidelines. And you will be presenting the manuscript at the same time as the query. So, your query doesn't need to be as comprehensive as it would be for a novel or for a project where the whole manuscript isn't gonna follow right along.
People overthink query letters, but picture book query letters especially. I've read query letters that are twice as long as the actual manuscript itself in terms of word count. I wouldn't recommend that. What I would do in a picture book query letter is add your personalization at the top, why you are querying that agent, why you are submitting to that publisher. Maybe it's the book that the publisher has issued that you love, or that the agent has represented that really speaks to you, or is similar in tone or for another reason to the book that you have, you think it might be a good fit.
Then you will want to present your picture book. Title is a picture book of XYZ words that is all about making friends and embracing differences, for example. So this is where your theme comes into play, the universal message that you are writing toward with your picture book. And you would put in a query so that they know... Because when we're evaluating picture books, we always know what kind of picture books we're looking for and what we may not be looking for. And so, if I'm a publisher and I have a ton of friendship books, or a ton of odd-couple friendships, or a ton of "I love being me" or embracing differences books, then I may bounce out right there. I would really clearly present what the picture book is about. We don't want to have a message in the book that hits readers over the head. That's a completely different discussion, but at the same time, I think it's perfectly fine to pull out your theme and isolate it in the query letter. Then you may want to go ahead and just run through what happens in the plot, who the character is. Both of these things are very important in picture books because you don't have a lot of words to work with. And so, your story needs to be right there in the query and right there in the picture book.
I would reveal how the picture book ends. If I'm thinking about Oliver Jeffers' "Lost and Found," I wouldn't say, "Does the boy ever find the penguin?" At the end, I would say, "The boy and the penguin are reunited in an unexpected way and their friendship grows," for example, so that's, spoiler alert, the ending to "Lost and Found" by Oliver Jeffers. But the agent or the publisher needs to know sort of where you're going with the story, how the story wraps up, and how the theme works into it. That's very important in picture books.
So make sure to have any sales hooks, for example, it's written in rhyme, it's a great read-aloud, it has a teacher's guide in the back that talks about penguins. Anything like that, you'll also want to include in the query letter. The plot, the theme, the character, if the character has any interesting attributes, or the character goes on a specific journey, or a character arc in the picture book, you'll want to include that. A little bio if you work in education, if you have other experience with writing for children or other teaching experience or other writing experience, even if it's not for children, very good stuff to put in the bio paragraph. And then, just say, "Per your submission guidelines, the manuscript is included below." You don't want to say attached and you don't want to attach anything because most agents and publishers do not accept attachments. But if they say in their submission guidelines that they want to consider the whole manuscript, in it goes with the query letter, usually via copy and paste. "Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you for your consideration."
If you're sending to more than one agent or more than one publisher at a time, which I highly encourage you to do, you may also want to include some language about "Please note this is a simultaneous submission." Say that 10 times fast because that indicates to them that you are going out widely on your submission, which is, again, totally fine, but you may want to have language in there just to, you know, dot your i's and cross your t's and then that's it, 250 words, 300 words maximum for a picture book query letter. And remember, the thing that you are talking about is gonna fall right after so this just needs to be a summary, a cover letter. Isolate any sales hooks, that's what agents and publishers will be looking for, and you're good to go.
This has been Mary Kole with Good Story Company, and here's to a good story.
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