Ask Beth & Lisa: Query Letters (with Deborah Crossland)

Query letters make even experienced writers panic—and for good reason. In this special Ask Beth & Lisa episode, we’re joined by author and educator Deborah Crossland for a deep, practical conversation about how to write a strong, effective query letter as we head into the 2026 querying season. Deborah breaks down what query letters are actually for, what agents want to see (and don’t), and how writers can avoid the most common—and most damaging—mistakes.

This episode is packed with actionable advice, mindset shifts, and real-world examples from the querying trenches.

About Our Guest

Deborah Crossland teaches English and mythology at a community college and writes myth-based contemporary YA novels with a feminist lens. Her novel The Quiet Part Out Loud was published in 2023, with the paperback released in 2024. She lives in Northern California and is passionate about making education accessible to all.

Key Topics & Takeaways

What a Query Letter Is (and Isn’t)

• The sole purpose of a query letter is to get an agent to request pages—not to sell the book or explain the entire plot.
• Think invitation, not explanation.

The Anatomy of a Strong Query

• A compelling hook (often 1–2 sentences)
• A focused pitch centered on external stakes
• Brief book details (genre, word count, comps)
• A short, professional author bio

External Stakes Matter More Than You Think

• Writers often lean too hard on internal stakes; agents need to see what’s happening.
• External conflict is what differentiates your book in a crowded field.
• If an agent can’t picture the story visually, the query isn’t doing its job.

Pitch vs. Synopsis

• The query pitch should not include spoilers or the ending.
• The synopsis is where you explain the full story, including how it ends.
• Mixing these up is one of the most common querying mistakes.

How to Personalize Without Being Cringey

• Reference an agent’s manuscript wish list, not their personal life.
• Keep personalization professional, brief, and relevant.
• Treat it like a business introduction—not a social interaction.

Query Etiquette (and Red Flags)

• Always submit queries exactly how the agent requests.
• Never DM agents or email around Query Manager.
• Don’t announce querying rounds or submissions on social media.
• Avoid pitching your unpublished book publicly on Instagram, TikTok, or X.

Author Bios for Debut Writers

• It’s perfectly acceptable to say, “This is my first novel.”
• Writing credentials are optional; strong pages matter more.
• Publishing loves debuts—lack of experience is not a liability.

Series Talk: Less Is More

• Don’t pitch a multi-book series as a debut.
• “Standalone with series potential” is sufficient.

Length & Clarity

• Queries should be concise and tightly written.
• Every word must earn its place.
• If you can’t summarize your story clearly, you may not be ready to query.

Hooks, Loglines, and Netflix Thinking

• Think in terms of loglines or streaming-style descriptions.
• If you can’t explain your story in one sharp sentence, that’s a sign to step back.

Transcript

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Beth McMullen: Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen.

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Lisa Schmid: And I'm Lisa Schmidt!

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Beth McMullen: And we're the co-hosts of Riders with Wrinkles. This is Season 4, Episode 27, and today we're excited to welcome Deborah Crossland to a special Ask Beth and Lisa episode.

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Beth McMullen: Deborah teaches English and mythology at her local community college and writes myth-based contemporary novels with a feminist bent for young adults. She's passionate about making education accessible for everyone. She lives in Northern California with her husband. So welcome, Deborah, thank you for being here. We are excited to chat with you today.

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Deborah Crossland: Hi, I'm excited too. Thank you for having me.

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Beth McMullen: So, the reason that we asked Debra to join us on this Ask Beth and Lisa episode, which, as you know, if you listen to the show, is usually just me and Lisa talking at each other. So, we wanted to talk about query letters, especially launching into 2026, when a lot of you, we know, are getting ready to submit to agents. So, that query letter is so critical, we wanted to bring in somebody who has a lot

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Beth McMullen: of insight into how to do it well.

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Beth McMullen: That is not necessarily me or Lisa, so Deborah is here with us today. But she's also an author, and we want to hear a little bit about her books before we launch into the nitty-gritty on Curry letters. So, Debra, what are you writing? What have you written? What do you want to tell us about all of it?

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Deborah Crossland: Well…

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Deborah Crossland: I… I have news that I'm not allowed to share yet, but I will share it as soon as… as soon as I possibly can. But my previous book, The Quiet Part Out Loud, came out in…

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Deborah Crossland: I don't remember, 23? 2023, and then the paperback came out in 2024.

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Deborah Crossland: And, it's about… it's a young adult novel about a couple who has, like, the perfect high school, senior year romance, and then something really tragic happens, and…

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Deborah Crossland: Mia, the love interest, or the main character, kind of re…

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Deborah Crossland: Sorry, I just blanked on it.

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Deborah Crossland: She,

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Deborah Crossland: she just bows out of life. She breaks up with them, she doesn't speak to anybody. Well, 5 months later.

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Deborah Crossland: She's finding herself in San Francisco, crashing on her best friend's

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Deborah Crossland: floor in her dorm, and she accidentally runs into her ex-boyfriend, Alfie, and has a meltdown, and realizes she still loves him. And, she calls him to try to

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Deborah Crossland: talk to him, and right during their talk, there's a huge, massive earthquake, and, like, buildings fall down, massive earthquake. And so she decides, she and her best friend decide to set off across town to try to find him.

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Deborah Crossland: Before… and an aftershot can possibly kill one of them, or keep them divided forever. And so that's… that's what the book is about.

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Deborah Crossland: She walks across San Francisco with her friend, and then we get their love story told in his point of view in flashbacks, alternating chapters.

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Beth McMullen: I love that structure. I also… I lived in San Francisco for a long time, so I just love that city. It's, like, its own character, which it sounds like you leaned into in this story, which is wonderful. I love that.

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Deborah Crossland: I actually lived through the Loma Prieta earthquake. I was on Knob Hill when it happened, and so I.

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Beth McMullen: Oh, goodness.

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Deborah Crossland: experiences from that… that night.

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Beth McMullen: Yeah, that… that is… like, earthquakes are dramatic, so you've got that built in. Tension, and fear, and anxiety, and all the unknown. What a great… so is the timeline condensed? Is it just over in the present?

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Deborah Crossland: Just that.

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Beth McMullen: I'm walking across the city over a day, or a couple of days, or how does it…

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Deborah Crossland: One day. It's not even a full day. It's, like, a night, yeah. And I timed it. I used Google Maps to, like, figure out how long it would take to get from one area of the city to the next. Right. And so, it's really broken down.

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Lisa Schmid: ever.

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah, no.

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Beth McMullen: That's really… that's really great. Okay, so we will,

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Beth McMullen: We will just keep our ears open for your announcement of your news. So, are you gonna… are you on socials? Is there a way that people can keep track so they'll be in the know when you finally do share your new, exciting news?

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Deborah Crossland: I think Instagram is probably the best place to find me, and it's just Deb Crossland, yeah.

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Beth McMullen: Alright, and I will add that to the podcast notes, so that everybody can celebrate with you when the moment is right.

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Deborah Crossland: Thanks.

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Beth McMullen: Okay, so we are here to talk about query letters. Why do they make us all freak out? Why are they, like, so hard? Why do they make me feel like my brain's gonna leak out of my ears? And we often hear…

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Beth McMullen: People talk about just this sense of panic when they see the blank page on which they need to put a query letter, so I'm excited for this conversation.

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Beth McMullen: We will get into it. So, our first question is…

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Beth McMullen: What is the anatomy of a career letter? What is the spine, the backbone, so to speak?

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Deborah Crossland: Well, I want to start with the main function of the query letter, and that is to convince an agent to read some pages of your book. That is the goal of a query letter.

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Deborah Crossland: Not to sell your book, not to explain the plot. You just want to get them interested enough to request pages.

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Deborah Crossland: And hopefully the whole thing, but, you know, first 50's not a bad thing either.

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Deborah Crossland: And so you want to start with a hook.

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Deborah Crossland: Of course, every agent, well, not every agent, but a lot of agents have personal preferences in query letters, and they will tell you what those are in their, like, on Query Manager, or wherever, what's the other one called? It just went out of my head.

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Lisa Schmid: wishlist.

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Deborah Crossland: That's the one, thank you. And, they…

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Deborah Crossland: they… you can look and do research on there and find out if they want an introduction first, or if they want just the… the hook, whatever it is, and then if they want a bio. Sometimes they're asking other questions now, I understand, if they're using, like, a query manager profile where you upload everything.

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Deborah Crossland: They'll ask some pretty random questions.

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Deborah Crossland: But, I was lucky I didn't have to do that part, so…

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Deborah Crossland: So the main anatomy of a query letter would be, your hook. You want to do, like, a back of the jacket sort of hook, but you want to keep it

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Deborah Crossland: about, I don't know, what is it, 150 to 300 words? You don't want it to be super long. And you need to have the stakes in there. And when I say stakes, I mean the external stakes. I think we writers get so caught up in our stories.

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Deborah Crossland: And we love to…

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Deborah Crossland: talk about all the minutiae that we really focus on internal stakes. I know I do. That's where my heart lives. I love the internal stakes for a character. And…

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Deborah Crossland: That's not what is gonna sell your book. What's gonna sell your book is the big thing, like the earthquake.

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Deborah Crossland: I made that mistake when I first queried.

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Deborah Crossland: the quiet part out loud, and I was focusing on the love story, and someone brilliant pointed out to me, you should focus on the earthquake, because that's the exciting part of the story, and I want to know more about that. And for me, that was like, ugh, that's just them afterwards. I want to hear about them falling in love, and I want to see their banter.

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Deborah Crossland: And so, you really want to focus on the external stakes of your novel, and then also make sure that you list out the consequences of what will happen.

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Deborah Crossland: If the… if that… if those stakes actually come through.

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Lisa Schmid: Okay, so, what, like, I know we just kind of talked about the opening hook, and you feel like that's a really… that's important, and it is, you know, sometimes I do see people kind of go off on tangents, and you're like, wait, come back, come back to the… to the meat and potatoes.

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Lisa Schmid: How do you just… how do you decide what to include in the pitch versus, like, a synopsis? Because I think that's where people really have trouble, is, like, digging down into the nitty-gritty of what little pieces to pull out from there.

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Deborah Crossland: The synopsis should give the full…

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Deborah Crossland: down low of the book, right? It should be the beginning to the ending of the story with spoilers. So you don't want to give that away, because if somebody knows how your book ends, they're not going to want to read it. And so you want to make sure that you keep it just with the premise, you know, set up your premise.

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Deborah Crossland: And then, explain what the character thinks they want, that's also something that's important, versus what they really want, right? That's… that's one of those things that… that you see characters move closer to or farther away from through each chapter, and that's what keeps the book going.

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Deborah Crossland: So you want to add that in, and then you want to add in the consequence. What's going to happen to them if these things do go wrong?

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Deborah Crossland: And once you have that, you can tell a little bit more about the book, you know, how many words it is.

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Deborah Crossland: That it'll maybe add a couple of comps. Try to stay away from extra-large super bestsellers as comps. The reason agents ask for comparable stories and books is to find out where your book is going to sit on a shelf.

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Deborah Crossland: And so, if they… if you say it would be next to this book, or it would be, like, this… if somebody picked up these two books, that would be similar to mine.

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Deborah Crossland: And, of course.

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Deborah Crossland: a lot of new writers will say, well, there are no other books out there like mine. And, okay, that's fine. You can find books that have elements of the things that your book is showing off. And so, for example.

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Deborah Crossland: The quiet part out loud was comped with gosh.

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Deborah Crossland: It's been a couple years. I'll have to… oh,

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Deborah Crossland: What's the one where they… the… You know what, never mind.

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Lisa Schmid: Okay, so one of the things I think that people…

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Lisa Schmid: Just kind of differentiating the two is the synopsis, which is very different from the pitch. You want to include everything, even the ending, like, how the story plays out. That's, you know, when a… that's the big difference, I think, is you want that hook, but you don't want any big spoilers of how it, like, wraps up.

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Lisa Schmid: So those are the, you know, I know a lot of people are like, should I, you know, should I have the ending and the pitch? And it's like, no, not really, you shouldn't. That's… leave that for the synopsis and the full explanation of the book. And so I think that's one thing that, some people get confused on.

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Deborah Crossland: Sure, absolutely, yeah. You definitely don't want to spoil the ending in a query letter.

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Beth McMullen: I want to, go back for a second, because I think this is really important, the idea of external

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Beth McMullen: steaks.

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Beth McMullen: And looking at, kind of, pulling out of that… the mind of your character.

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Beth McMullen: and looking at them almost like you're watching a movie, right? What is the… in the example that you used for your book, The Earthquake, which is brilliant.

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Beth McMullen: What is the… what is the…

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Beth McMullen: the danger, the… the hill they need to climb, and in some cases, literally, like, are you climbing over rubble? What do you…

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Deborah Crossland: Yes.

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Beth McMullen: I think it's really important for people to remember there's a huge difference between external and internal, and using the external to get the attention of this agent that you want to request your pages is…

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Beth McMullen: very different than saying, they love each other, and they want to be together, because your external… your external states can be very, very unique to your book. Now, there are a million books that are…

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Beth McMullen: we're in love, and yet they're obstacles, right? That's, like…

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Beth McMullen: That's the entire romance genre in one way or another.

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Deborah Crossland: Hmm.

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Beth McMullen: But…

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Beth McMullen: an earthquake in San Francisco where you're trying to get from point A to point B, that's unique. And you have to lean into that to differentiate yourself. I just think it's super important, and I'm really glad you pointed it out, because I think most people

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Beth McMullen: won't realize that. They'll think, oh, I don't wanna… I don't wanna look at quote-unquote plot in my… in my query, but yeah, you do, you need that.

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Deborah Crossland: You do.

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Beth McMullen: It's gonna differentiate you from everybody else, and there's thousands of everybody else's, so it has to be something sharp.

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Beth McMullen: And, like, sticky. What are they going to remember after they're done with the letter that's going to make them say, give me the pages? So I love that. I just wanted to point that out before we move on, because I want people to write that down in big letters, external stakes at the top of their document, 

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Beth McMullen: I actually love this next question, because I think it is a really fine line. When you're talking about personalizing a query, and any…

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Beth McMullen: anybody who's talking about query letters is saying you have to personalize, find that thing, whatever it is, but how do you do that without being cringey, where it sounds too familiar, or that you're forcing it? So…

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Beth McMullen: How do you present that in a way that's helpful, rather than, like, You know, kind of off-putting.

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Deborah Crossland: This is a great question, because

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Deborah Crossland: you don't want to stalk their Instagram or their socials and.

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Lisa Schmid: What?

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Deborah Crossland: had a baby, and…

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Lisa Schmid: Tracy talk.

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Deborah Crossland: Well, you don't want to be like, congratulations on your new baby, and you've never met this person before, yeah, like, thank you,

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Deborah Crossland: I always suggest to writers that you would greet… greet an agent like you would greet a banker. It's professional and business-like and warm, and friendly, and so you want to appear open and… and…

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Deborah Crossland: Available to chat, to talk, to share your writing, and it is a very personal thing to do that as a writer, but the agents are looking at the business side of this, so there is no personal side yet, and we have to keep ourselves

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Deborah Crossland: kind of…

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Deborah Crossland: shut off in that personal way. And so, if you… however you would walk into a bank and sit down at a new accounts desk and say, you know, hi, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. You know, nice office, or I don't know, whatever. And then, and then move on to your business.

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Deborah Crossland: So…

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Lisa Schmid: One of… one of the things that I always liked, and, that I… I always did, and maybe it was wrong…

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Lisa Schmid: I would always, like, if I… because I did look at people, like, I did look at their socials, I did kind of see what they were looking for, their manuscript wish list, or if they, you know, pitched, they tweeted out something. I would reference that. I saw on Twitter that you were interested, or I read on manuscript wish list, that you were interested in this, so that, to me, it showed that I had done the research, and I think that already

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Lisa Schmid: makes the agent feel like, okay, she's already doing the work, and she's not just throwing spaghetti against the wall. And so.

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Deborah Crossland: I know, 100%. Agreed, yeah. But it should be, again, professional. Professional, yeah. And, like, the reason a manuscript wish list exists is because agents and editors want to put out their wish list. Right.

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Deborah Crossland: They expect you to go there and look at it, but they don't want you to go into their personal lives and, you know, stalk their homes or, anything like that.

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Lisa Schmid: happened.

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Deborah Crossland: It has happened.

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Beth McMullen: That's the fine line, right? That's the fine line.

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Deborah Crossland: I saved a lot.

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Beth McMullen: It's pretty cool.

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Deborah Crossland: thick there.

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Beth McMullen: Yeah, no, but I mean, when you're looking at what they're posting, that's fine for your own information, but you don't need to bring that to the letter. The letter is the stuff that is book-related, not, I saw you took a trip to St. Croix, and I really want to go there, and wow, you look great in that swimsuit, or whatever.

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Deborah Crossland: we're gonna put out there. Yeah, let's not do that.

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Deborah Crossland: But if they are tweeting out from a business standpoint what they're looking for, then it's perfectly acceptable to mention that. Right. Yeah.

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Lisa Schmid: The other thing I think that's important to mention when we're talking about those fine lines is making sure you're emailing to the address they want you to. Don't go off and find some other email address they have, or don't send it to their, you know, their Instagram Messenger, or, you know, keep it where it's supposed to be.

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Lisa Schmid: Keep it in the

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Lisa Schmid: Elaine, because there's so many times you'll see somebody that's posting, like, you sent this to an email address that, you know, is not where I accept queries, or I only accept queries, you know, through Query Manager, and I got an email through my business account. Those just get deleted, and it pisses them off because it feels like it, which it is, an invasion of their privacy. They've set up boundaries, and it's really, really important to respect those boundaries.

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Deborah Crossland: And I think the other thing is don't go on their social media feed and, like.

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Lisa Schmid: like, make comments and, like, you know, do things, because then you just look like, you know, a weirdo. Like, you're kind of stalking them.

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah, pretty much.

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Lisa Schmid: I just, you know, anytime I know that, like, for example, when Leslie's… when I'm out on sub, I'll go look at, like, an editor's profile, and look at what their, you know, Instagram page… but I never follow them, I never do anything, but I look at it, I'm like.

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Deborah Crossland: Sure.

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Lisa Schmid: Are they gonna like it? So it just… it's one of those things, if you're following them on socials, like, just be careful of how you.

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Deborah Crossland: Agreed.

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Lisa Schmid: So that you don't come across as, you know, somebody who's gonna show up on their doorstep.

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Deborah Crossland: And my agent told me, back when we were subbing, that it's pretty important, too, for riders not to announce on social media that you're on sub, because if you go on a second, or third, or fourth round, and…

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Deborah Crossland: The editor's gonna know which round they're in, and that can be insulting, and they just may reject it on that premise, too.

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Lisa Schmid: Oh, good information! God, you know what, that's really interesting. I don't think anyone's ever brought that up before.

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Deborah Crossland: Oh, okay, yeah, I was told that the first time we went on sub, and I was like, oh goodness, okay. And so I imagine it applies to queries as well, like, you don't want to announce to the world that you're…

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Deborah Crossland: there, and you've sent it to these agents, and that sort of thing. You want to keep that private.

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Lisa Schmid: third team that, you know, it's like, oh, I've already sent it to my first round picks, and you kind of suck, but I'm coming after you now.

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah.

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Deborah Crossland: So, get yourself a small group of friends that you can have a group chat with that's, you know, entrusted in, like, a sit room or something, and that's where you do all of your boasting and talking and freaking out and questions.

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Beth McMullen: Absolutely. I mean, it's crazy to be broadcasting all of this stuff, because…

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Beth McMullen: you have an idea in your head, okay, if I put this out there, this is how it's gonna be received, but you have no idea if that's accurate, and it could be the exact…

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Beth McMullen: Opposite, I just got… this was probably in the last couple of days.

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Beth McMullen: I got a request from a… we get a lot of requests from publicists for… for people, authors primarily, to come on the show, and this publicist…

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Beth McMullen: pitched me, her author, and she referred to something that we had, or I had put on social media.

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Beth McMullen: But it was obviously written by AI.

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Beth McMullen: pitch, and we do not take pitches that are obviously written by AI. I have no problem if you're using AI to proofread, to look for grammar, but if the pitch is obviously AI, and AI has gone out there and scraped all our social stuff and come up with this really weird perspective, then the answer is a fast

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Beth McMullen: no thank you. So, I mean, this person, this publicist, obviously isn't doing it because she thinks that it's gonna, you know, she obviously has an idea of how it's gonna be interpreted, and it's the exact opposite.

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Deborah Crossland: Just…

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Beth McMullen: really need to be hyper-aware and keep, like, if you're questioning whether or not you should post it, don't post it. Exactly. Please don't. If you wouldn't put it on the front of the New York Times.

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Deborah Crossland: Do not put a note on social media.

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Beth McMullen: We'll come back to biting. Write that down, too. Write that right under external stakes, write… not on the cover of the New York Times, don't do it. Perfect. Words to live by.

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Deborah Crossland: We've all been there.

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Deborah Crossland: We've all overshared and extremely regretted it.

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Lisa Schmid: One of the things that, you know, I always… this is something that I learned, and… because it just… you all… we all make the mistake where you send the email, and you've, you've put the wrong agent's name in.

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Deborah Crossland: misspelled it, yeah.

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Lisa Schmid: Or misspelled it. And so that, it's such a weird little technicality, but, you know, please, please, please don't just copy and paste over, and, you know, just, you know, copy and paste the, you know, the.

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Deborah Crossland: body.

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Lisa Schmid: pitch, or whatever.

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah.

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Lisa Schmid: But never just do it from one email to the next, because there is no doubt you will snag the name and forget to change it. And so, it's just one of those things, like, just double check, because you'll send it, and then you go back and you're looking at it, and all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, you know, whatever.

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Lisa Schmid: And I always tell people, like, you know, send it to a friend first. Like, have people double-check it. It's…

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah.

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Lisa Schmid: It's so important. Don't… I mean, querying is just as important as the manuscript, because you… without that good query, you… there's no sense knocking on the door, you know? And so, it's one of those things, like, just let your critique partners look it over, get… get lots of feedback, basically workshop that query letter, and make sure that all the components are there, the hook.

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Lisa Schmid: The pitch, you know, everything.

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Lisa Schmid: And that kind of brings us to one of the last things, is the author bio. And this especially applies to people who have no writing credentials, and they're always kind of like, what do I say? Like, I don't have any… I don't have anything to really write. What advice do you give for, people who are going to be debut, that don't know what to write in their bio?

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Deborah Crossland: it's perfectly acceptable to say, this is my first novel. If you, you know, want to talk about some classes that you've taken in creative writing, or if you have an MFA, those things are all great to put in there, but if you don't have that, that's okay too, because

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Deborah Crossland: what the agent cares about is a solid query and good, strong opening pages. And they don't… it doesn't matter what your experience is. Because I've read things from people who have MFAs that, you know.

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Deborah Crossland: probably aren't ready to be out in the public yet. And I've read things from people who don't have college educations that are brilliant. So it just… it doesn't matter, what your experience level is, and so don't freak out about that. Let yourself be honest, and again, professional.

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Deborah Crossland: And… and… Shoot your shot.

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Lisa Schmid: Yeah.

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Lisa Schmid: And I think anything that you can… you know, I was trying to think back when I was querying, and I didn't have anything to really say about myself. I think I just was… I think I had belonged to SCBWI, so I think I put him a member of SCBWI, and…

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Deborah Crossland: Right.

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Lisa Schmid: a critique group, or whatever. I think it was just very, you know, I'm a mom of a middle grade kid, like, whatever. I think it was just something that made it sound so that I can relate to whatever, you know, the topic. I was a middle grade writer.

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Deborah Crossland: Right.

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Lisa Schmid: So, and it was very short and sweet, because I had nothing.

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Deborah Crossland: Same. I said I was a high school English teacher, which I was.

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Lisa Schmid: Yeah.

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Deborah Crossland: And that's, you know, good for YA, so…

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Lisa Schmid: Right.

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Beth McMullen: I speak teenager, so… I also remember that publishing loves debuts.

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Deborah Crossland: to be honest.

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Beth McMullen: debuts. They.

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Deborah Crossland: Way more than they do, yes.

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Beth McMullen: Over somebody with baggage, so…

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Deborah Crossland: Yes, 100%.

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Beth McMullen: You can really lean into, this is my first book, this is a debut, I've never published before. I think you can put in elements of being a good literary citizen, as in, you know, if you are at teaching English, if you do, you know, maybe you do a creative writing group with kids that you're

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Beth McMullen: child school, or I don't know, pick something, but I think you can lean into that, that you're participating in this universe, even if you have not yet.

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Beth McMullen: published, and…

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Beth McMullen: Yeah, do not be shy to say that you've never written a book. It actually will probably help you nowadays.

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Deborah Crossland: Nowadays, for real. Also… One thing, too, that's important is,

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Deborah Crossland: Don't put your book out on social media, and spoil it for everybody.

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Deborah Crossland: keep it in the query letter, and if you're querying, unless you're planning on self-publishing. Otherwise, you know, then you're not going to need a query letter, and you'll probably quit listening to this episode, so…

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Lisa Schmid: Wait, so what do you mean by that, when you say don't put it out on social media?

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Deborah Crossland: I've seen, authors who are querying, talk about their books on social media, doing reels or TikToks or things like that, and just trying to sell it that way.

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Lisa Schmid: Oh, okay, okay.

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah, and I would recommend against that.

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Lisa Schmid: You do? I know, you know, I know… I've known of some authors who think that somehow.

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Lisa Schmid: that by putting something on socials, that it's going to attract an agent, that they're gonna be like, yes, I want to see that. Or somebody will post, like, hey, if anybody knows of somebody who wants a, you know, a middle grade fantasy, da-da-da-da, and it's like, yeah, no, I look at that, and I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, good luck with that. So it's just like, don't try to pitch your book out into the universe that way, because it's… it's not gonna…

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Lisa Schmid: It's not going to help you, and it just shows your lack of knowledge on the industry itself.

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Deborah Crossland: Right. Another one real good thing to do is, if your book is a series.

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Deborah Crossland: You don't need to mention that for the first one. There aren't any agents… unless you've been self-published and you sold a million books.

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Deborah Crossland: No one's gonna want to look at a series from a debut point of view. You can say that it's got series potential.

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Deborah Crossland: A lot of writers use that, but just to say that there's 6 books in this series, you know, and you haven't even published the first one yet, is not wise.

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Deborah Crossland: So I would recommend holding that back, too.

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Beth McMullen: Yeah, that's a good idea. I like the… I think certain genres lend themselves to, the idea of series potential. You know, mysteries often do, cozy mysteries often do, things like that, but the… the agent knows that.

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Beth McMullen: I already know that. You don't need to say it.

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Beth McMullen: it's the kind of thing where you've written it, where it has the potential to go on, then that's pretty obvious, it doesn't need to be… you certainly aren't going to say, there's a whole bunch in this series, and I know you're going to want to publish them all, because that's terrifying to the person on the other end.

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Deborah Crossland: Yes, exactly.

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Lisa Schmid: Another thing I don't want to forget that we talk about is the length of a query letter, because I think some people also get too wordy.

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Lisa Schmid: And they include minutiae that's unnecessary. And so, I think, how long do you think a query letter should be? How many words? Let's say words. Like, how many words do you think?

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Lisa Schmid: a query letter should be. I know that's kind of throwing something out at you, but I just don't want people to get too long-winded, because agents get hundreds of them a month. Like, I… my agent lists how many she gets, and she gets, like, 275 queries a month. So imagine yourself as an agent.

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Lisa Schmid: getting 275 queries a month, what you're presenting to them has to be to the point, not long, not drawn out, and not, you know, bogged down with unnecessary details. I hate unnecessary details. What are your thoughts on that?

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Deborah Crossland: I would probably say no more than, and I think this is generous, 750 words. Okay. Maybe, like, 350, for the pitch, for the, you know, maybe 500 if it's a dual timeline. And then, your biography paragraph should be one or two sentences, and that's it.

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Deborah Crossland: You do have to talk about, you know, say what genre the book is and the word count, that sort of thing, but that's just one extra sentence. So it really should be short and sweet, and the hookier your hook is, the better, because that first line is the most important. That's what… a lot of agents won't read past that first line if it's not.

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Lisa Schmid: Right.

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Deborah Crossland: So…

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Lisa Schmid: Yeah, it needs to be, and one of the things that we always talk about as far as hooks, because I think some people are like, I don't get, you know, how do I write a hook? We always… we've mentioned this several times, like on Netflix. You can go and read that little 25-word, you know, blurb about what the movie is about. That's the hook.

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Lisa Schmid: That's the hook. And I used to, when I was querying for Ollie Oxley, I would go and look at, different movies.

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Lisa Schmid: and look at, like, I would read the little 25-word

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Lisa Schmid: pitch of what the movie was about, and you kind of get a feel for it, like, there's just like a, okay, this is what I need to have… these are the elements I need in the hook, so that they want to read my book, just like Netflix is trying to hook you into watching that movie. So those are… and I know, Beth, you have other ways, little places that you can go.

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Beth McMullen: I like to think about it in terms of a log line, which is something they use in screenwriting.

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Beth McMullen: A log line sums up…

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Beth McMullen: pretty much everything you need to know in that sort of teaser way. And if you just search…

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Beth McMullen: log line and put in your favorite movie, you'll see what I mean. And it's a very concise, clear way to think about it, and that often works as your first line in the description of the book part of the query letter.

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Beth McMullen: And then you can add in the additional details that support that. So it's a… it's a good way to just kind of think about a catchy, you know, way to grab attention, because that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to get them to ask for…

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Beth McMullen: the pages. So, I like that approach. And it's a good exercise, too. If you can't

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Beth McMullen: Produce a logline for your story?

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Beth McMullen: After some practice, give it a few tries, understand what a log line is. But if you can't do that, you might not be ready to query.

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Beth McMullen: You really have, in order to produce one of these letters that we've been talking about, which every word is absolutely critical, because you don't have a lot of words.

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Beth McMullen: You have to know that story so well that you can just spit out that logline, that elevator pitch, that, you know, quick two-sentence summary, whatever it is. You better know it that well, or your letter's gonna reflect that.

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Beth McMullen: That's gonna be a problem.

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Deborah Crossland: Yes, exactly.

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Deborah Crossland: It's super important to have set up, you know, state who your character is, what they want, what's in their way, and what's gonna happen if they don't get it. And… or if they do get it, that what they want isn't good for them. And that's… that's the basic premise of it. That's all you need.

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Lisa Schmid: I have a cautionary tale about this very…

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Beth McMullen: -Oh. Great.

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Lisa Schmid: Brace yourself for impact, here it comes.

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Beth McMullen: Okay, deep breaths, everybody.

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Deborah Crossland: Cool then.

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Lisa Schmid: I queried Ollie Oxley forever.

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Lisa Schmid: And never got… never got an agent interested. And I had one where I had queried them, and they… they must have turned me down, and then they liked my pitch, like, on one of those Twitter pitch parties that we used to have in the olden days.

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Lisa Schmid: And she liked my pitch, and so then I went to send it to her, and she's like, oh, I've already turned this book down.

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Lisa Schmid: If it's still… if the premise is still that it's a search for gold, then I'm not interested. And it wasn't until… and I was like, okay, yeah, that's still the premise, like, you know, whatever, I guess you don't want my book.

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Lisa Schmid: But then later on, as I was, like, always talking about it, like, afterwards, you know, once it was out and everything, I was saying, the story is never… the mystery was never about a search for gold, the mystery was about who Teddy the Ghost was. And I was like, oh my god!

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Lisa Schmid: Yep.

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Lisa Schmid: wait a minute! Like, I didn't even, like, I knew that in my brain, like, that was the heart of the story, is who Teddy the Ghost is. It was never the search for gold, because, you know, it was kind of obvious to the reader, like, you know, I think, like, where the gold was.

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Lisa Schmid: But I was just like, oh my god, I miss my own heart of my story, and I probably missed out on opportunities.

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Lisa Schmid: to pick up an agent, because I didn't even know my own story well enough to say that's what the story was about. Does that make sense? Like, I was just like, durr!

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Deborah Crossland: That's what happened with the quiet part out loud, is I was… I didn't even pitch the earthquake part.

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Lisa Schmid: Yeah.

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Deborah Crossland: their love story, and somebody was like, I want to hear more about the earthquake.

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Lisa Schmid: Yeah.

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Deborah Crossland: And then I was like, oh, you know, also, you know that, if you can afford it, and I don't know how much it is now, it can spend a minute, but manuscript wish lists offer agent meetings, like 10-minute meetings.

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Deborah Crossland: And, they were $50 back when I was doing them. And, if that's a thing that you can do, I highly recommend that, because they will help you polish your queries and give you advice.

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Deborah Crossland: Yeah, I agree.

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Beth McMullen: I think they still do it. Yeah.

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Deborah Crossland: It is super helpful.

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Beth McMullen: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, those extra eyes help you, like you said, with your group that said, hey, tell us about the earthquake. You get so wrapped up in this stuff that you stop seeing it for what it is, so those extra eyes, especially if it's somebody who does not know you at all.

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Deborah Crossland: Is…

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Beth McMullen: Super important, and really can take you to the next level, which is what you're trying to do.

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Beth McMullen: We could talk about query letters forever, but we don't want to overwhelm our poor… our poor listeners who are right now, like, holding their heads in their hands, being like, oh, I've got to start it over! I don't know. Don't be Elisa, don't be Elisa! Oh, me!

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Beth McMullen: So…

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Deborah Crossland: Deborah, thank you so much for being here and sharing all of this with us. This is a great… My pleasure.

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Beth McMullen: episode.

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Beth McMullen: Listeners, remember you can find out more about Debra by visiting our podcast notes and the blog at writerswithwrinkles.net, and I'll put up a cheat sheet for this episode. Remember, those are only available to our podcast newsletter subscribers. Visit writerswithwrinkles.net and sign up for the newsletter, and then you get all the fun cheat sheets.

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Beth McMullen: Which you'll want to have right at your elbow as you start working on your query letters for 2026.

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Beth McMullen: This is our last scheduled episode before we launch Season 5 with guest Aaron Casey-Weston on January 5th.

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Beth McMullen: So we hope you've enjoyed Season 4 as much as we have. Hopefully you've caught the encore presentations of our favorite episodes, which dropped last week, and we encourage you to go back and revisit your favorite episodes. There's always something new to discover when you listen again.

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Beth McMullen: So until 2026, our lovely listeners, happy reading, writing, and listening.