5 Query Letter Mistakes That Get Novels Rejected (and How to Fix Them)

Your query letter is how you introduce your book, and yourself, to literary agents. It's a high-stakes, one-shot missive where every word counts. After eight published novels and years of helping writers revise and pitch their books, these are the mistakes I see most often. Are you making any of them?

1. Your one line isn't clear or compelling enough 🎯

In publishing, a killer one line is crucial, because it's how books get talked about in-house. You might have the best pages in the world, but if the book can't be summed up in one fascinating line, it's hard for anyone to champion it internally.

The standard format is: person, situation, trouble. Here's one from an actual deal announced this summer:

A beauty technician is recruited by MI5 for an undercover operation in a salon run by the mafia, and falls for her annoying handler.

We know who the main character is: a beauty technician. We know the situation, aka the promise of the premise: she's recruited by MI5 for an undercover op in a mafia-run salon. And we know the complication: she falls for her dreamily annoying handler.

Your one line should be specific, shouldn't lean on adjectives to create tension, and should be easily repeatable. Imagine how differently this would land as "a woman who gets in over her head with the government and falls in love." It's essentially the same idea, but we lose the excellent specifics.

2. You're explaining too much of the plot 🗺️

Your query should cover the book in broad brushstrokes. Think flap copy. The point of a query isn't to walk an agent through the entire plot. It's to make them want to request pages.

Less is more. Give a bird's-eye view of the story, plus a clear sense of what's creating tension throughout. Keep it to one or two named characters, not your whole key cast.

3. You're including emotion (any emotion at all) 🥺

"I've wanted to be a published author since I was a kid." "This book means more to me than anything." "I've been working on this for ten years. You're my dream agent, and this would be a dream come true!!!!!"

Heartfelt sentiments, great for a journal. They don't belong in a professional piece of communication, because they're not useful to an agent. No agent opens a pitch to editors with, "Well, this writer's wanted this forever, so I really think you should consider it." Put yourself in the agent's shoes: they want a clean pitch for a book they can sell, not a request to make your personal dreams come true (even if that's what happens!).

4. You're not clear on genre or positioning 📚

Books are sold onto shelves: contemporary fiction, thriller, romance, mystery, horror, literary fiction, and so on. If your positioning isn't clear, or the book sits somewhere in between as a hybrid that doesn't fully satisfy on any level, it might not get very far. Publishing works to sell books to existing readerships, not invent new ones.

A kooky genre mashup is fine (and rising in popularity!) as long as it fully delivers on both genres. A Western horror, for example, needs to work as a Western and as a horror, and satisfy both readerships.

5. You're querying too early ⏳

An agent should never be the first person to read your manuscript. It's standard for a book to have gone through outside readers, like beta readers or a developmental editor, who give feedback for a proper revision. Not just a clean-up. A real revision.

Publishing is incredibly competitive, and the books being acquired are polished, strong, lean, and confident. That comes from revision. A good gut check is length: for most genres, and especially for debuts, a manuscript over 100,000 words can be a red flag. It usually means the book needs another tightening pass.

If you feel the book isn't quite ready but you're losing patience, know that querying anyway is a risk. Querying too early is one of the most common self-inflicted wounds in publishing.

Get your novel, and your query, ready

I help writers craft their query letters in both tracks of My Novel Year, my year-long novel mentorship, taught live on Zoom so you can join from anywhere:

• My Novel Year: The Revision is for writers with a finished draft who want a developmental edit, a year of guided revision, and a polished query. It ends with a one-on-one pitch session with a literary agent and an acquiring editor.

• My Novel Year: The Draft is for writers who want to finish a complete first draft this year, with the same industry access at the end.

Applications for the next cohorts open in November for a January start. Join the waitlist to get a reminder.