Every writer knows the angst of summing their fantastical manuscript into a couple brief paragraphs. This grueling step is necessary to write an intriguing query letter. (For non-writers, this letter is the introduction to a manuscript to swoon a literary agent and/or publisher into reading a writer’s story with hopes of being signed.)  Writerly folks can spend hours, days, weeks, and months forming words together, rearranging, and deleting until the paragraphs are just right. And honestly, some writers struggle knowing when the query is the absolute best for sending out into the world.

And sometimes, the problem isn’t always summing up the story. With nearly 130 million books published in the world, it’s likely someone already wrote something similar. So a writer needs to know what makes their story different and highlight that in their query letter. And trust me, this isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds.

Knowing the struggles of query letters, I decided to inform my readers of a couple places to view query letters that have worked in hopes it’ll help a few writers.

• Successful Queries via Chuck Sambuchino at Writer’s Digest. The reason I love this sight is because he also lists commentary from the agent that signed the author and why it worked for them.
• Query Samples via Charlotte Dillon.

And for authors receiving rejections, here are a few best sellers that got snubby rejections but went on to sell millions of copies! Don’t let go of your dream!

P.D. Pabst

Blogger and writer of MG/YA Fiction.