Dear Agent

The query letter that worked

An agent reading my letter [Nina Hardy, 'The Love Letter', 1904]

Writing a query letter to an agent is the first time out of the 1000000 you’ll have to try to sell yourself and your book project. I’m sorry, it is just that mercenary! I wish it wasn’t! I wish getting a book published was just based on the merits and beauty of your writing and that everybody would get free books for life, but that’s just not our world. We’re selling you, and we’re selling your book to someone who will help you sell it further, to someone who will then print it and sell it further, to people who will read it and then hopefully “sell” it to others with their reviews and recommendations. We’re selling all the way down in a capitalist hell spiral.  

Here’s the final version of my query letter, a.k.a. the one that worked. It was not a cold query; I had a very, very helpful introduction (which I wrote about here), but I still had to convince the agent(s) to represent me. I’m sharing it because I didn’t have a ton of templates to inspire me, especially for nonfiction books. I did one query-letter writing workshop, and definitely used some of the wisdom I got from it, but I’d be lying if I remembered what it was specifically, and I can’t locate any notes. You’ll just have to learn from the final product. I’m abridging it a bit, because my book isn’t published yet, and certain key things may change. But I’m also doing step by step annotations! Here goes [everything that’s in a bracket wasn’t there. The bolding is there for you to notice certain words].

Hanna’s Query Letter That Worked (and eventually led to a Big 5 publishing deal)

[Introduction conveying my credentials, my self-explanatory title, and my excitement] I’m a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Guardian, and many others, with a narrative nonfiction book idea that I’m very excited about. The working title is U up? A social history of online dating. 

I’d be thrilled if you’d consider it. Below please find a summary of the project, a paragraph about me, and a selection of my work. I have a full proposal, including a sample chapter, that I’d be happy to send over. 

Summary: U Up? A social history of online dating 

[Hey, this matters! a.k.a The Stakes] We are living through a relationship revolution, and it’s a much bigger deal than we’ve made it out to be. Online dating is the most popular way American couples meet. “No one goes to a bar to find the love of their life. It’s increasingly hard to date at work because of HR rules,” online dating coach Eric Resnick told me. It’s difficult to casually approach a stranger, with everyone’s eyes on their phones and ears covered by headphones. Gen Z does not know a world without Tinder. And now, AI is helping people chat with prospective dates. How did we get here, and how, exactly, are we navigating this new way of finding love? 

[The book’s basic approach:] My book will answer these questions, putting the experiences of regular daters at the forefront. It will be a social history of online dating around the world, starting in the 1960s – yes, that’s right, the 1960s –  and going up until today. [Why now?] It’s the right moment to collect these stories: In 2022, Tinder turned 10. In 2025, Match.com will celebrate 30 years since its launch.

[Fun narrative anecdote that exemplifies the approach:] U Up? will follow people like Larry Dilg. 

When Larry was a sophomore at Amherst College in 1966, stuffed in his mail-room cubby he found  a pamphlet inviting him to join a new dating service. Run by a couple of Harvard students, “Operation Match” would use an IBM 7090 computer to find Larry a perfectly compatible date. It sounded completely futuristic. He’d never even seen a computer — which at the time took up an entire room — let  alone use one. Still, with no girls around at the all-male school, he was intrigued enough to fill out the pamphlet’s questionnaire. He obsessed over how to answer the questions, which asked what religion should his date be, whether he was “sexually experienced,” about his SAT scores, and his family’s income. But when Operation Match sent him back what was supposed to be a list of “perfect matches,” there was only one name on it: Mimi Kennedy, a first-year at Smith College, which was just down the road from Amherst.  

“I looked her up in the freshmen book from Smith. And there was Mimi Kennedy from Our Lady of  Mercy High School.’Oh my god, it's a nun! That's not what I asked for!’ I didn't call her because I thought I obviously did something way wrong in filling out [the questionnaire],” Larry told me.  

Larry played in a rock-n-roll band. Larry wanted to get laid. Mimi was an inexperienced Catholic school girl. Naturally, in a rom-com-like twist, a tumultuous several years later, they ended up getting married.