Keller Media

How To Write a Compelling Query Letter

The most impor­tant step in get­ting pub­lished is to push your way past the first gate­keep­ers – the lit­er­ary agents. That’s done with a query let­ter – a let­ter inquir­ing about their level of inter­est in your pro­posed book. Now the bad news: most agents see hun­dreds of queries a week by mail and email! How do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from this avalanche of queries? This arti­cle shows you how.

Preview Our Contract

Here you can see an exam­ple of our cur­rent agency con­tract. You are wel­come to review it, ask ques­tions about it, wish it was yours, and so on. In fact, the only thing you can­not do is repro­duce it or print it. It’s copy­righted, a word that will mean a lot more to you when your book comes out. Please note the straight­for­ward lan­guage and easy-to-understand terms we use, which are by all accounts quite fair to us and to you, the author. As the author of 31 books under 9 pseu­do­nyms, senior agent Wendy Keller is a vocal advo­cate for author’s rights.

For Emerging Speakers

Speak­ing is an excit­ing indus­try! All eyes are on you. You stand in front of a room of peo­ple and share what you know. You give your impor­tant mes­sage with pas­sion, power, focus and clar­ity. You exude authen­tic­ity. The con­tent you present is truly trans­for­ma­tive. The audi­ence uses what they’ve learned and makes real last­ing changes. The peo­ple who hired you got more than they paid for. You get refer­rals. Word spreads about you like wild­fire. Sounds good? Let’s go!

A Message From Our Founder

Here’s a phi­los­o­phy you don’t hear very often in this indus­try: Help peo­ple get their foot in the door. For some rea­son, there’s this idea in pub­lish­ing that any agents who care enough about peo­ple to nur­ture and men­tor them are some­how “unethical.”

That’s just wrong.

It’s wrong because every suc­cess­ful author or speaker got a help­ing hand from a guide, men­tor, book or friend. Every­one was once a begin­ner, whether they were learn­ing to write their ABCs or the lat­est New York Times best seller. This site is about offer­ing that help­ing hand to YOU as an emerg­ing author or speaker. You can’t get any­where in the pub­lish­ing or speak­ing indus­tries with­out a “plat­form” — which is a short­hand way of say­ing, “proof that lots of peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to your message.”

Contract Consulting

We’ve con­sulted on hun­dreds and hun­dreds of pub­lish­ing and speak­ing con­tracts since 1989. While senior agent Wendy Keller is not an attor­ney, she has nego­ti­ated the best terms for many soon-to-be authors and emerg­ing speak­ers and can help you fig­ure out how to get the best terms to ensure your success.