Learn from others’ errors: Bad query letter #1
I’m the gatekeeper for guest posts on a website that gets a pretty decent amount of traffic. I sympathize with the writers trying to get content published; I’ve been there myself.
But the first rule is this: If you can’t write a polished query letter, you can’t get published. Sometimes it’s the little things that make a query letter look bad.
Here’s a recent email I received:
These are query letter common mistakes and I think they boil down to three things:
- Writing like you talk,
- Writing like you post to social media, e.g. using “&” instead of “and,” and
- Mistakenly believing that more adjectives and adverbs improve writing.
If you’re an inexperienced writer, work with a good editor on your query letter and also run your work by an edit before you submit it to an editor in charge of guest posts.
