OMG! Sample Pages in a Query? The Nerve!

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So you’ve been polishing your manuscript for four score and seven years and are now ready to submit a query, but the guidelines say “Query Only.”  Should you include sample pages? Doesn’t that mean I’d be ignoring the guidelines? Won’t I be blacklisted from querying FOREVER? You speak nonsense, Manivong, and you’re trying to kill my dream of being published!

Hey, dreamer. Yeah, you. Come ‘ere. Closer, still. Good. Now let me smack some sense into you. It won’t hurt, I promise.

Unless the guidelines specifically say DO NOT SEND SAMPLE PAGES, then send the flippin’ sample pages, for the love of  angst! Who am I to advise this? A measly writer? A girl with one published novel in the market? A bruiser set on dispensing bad advice? You decide. But if it makes you feel better, I’ve heard numerous agents say this very thing.

You know what else I’ve heard? That readers, whether they be agents and editors themselves, or assistants and interns, will sometimes (maybe even often but certainly not always and possibly for some…never) read the sample pages first! If they likey, then they may read the query to find out more about you and your background. This is one reason why you’ll hear that THE WRITING MATTERS MOST, not that you got a blue ribbon for the softball throw in sixth grade, which makes you qualified to write The Complete History of Plastic Baseball Bats.

What constitutes a sample? Five pages. Even six if your chapter ends there. What’s the worst that could happen? An assistant reads your brilliant sample, passes it to her brilliant boss who cradles the pages like a swaddled newborn. Brilliant Boss passes it to her supervisor who declares, “Holy batman! Who needs vampires anymore when we have plastic bats?” Brilliant Supervisor passes your pages onto Dream Publisher Dudette, who is so taken by your brilliant prose that she begs for a tissue. But then, DPD inquires how these sample pages came to be. Assistant is beckoned to the big corner office. The door is closed. The sweating begins. And the question is uttered. “Am I to understand,” Dream Publisher Dudette whispers, “that you read these sample pages when our guidelines clearly state to Query Only?” Assistant nods, sheepishly and with great trepidation. DPD swipes the Donald Trumpish lock of hair away from her face and declares, “You’re fired.”

So think of “Query Only” as really meaning do not submit your entire manuscript, and don’t you dare even think of sending us a honking three chapters. Just the sample. The wee sample.

Now how do you include this wee 5-page writing sample, which btw, is always the first five pages, not some random bit from chapter 36 when the action starts heating up? What did you say? As an attachment? Hey, dreamer. Yeah, you. Come ‘ere. Closer, still. Good. Now let me smack some sense into you. It might hurt a little. Maybe even a lot!

Include the sample in the body of the e-mail, for the love of common sense, never as an attachment, because OMG, the nerve!

Here is the book I sold to HarperCollins after querying agents:

Escaping The Tiger on Amazon for $3.99

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