The Perfect Cover Letter
You’ve polished your manuscript and decided to submit to Mushens Entertainment. Next, you need to write your cover letter. But what should you say? Juliet Mushens has highlighted exactly what she likes to read in a submission cover letter:
I’m often asked what a cover letter should look like, in an ideal world. There are lots of great resources out there and some authors have shared theirs. Of course, the cover letter is just the first stage - designed to entice the agent to read on quickly – and the writing itself is what makes me want to read a full manuscript. However, the example I have written should help you when trying to structure your own cover letter for your novel. I hasten to add, THE LISTENER exists nowhere except in this cover letter, but I did enjoy coming up with the idea!
Dear [agent name],
This sounds obvious, but make sure to get the name right! People often worry about whether it should be Ms Mushens, but I’m perfectly fine with just a simple ‘Dear Juliet’. I’m presuming you’ll send to multiple agents but try to make sure you call me by my own name (!) and don’t do the dreaded ‘Dear Sir’ either!
I’m attaching the first three chapters and synopsis of my debut thriller, THE LISTENER, which is complete at 85,000 words. It follows Jayne McGill, a late-night talkshow radio host, who realises that one of her listeners is a murderer: and that she’s next on his list. I would position the novels alongside those such as THE WIDOW by Fiona Barton or THE RUMOUR by Lesley Kara.
This is a short paragraph but it contains: genre, comparison titles, word-count and an elevator pitch. The titles I have picked to compare it to are recent, and performed well. If you don’t have obvious comparisons you should think about writers you would like to be compared to, and where you would hope to be stocked in a bookshop. Sometimes comparisons to films, videogame series or TV series are also helpful. When I sold The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell one of my comps to publishers was The Others.
Jayne McGill has been stuck working the late-night slot in local radio ever since her messy divorce from her famous husband saw her fall from grace. Her callers? Insomniacs, night-shift workers, and cranks. And then someone new starts ringing in, someone who seems to know a lot about her, and about the decades-old unsolved murder of her sister, which until now Jayne has managed to keep from the public eye. When a body is found on an industrial estate near Jayne’s flat it becomes apparent that there is a killer out there, and one who’s going to strike again. As the phonecalls to Jayne intensify, she realises that this man might well hold the key to what happened to her sister all those years before, as well as knowing a little too much about the recent spate of murders. But with no one else taking the listener seriously, if she wants justice to happen, she’ll have to take it into her own hands.
This is a longer description of the plot of the novel, similar in tone to the blurb on the back of a book jacket. It introduces us to character, setting, and conflict and establishes the key narrative arc to the novel – Jayne trying to solve her sister’s murder, and escape a killer. It doesn’t reveal what happens at the end, but it reveals enough detail to hook the agent.
I envisage this as a standalone novel and am at work on a second thriller, about a woman who discovers that her next-door-neighbour publicly escaped a murder charge in his own country, but suspects that he is guilty, and going to strike again.
Include a couple of lines about your next project if you can. That might be ‘this is the first in a trilogy and I have plotted out books two and three’, or ‘I have lots of ideas for future novels, and am currently writing my next fantasy novel’. I don’t expect a huge amount of detail but it is always helpful to know your plans, if you have them.
I am in my thirties and live in London, where I work in publishing. I have published non-fiction previously but this is my first novel.
I don’t expect a lot of detail about you – if you have other writing credentials it can be helpful to list them but it’s certainly not something I expect. Other relevant details might be, if it’s a police procedural and you work in the police, or it’s set in Regency England and you are a university lecturer in the topic.
I hope you enjoy the extract and look forward to hearing from you in due course.
All the best,
Juliet
Ending it succinctly and politely!
Other things you can add, if you want to:
You can personalise it to the agent, for example maybe you are submitting to them because X client is your favourite author, or because you saw them speak at Y panel and liked what they said.
Maybe you have a newsletter dedicated to writing with 10,000 subscribers, or you were mentored by AN Author for this novel. Titbits like this can be worth referencing in your biography, although if you don’t have them – don’t worry!
If you have done a creative writing course, it can also be worth mentioning.
Don’t worry about:
Trying to be whacky or zany or stand out – just stick to a professional and polite letter.
Your social media presence. It has no bearing on my interest in the novel and some of my biggest deals were for authors who don’t have twitter or any interest in having it!
Whether you have lots of writing credits. Some authors have them, and they’re worth mentioning, but I certainly don’t expect you to have them.
Of course, no two letters are the same, and there is no such thing as the perfect cover letter – but I hope this helps explain a useful way to structure yours. Good luck!