Plus, the book sounds great–congratulations!

And the best query in the world, no matter who wrote it, wouldn’t have gotten you the agent or the deal if your book weren’t awesome. I think people forget that. It’s also easy, in this business, when you’ve been rejected again and again and don’t quite understand why, to seize on anomalies and make broad statements about them.

So, hugs, but there’s no doubt you deserve the deal — and I can’t wait to read the book!

That being said, after reading Jackie’s post, I feel like I need to write a query letter ASAP!

I’ve read amazing books but the query letters sucked, so should that person be punished because they can’t write a simple paragraph, yet can writer a 400 page book? I dont think so.

As a reader, I wouldn’t give a crap if the writer wrote their own query letter, I’d just want to read a good book.

And good for you for being honest.

Writers use their connections all the time. Whether it is to get a foot in with an agent (those who say they are closed to querying, but open to referrals from their clients) or to get some feedback from an author or agent on her query or book. This is such a competitive business, you have to do what you can to make it.

I just don’t see an issue with this. If the book is good, shouldn’t the final comment be: Congratulations?!

That said, I do understand why agents might THINK it is dishonest/misleading. And that is because, in my experience of reading both queries and manuscripts, I generally find that there is a correlation between the writer’s ability to produce a good query and his/her ability to write a good story. I think it’s because, as you mentioned on Kristin’s blog, being able to condense the essential elements of your story (particularly conflicts and goals) to a couple of paragraphs really helps you to understand what your story is about.

At this point, I’ve discovered that if I don’t write that roughly 200-word query hook before I write the book, I will inevitably hit a brick wall when writing the book. It will happen because, even if I have a relatively detailed synopsis, I will find at some point that I don’t actually know what the heart of the conflict is.

This happened with the last book I started. I thought I knew what the story was. Thought I understood the conflict. But I kept writing myself into dead ends. Kept finding myself trying to put the characters in situations that didn’t “fit” their personalities. And when I actually tried to write the 200-word hook, I discovered WHY. All the details of the plot I’d laid out in my synopsis had already invaded and overtaken any sense of what the ACTUAL conflict between the characters was. It was all externally motivated and the internal conflicts were weak/non-existent. Worse yet, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

So, I ditched the book for the time being and started on another one. And THIS time, I wrote the query blurb before I wrote page one. So far, it seems to be working MUCH better.

Ultimately, I didn’t even use the query letter to land an agent. Kristin requested the full at the conference, sans query, and I already had Sherry’s recommendation.

There’s a difference between things that must be your own work and things that are not your own work. Everybody agrees you can’t pass someone else’s work off as yours in an academic paper. But if someone else wrote your abstract–and indeed, other people often do–nobody would even blink. It seems to me that there are multiple classes of items:

1. Things you must do yourself, without any outside help at all. These include, for instance, exams.

2. Things you must complete yourself, but you are allowed to ask questions and seek feedback, but must attribute for feedback. Thus, for instance, the academic paper, with the mile-long footnote thanking X, Z, and their dogs for helpful comments. Likewise, I think, in books, one thanks one’s critique partners and editor and copy-editor and agent.

3. Things you must complete yourself, but you are allowed to get feedback, and you need not attribute. This includes, in my mind, homework. It also includes query letters. I think this class of things includes anything where it is assumed that working together is okay.

4. Things you need not complete yourself, but which generally contain some form of attribution. These include, among other things, business letters (so would this all be okay if I added CM/st at the bottom?).

5. Things you need not complete yourself, which are not attributed. This includes, in my mind academic abstracts of papers, back cover copy of books, copy on website pages, and advertisements about a product.

There are gray areas between these places. Take, for instance, college entrance essays. I think you’d be a fool not to seek feedback, but you generally don’t need to say in your application, “My best friend helped me with this.” On the other hand, if you pay a college admissions service to edit your essays, I feel like that does need to be disclosed.

Ethically, I think these categories are sound. But I don’t have a good rubric for figuring out where to slot every item. To me, the query letter itself sounds precisely like back cover copy, academic abstracts, and advertisements–in other words, it seemed to fit into category 5. But some people insist it is category 3 or 4. I haven’t seen, in all hundred-whatever comments on Nathan’s blog, any sort of discussion that gets into the relevant ethical taxonomy. Everyone is just asserting, “No, it is like homework” or “No, it is like an examination.”

Ultimately, I think people are mixing up two things. It is rarely prudent to have someone else write your query letter. It worked for me because Sherry Thomas is awesome, and I exercised a great deal of control over the final product so that it ended up as representative. But imprudent and unethical are two entirely different beasts.

I’m new to the debate, so I’m just asking. Clearly, Kristen and the folks over at Harlequin have gotten over any query letter debate. And I’m just too darned happy for you to get my knickers in a twist!