Meet our guest poster, Jessica Berg.
Jessica will be attending the Crime Wave this year and teaching two workshops on “Query Letters” and “The Introverted Author’s Guide to Building a Platform.” You can learn more HERE.
Jessica is the founder and agency director of Rosecliff Literary, a boutique agency built on the belief that ambitious writers deserve transparency, strategy, and a seat at the table. She earned her MFA from Spalding University and brings more than a decade of experience to her work with clients.
In addition to her agency role, Jessica serves as a contributing editor for Writer’s Digest, where she writes and consults on topics related to querying, craft, comp titles, and the business of authorship. She teaches globally on query letters, positioning, and sustainable author careers. Jessica serves on the board of the Historical Novel Society and is a chair for the National Women’s Book Association.
She lives online at @jessica__berg, where she talks about querying, writing life, and the realities of publishing with transparency, humor, and a touch of glam. Connect with Rosecliff at @roseclifflit.
Free download: How to Pitch Your Book in 30 Seconds at https://www.jessicaberg.me/
5 Things I Wish Every Querying Author Knew
By Jessica Berg, Agency Director + Founder, Rosecliff Literary
Ask anyone who’s been doing it for a while and they’ll be the first to tell you the querying process is unhinged. Writers are expected to understand how to write marketing copy for a manuscript you’ve bled over for years and then send it out into the world.
From my side of the desk, a gentle reminder that agents are overworked humans doing a job that’s largely unpaid. That said, there are five things I see querying authors get wrong (or just not know) over and over again.
01 | The Query Letter is NOT Your Book (And That’s the Point)
A query letter is a marketing document. It is not a summary, a synopsis, or a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. Its only job is to make me desperate to read the first page. That’s it. The query letters I remember most are those that treat the story like a movie trailer and not a Wikipedia entry.
With that in mind, I want to stress that I know your book is more complex than 250 words. I know what your side characters have expansive backstories and your b-plots earn their place on the page. That your themes run deep and that you’ve got a gorgeous twist I won’t see coming.
But the query isn’t the place to prove any of that. All you have to prove is that the core story is compelling and your voice is unmistakable.
No pressure, though.
If you take nothing else from this: please hook me on the character. Hook me on the stakes. Hook me on the voice. Then get out of your own way and let your pages do the rest. Tease. Entice.
Leave me wanting more.
02 Personalization is Hurting You
I see this all the time.
“Dear Jessica, I’m querying you because you represent great books.”
Sorry, but that’s not personalization because every agent represents great books. So what does real personalization look like?
It’s you referencing an article I wrote or an interview I gave. It’s a mention of Larry, Rosecliff’s CEO and my cat. Or even you calling back to a Rosecliff Roundtable where an agent made mention of what they wanted to see and how your project is filling that gap.
The big takeaway here is that the best queries are always thought that feel like the beginning of a conversation and not a cover letter you’re sending to fifty agents at once.
03 Rejection Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means
Rejections don’t mean your book isn’t good. Rejections don’t mean you should give up on your goals of being a published author. And rejections definitely don’t mean I’m personally passing judgment on your or your narrative.
Rejections do mean that your project isn’t the right fit for me at this time. It means I might have something similar coming from an existing client. It means that the market I have the most expertise in isn’t ready for your project.
It also means that I didn’t love it enough to fight for it in the way I know another agent will. You deserve a champion for your work who is going to go to bat for you in all the ways you need, and if I don’t feel that way with the entirety of my being, then I’m going to make space for someone else who will feel differently.
And trust me, that’s what you want. You need an agent in your corner who is unreasonably
obsessed about your book. You owe it to yourself to keep going until you find the perfect fit.
Querying can take a while. Your favorite authors are the ones who used rejections as data, not as an indicator about their work.
04 Comp Titles Tell Me Things Without You Realizing
Authors ask me about this all the time. “Do I really need comp titles?”
The short answer: yes.
The long answer: comps aren’t a formality! They’re one of the fastest signals I have from you about whether or not you understand your book, the current market, and where your book sits in the market.
Also, please don’t comp to wildly successful books! Using something that’s had or is having a massive moment in the zeitgeist isn’t doing your project any favors. Nor is comping to something published more than 5 years ago because that signals to me you’re not reading in your genre as it exists right now.
The easiest bit of advice here is to read widely. Read currently. Read everything you can in your genre so you know where your book is going to fit on the shelf.
05 You Don’t Realize it, But Every Agent Is Rooting for You
By the nature of experience, the querying process can feel extremely adversarial. Like agents are gatekeepers bent on finding reasons to say no. I’m here to remind you that’s not how most agent operate. It’s the opposite, in fact.
Every time I open a query, there’s a portion of me hoping that this is The One. The debut that’s going to make me forget everything. The one I can’t stop thinking about. The manuscript I’ll still be talking about in ten years. I desperately want to find it because I want to champion it and I’m actively hoping it’s your project that comes across my desk.
I get it. The querying process is tough. It can feel like you’re shouting into the void with very little clarity on how to move forward. I promise you that on the other side of every inbox is a person who got into this industry because we love books. We love stories. And we’re all genuinely hoping you’re the author to surprise us.
Now Get Ready to Query With Confidence
Trust your manuscript. Research your agents. Read your books. And then send your query letter knowing that the only queries that don’t get offers of rep are the ones that never make it out of drafts.
Crimes in the Archives
Join the Maine Historical Society (MHS) and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA) for a special pre-conference Crime Wave session with author, historian, and professor Elizabeth DeWolfe at the Brown Research Library. This engaging program explores how writers can use historical and archival sources to enrich their work by uncovering context, detail, and a sense of time and place. Drawing on materials from THE MURDER OF MARY BEAN and her latest research on Maine’s first female undercover detective, DeWolfe will demonstrate practice how writers can pull archival research to support their fiction and nonfiction writing. The session also includes a guided tour of the Brown Research Library and an overview of how to conduct research at MHS with a professional librarian. On 5/29 from 1:00-2:30 at the Brown Research Library (489 Congress Street, Portland ME). More Information HERE.
Crime Wave is coming to Portland, Maine. Writers, readers, and criminals can all benefit from this fortuitous occurrence. Come meet the people who snake chills and thrills into our homes, bookstores, and libraries. The cast (or police lineup) of participating authors is incredible.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Matt Cost (Monday), Rob Kelley (Tuesday), and Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Friday).
One of the (many) things I was concerned about beforehand was what it might do to my writing, in terms of schedule, how much time I could spend in the chair, and everything else that goes to make up the highly subjective and superstitious ways and means we all have of getting our work done.
for the offending joint, a general sense the sleeping unoperated-on world was a lot smarter than I was, and a curiosity about how long it would take before I could say I was glad I’d done this to myself.
What I’d relearned is that those first few hours, before the day rushes in, before you start scrolling for the news, before your living companions start to need you, are precious, and somehow more fruitful than the same number of hours later in the day.
Elaine Lohrman: I did not intend to write a book. It was just something I fell into. Conversations with Nora is not a crime thriller, but we will get to that part later. Some fifteen years ago, my mother was deep into dementia, and I was struggling to understand how my once loving parent could turn on me so viciously. A lovely lady, whom I call Nora, faithfully walked by my side during that time, helping me cry and deal with the inexplicable anger that welled up inside me. Every week we met over dinner to have those difficult conversations that always began with “Why?” Nora had experienced the mental decline of her own mother and had a deep understanding of what it is like to be “divorced” by one’s parent. Nora was a Stephen’s Minister, a lay person trained in compassionate caregiving of caregivers. Yes, that sounds strange, for a caregiver to need care, but while my mother was lost in her own confusing thoughts, I too was lost.
After a short hiatus, I eagerly picked up my pen again, this time to write in a completely new genre – historical crime thrillers. (I told you that we would eventually get to crime writing. Thank you for staying with me to this point!) There was no question as to which time period in history I would choose. The Victorian era has always fascinated me and in the tradition of Isaac Bell in Clive Cussler’s tales, the Angus Quinn series was born in my first novel. The Boathouse is set against the backdrop of New York City in the early 1890s. It is the first in a series of thrillers that spin compelling stories of police corruption, murder, and deeply enduring love. The Angus Quinn series grew from there and Incident on Hopper Lane soon followed, with a third book due out this fall.
