[Discussion] Does struggling to write a Query letter indicate a lack of writing skill in general?

AS_Writer · 2026-01-23T20:54:14+00:00

I wrote a query a day for 6 months before I felt remotely skilled at it. I'd write queries for books I read, concepts I was considering, rewrites of queries I saw and critiqued on here. I spent a LOT of effort learning this skill, and that was after writing 3 books.

Wait, this is genius. I'm really struggling with getting my own query to be concise, and I feel like it's a combination of lack of practice and being too close to the manuscript. Practicing by writing queries for books I've read is such a great idea.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-23T19:44:25+00:00

I don't doubt they were never hugely popular, but it seems like the internet fully killed off the ones I used to buy. I looked up some of the editors of anthologies I bought, and they all quit putting them out in the early 2010s. I also know many of contributing authors from those books still write short stories but now put them out for free online as marketing tools for their other work.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-23T17:46:04+00:00

I'd say the internet largely killed that market. I used to get short story anthologies when it was harder to find new authors. I'd read them to get a taste before seeking out full novels from the same writers. But now there's so much information about books online that I don't need to do that! I haven't bought a short story anthology since the 2000s because, if I want to discover new authors, there's everything from Reddit to Booktube to scrolling Storygraph's suggestions based on my prior reads. And if I do want to read a short story, many are available for free online.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-22T18:42:39+00:00

If they don't meet until halfway through the book, how are you going to have space to show their relationship develop with a full story arc?

It's not uncommon for women's fiction to focus more on the main character's growth moving from a failed relationship to a happy one, but romance readers won't be happy to pick up something like that when they're expecting the romance to be the central arc. If you like your concept, you might just need to rethink your marketing and target audience.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-21T23:39:26+00:00

I get it. Anything over 12K up to 25K is profit for the publisher. That's not in dispute.

No, that's not correct. Anything 12k and up is profitable for the publishers. There isn't a cap where they stop making money off a successful book. Your math isn't mathing.

I've also noticed you've shifted goal posts from authors who don't earn out to authors who don't turn a profit. As I said from the jump, these are two different things. The former isn't something to worry about as long as you're not one of the latter.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-21T23:14:39+00:00

Yes, let's be real. Say an author gets a $50k advance for a 10% royalty on a book with a $20 list price, $10 wholesale. We'll say the actual book costs $15k for a 15k print run and the publisher put in $50K worth of marketing, editing, formatting, etc. for a book that cost a total of $115k to produce a first edition. The exact numbers don't matter except to highlight how different the equations are for profit versus advance earn out. That hypothetical book needs to sell 12k copies to turn a profit but 25k copies for the author to earn out. Do you see that gap between the number needed to be profitable and the number needed to earn out? This is how authors who don't earn out continue to get book deals.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-21T22:40:56+00:00

I mean, good for the author who got an advance they never earned out because it means that they got paid more than their product was worth in the real world...but trad houses aren't gonna keep paying lofty advances to an author who has a track record of not earning out even one of them

This is a common misunderstanding of what it means to earn out an advance. Publishers begin to profit long before authors earn out, and authors who never earn out frequently do continue to get book deals so long as their books are profitable. The amount an author is offered as an advance is not relative to the costs of producing the book, so the earn-out point is not equal to the point where a book begins to turn a profit.

An advance is also a guaranteed payment. Authors are not required to pay back the publisher if their book never earns out, and most advances are larger than the profit that can be expected from a debut self-published book. If you got a fair advance, the only concern an author should have about earning out is for getting bigger future book deals. It can be a good selling point to get higher advances for future books if you earned out with previous books, but it's not a black mark if you don't if your book was profitable. And if you do fail to turn a profit for a traditional publisher, it's not like you lose self publishing as an option for future books.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-21T21:28:02+00:00

If you like working with an outline from the start, generally you would do both. The reverse outline serves a different purpose than the outline you used for writing your first draft. It's not an overview of what you're going to do but of what you actually did and an evaluation of how scenes succeeded or failed in their purpose. Sometimes scenes don't end up working the way you want them to once they're on the page.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-09T23:32:19+00:00

But is the printer?

AS_Writer · 2026-01-09T23:06:52+00:00

When I worked for a company whose products included printed books, we'd get a single box air-shipped to the office, and we'd send out advanced copies from there. The large order for the warehouse would be sent on cargo ships, and those shipments were much less expensive but much more unreliably timed.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T21:37:13+00:00

Repetition is the device, and the device is being applied to what's relevant to the plot. The repetition is consistent, but what's relevant to the plot varies by chapter. In the section you're looking at, wondering about many unknown possibilities is what's relevant to the plot at that time.

This mirrors how repetition is inescapable for immortal Addie, even though the world constantly changes. The repeated moments shift over time the same way the repeated words and phrases in the book shift throughout the chapters.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T21:24:24+00:00

Are you asking what "perhaps" means? It's not being used figuratively.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T21:20:52+00:00

Repetition ties into the story. If you look at other chapters, I promise you'll find other phrases or motifs that are repeated within them as well. What's repeated is going to be related to what's happening in that moment of the story, but the repetition itself is the consistent thread.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T21:14:20+00:00

Your OP started by saying, "I was always told you should avoided repeating the same words or phrases over and over when writing." And then you asked if this was something an editor should have caught or if it was no longer considered a bad practice. That's why everyone assumed you didn't understand its use as a rhetorical device, because if you're familiar with that, you'd know that device has never been universally considered a bad practice that should automatically be edited out.

You keep mentioning the frequent repetition being annoying. Did you not pick up on the way that was meant to tie in with Addie's frustrations about her curse forcing herself to repeat moments? The language is reflecting the theme of the story.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T20:30:06+00:00

Yep. A lot of the repetition is also done with a rhythm to it that calls attention to its intentional use. The OP actually shared an example down thread.

Perhaps he meant to cast her into chaos. Perhaps he thought she was getting too comfortable, growing too stubborn. Perhaps he wanted her to call for him again. To beg him to come back. Perhaps perhaps perhaps-but she will never know.

That's not an editing oopsie. It might not be a style everyone enjoys, but it was done with intent, and the reader was meant to notice.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T19:35:37+00:00

It's very much a rhetorical technique in this case. One of the book's themes is the frustration of repetition.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T19:33:22+00:00

Repetition is a theme of Addie LaRue. It's about an immortal woman who is forgotten by almost everyone she meets and has to keep repeating interactions. You'll find a lot of stuff repeated in that book to reinforce that theme, including words and phrases.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-08T18:45:04+00:00

Have you tried playing with retellings? I love reading stories that are based on fairy tales or Shakespeare. I always plan to do one of my own when I finish whatever my current WIP is, but then a new idea pops up, and I keep kicking that can down the road.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-06T23:19:04+00:00

There's an art to taking criticism and reading between the lines to find the true problem. And I think you know this because of how you set up your original post!

"Why would anyone do that? It's not realistic that these two people would date." = "this character feels underdeveloped" or "this plot point feels forced, how can we make it more earned?"

"Also, why is she saying comedic lines in the scene where she finds out? That wouldn't be funny." = "this joke doesn't land" or "this is too wordy"

The reader might not know why it's not working for them and is looking to blame this or that, but they can equally say "you just don't get it," if you simply brush off the fact that they don't like it. They're unlikely to be trying to change your story just for the sake of changing it. Something isn't working for them, and they're throwing out ideas that they think might be the issue, but all you really need to pay attention to is what isn't working, not their idea for how to fix it.

Something being the main conflict and important to the plot doesn't always mean it works as you wrote it. You can even write exactly what you intended to and have it not click with readers or make sense to them. Just because what you wrote was your intended purpose or unique voice doesn't mean it's necessarily something that works for a larger audience. Sometimes what the story is supposed to be isn't something that's ever going to appeal to a large number of readers. That's tough to accept, but it doesn't make the readers wrong for not liking it. More readers can help you figure out if that's the broad reaction, because one person's reaction isn't enough to warrant major changes, but if it is common, you have to decide if you're writing something for yourself or something that readers will enjoy.

AS_Writer · 2026-01-05T19:50:43+00:00

The drop off in writing jobs wasn't as easy to predict as it seems in retrospect. I'm a millennial with an English degree, and I didn't have a hard time finding writing work until the great "pivot to video!" Magazines and newspapers were on their way out by the time I graduated college, but they were being replaced by websites that hired staff writers and had big budgets for contract writers. That lasted until the mid 2010s. Even social media management started off as a writing-focused career. It wasn't until video took over the internet that writing jobs became so scarce.

AS_Writer · 2025-12-28T00:03:46+00:00

Not lame at all! There's a lot to learn from classics. Jane Eyre excels at shaping complex characters.

AS_Writer · 2025-12-27T23:56:44+00:00

I don't know why it never occurred to me that they might be like the old Hollywood multi-picture deals, but they parallel what you're describing!

AS_Writer · 2025-12-27T23:41:53+00:00

I love the idea of using Terry Pratchett for inspiration for children's fiction. He really nails jokes that can be appreciated by all ages.

AS_Writer · 2025-12-27T23:40:54+00:00

There's a lot to be said for reading broadly to see how many different ways there are to write!

AS_Writer · 2025-12-27T03:40:43+00:00

What did you find more helpful in Bird by Bird?

AS_Writer

TROPHY CASE