I’ve often wondered why some wonderful writers never get a nibble from an agent, and others get a request for a full manuscript after a handful of queries. I had an insight into the issue this week when I heard from a friend of a friend who’s been getting nothing but rejections on his excellent novel — and was about to fall into the hands of a notorious vanity press.

After a look at his query, I saw why he’d been getting rejected. The letter wasn’t terrible, and it was a solid business letter, but it wasn’t going to entice an agent to read his pages. I told him it was likely nobody had actually read a word of his book. They’d been put off by the query.

Which meant his book hadn’t been rejected. No need to throw it to a scammer.

There was no element in the query that was a deal breaker, but there were enough missteps that the cumulative effect was going to be “pass.” Since I made a lot of these mistakes myself when I was starting out, I thought I might share what I’ve learned along the way.