How to Write a Cold Email

Not Cold as in Being a Jerk

Via

Hi Friends!

Do you know what a Cold Call is? Is this a thing most people know about? When we used to call people on the phone, calling someone you’d never had contact with before—in a business way, not a personal way—was a cold call. It was nerve wracking! You just dialed and said Hello! I’d love to tell you about this thing! Or Hello! I’m selling something. Would you like to buy it?

Up until about ten years ago, I would call every. single. editor. I was pitching a project to on the phone. These days, we mostly email. But back then, I would have a list of 15 or 20 editors and their direct office phone lines and I would call them and say Hi! It’s Kate McKean from the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. I’d love to tell you about a new project I have on submission. And then I’d have about 15 seconds to get something out that sounded interesting, fun, relevant, new, exciting—whatever the pitch was. Sometimes I knew the editor, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I had their direct line, sometimes I had to call the switchboard. I can probably still rattle off the big five’s switchboard numbers if I tried. This is all to say A: things were harder back then and B: Cold Email sounds funny, but it comes from Cold Call.

To promote my book, I want universities to invite me to speak to their MFA students. I’ve done this before and I love it and I think it will be a great way to spread the word about the book as well as help writers learn more about publishing. I’ve sat down to write these cold emails a bunch of times and you know what—it’s hard! In writing and rewriting them, though, I’ve come up with some tips that will help you write cold emails for whatever you need them for. (A query letter is a cold email, of a sort.) The goal of these emails is to get the recipient to do what you want and the best way to do that is to give them what they need to make that decision.

Know who you’re talking to.

You might be sending an email to a general email address, but as best you can, address a real person. If you’re asking a bookstore to host your launch party, seek out the events manager. If you are pitching an idea to a website, find the editor that does stuff on your topic. This takes some legwork, but of course it does. Why would it not? Address this person by name if you can. If you can’t, it’s ok to start with “Hello!” or a similar salutation. You don’t have to be overly formal and go with “To Whom It May Concern.” Be professional, not stiff.