The Least Important Part of Your Book

is why you wrote it

Hi friends,

Yes, this is a click bait headline. What can I say? I was raised on BuzzFeed. But this came to me when I was reading some queries the other night, and I wanted to talk to you all about it.

Lots of queries I read include information about why the writer wrote the book, and that’s great. As an agent, it can be interesting to hear what’s behind the plots and characters and word counts and other book related stuff. It gives me a sense of the author off the page. But after 20 years of reading queries, I’ve noticed some common threads. Writers often say I wrote this because I needed to tell my story. Or This idea came to me when I was a teenager and I’ve been working on it ever since. Or The world should know about [this important thing.] All of these are good, true, and worthy reasons. The most important part of a book to you, the writer, is why you wrote it. But the least important part of your book to a reader is why you wrote it.

Does the reader care about why you wrote your book? Yes. Do readers often ask authors what inspires them? Yes. But that comes after the reader’s already bought your book. It’s a question they want answered in an author’s note or epilogue—which come at the end of a book. It’s something a reader might look for in an interview with an author, or asked in a Q&A at a reading—after the reader already knows about the book, has bought the book, or is taking it out from the library.

The reader does not walk into a bookstore and ask the salesperson hey, do you have any books that were written because the author was inspired by Stephen King at a very young age? Or do you have any memoirs that were written because the author processed their trauma by writing? Or do you have any picture books written by grandparents to teach their kids to do XYZ?

The reader walks into a bookstore and asks the salesperson hey, do you have any new Stephen King-esque horror? Or do you have any memoirs about Complex PTSD? Or do you have any picture books about remembering to say please and thank you? The reader is thinking about what THEY want in the reading experience, not what the writer got out of writing the book. Yes, yes, I hear you contrarians in the back saying sometimes I care about that!!!!!!!! Ok, sometimes sure fine. But the reader is overwhelmingly thinking about themselves when they are picking a book to read.

So, should you automatically take out all references to why you wrote a book from your query letter? No. A sentence or two about that doesn’t hurt and yes, sometimes it does give the agent a little context for your book. But, if your query is only about why you wrote the book it will be an ineffective query letter. You’re telling me things I can’t use to learn if the book is right for me and/or the current market and/or readers of that genre. I can’t call up an editor and say hey I have this great book that my client wrote because they wanted to turn the hero’s journey on its head. Maybe that’s interesting for a second, but it doesn’t say anything specific about the actual book. If you don’t tell me anything specific about your actual book in a query letter, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

If the pitch for your book rests overwhelmingly on why you wrote it, you’re not effectively pitching your book. If the pitch of your book rests heavily on the word should: readers should learn about this thing, readers should care about this thing, readers should listen to what I have to say, you’re not meeting the reader where they are. How do you react when someone tells you that you should do something? See, it doesn’t work on a reader, either.

You are allowed to talk about why you wrote your book in a query letter. It is not a mistake to do so. But keep it to a sentence or two, and make sure your whole pitch does not rely on the reader caring only about why you did it. The reader doesn’t know to care about you until after they’ve read your book. You have to get them to read it in the first place by saying what’s in it for them.

XOXOXOOXOX,

Kate