Death to Paper Queries!
I can’t believe it took me an hour to “dash off” a query to a major publication! It’s not the conceptualizing, nor is it the writing of the query. It’s the printing of the letter, the envelope, the sample clips and the stamping and mailing. I’m sorry – what century are we in again? Why on earth are major, and I do mean major publications still using the arcane, tree-killing system of snail-mail queries? I would have dropped the notion of sending this query entirely had it not been for the fact that this fit like a glove.
Maybe that’s the point. If we take time to do all that additional prep work, we’re going to target our queries better. Sadly, publications do have to consider this. Otherwise, People magazine’s going to be inundated with travel articles and Playboy is going to have one too many articles on Cooking Sexy.
But honestly, are paper queries really going to deter the determined? I remember when paper was the only way. I remember sending out tons of queries a week, and I can guarantee you that not all of them were well-targeted queries. It’s out of sheer laziness that many people send off bad queries, but I think even snail mail submissions suffer the same affliction as emailed ones.
I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding queries to pubs that don’t offer email submissions, but I can’t avoid them forever. I wish, though, that they’d realize that bad is bad despite the delivery and modernize their systems.
I print clips ahead of time and always keep at least 10 of each in the file. That way, I just pull it out and add it to the query.
Snail mail queries and email queries take the same amount of time for me. Hitting print doesn’t really add all that much time.
However, now since we have no mail boxes and the post office is only open random hours — that’s a problem.
You’re not the only one. I shy away from pubs that only accept snail-mail queries/submissions too. I have a couple bookmarked I’d like to approach, but it probably won’t happen until I have a major lull in my schedule.