Query Letter Professional Critique Service

DON’T SEND OUT THAT QUERY LETTER… Without a professional review from the professionals at Writer’s Digest!

Make sure that your query letter is pitch-perfect before you send it to the hands of agents and publishers. A query letter critique from 2nd Draft Critique Service provides you with specific, tailored advice for your query letter. You will not only learn what works in your query letter, but what doesn’t – and how to fix it! 

Price & Length Requirement

Price:  $39.99
Length:  1-page query letter formatted to the specifications below.

 

 

What Can You Expect from a 2nd Draft Query Letter Review?

2nd Draft Critique Service provides a high-level review of your work, pointing out reasons that an agent or publisher may stop reading your query letter. It offers:

  • An evaluation of the query’s overall strengths and weaknesses
  • Specific comments on your opening, biographical info, referral information, and closing
  • A non-biased assessment on the effectiveness of your logline or “hook”
  • A red flag on consistent issues of grammar, mechanics, spelling or style
  • A clear idea of how to revise

SAMPLE QUERY LETTER CRITIQUE  |  QUERY LETTER TESTIMONIALS

What Can You NOT Expect?

2nd Draft reviewers will not:

  • Rewrite or revise for you, except in the case of providing an example of how to revise on your own.
  • Correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. This requires a professional copyeditor or proofreader. However, a reviewer will point out any patterns of surface-level error that may pose a significant problem for you.
  • Check and correct for style (e.g., Chicago Manual of Style or AP style). This requires a professional copyeditor or proofreader.
  • Provide any fact-checking.
  • Provide answers or advice on legal issues.

Process and Requirements

  1. First, you must complete the 2nd Draft information and payment process at WritersDigestShop.com.
  2. You will receive an automatic confirmation of your order with instructions on how to submit your query letter to us via e-mail. (Sorry, but we cannot accept hard copies.)
  3. Our staff will be in touch within 3 days about the assignment of your project to a professional critiquer.
  4. After a professional critiquer is assigned, they will e-mail you to introduce themselves, and estimate a timeframe for turnaround.
  5. The critiquer will e-mail you an editorial review of your query letter in an attachment. If you submitted your query letter as a Word or RTF document, they will also return this with any related mark-up or in-text comments.

FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS
All documents must be submitted electronically in ONE of the following formats:

  1. Word document (.doc or .docx)
  2. Rich Text File (.rtf)

All documents must adhere to the following formatting standards, which are:

  1. 8.5 x 11 page size
  2. Single-spacing throughout in blocked paragraphs
  3. 1-inch margins on top and bottom
  4. 1.25-inch margins on left and right sides
  5. Arial, Courier, or Times font
  6. 12-point font size

If your query does not meet these formatting requirements, we will either return the document to you for correction, or we will apply these settings ourselves when possible, and only critique the first page of your query letter.