Query Letters- Yikes!!

Okay, this was painful, and I don't mean your average, run of the mill, paper-cut painful. We're talking severed limb here. Writing a query letter, a more difficult task than writing the book, at least in my opinion. I searched google for advice on writing the dreaded thing, and found a ton of information. Unfortunately, I also discovered in pretty short order that everyone's an expert, and for every "helpful tip", I found two to contradict it.

So, how did I write this stellar query letter you may ask? With a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and about ten revisions. But I learned a lot along the way, and this is what I believe to hold true: Keep it short, concise, and professional. Address it and format it like a business letter, even if it's an email. Introduce your book, and include genre, and word count in the first paragraph. In the second paragraph, provide the hook/short synopsis for your novel. In the third paragraph, sell yourself. Mention any previous publication, awards, memberships, etc. In the last paragraph, thank them for their time and consideration and it always helps to include why you think they would be a good fit to represent or publish your book.

I read several query samples online and found the following sites to be particularly helpful:

Sample Query Letter .pdf  I found this sample to be the best and most helpful.
Charolette Dillon There are a lot of good resources available here.
Nathan Bransford This is great advice from a literary agent's perspective.

I had a question last week about writing in deep POV. Here are some helpful links that do a great job of describing deep POV with examples.
Deep POV Daily Writing Tips
WOW- Deep POV
RWA-Deep POV

I hope this is helpful :) Have a great week!