After working on the query letter and synopsis the last few days, I thought about my struggles.  It's just like anything else:  how do you distill and present the material to make your case?

I worked in marketing in a past life.  My veep boss wanted to do a reply by mail campaign in conjunction with a new product launch.  It was a coupon on a postcard, offering a discount on the new product line. 

We were sending them to thousands of cardiologists, cath lab directors and techs, and nurses who had signed up for information from us.  One of my jobs was to estimate how many responses we could expect.  I told management that a 2.5% rate would be outstanding. 

They were stunned.  They thought it would be much higher.  Despite the relatively low rate, the mailing was still a cost effective marketing approach. They pursued it.  It paid for itself within a week.

I was thinking about this with the query approach to agents and publishers.  It's essentially the same thing as an RBM campaign, a mailing to a select group who expressed potential interest in your product. 

I won't say it's all in the math.  We ended up at 2.5% response rate, the high end and it was a great success, establishing sales for the new product and getting it attention and into cath labs. I think a large part was that the design team put together an attractive product and proposition.

With that in mind, off I go, to create an attractive product and proposition.