In yesterday’s post, I talked about the necessary elements of a query letter, in the helps of hoping other beginning freelancers overcome to difficulties in composing queries. When you’re sending out many queries for the same article idea, however, there’s more to it than just knowing what to include in a well-written letter. Below are some tips for easily mass-producing your query letters.

Research the recipients for your query. Before you start writing your letter, you need to know your audience – that is, you need to know whom your letter is going to, because it may affect the information you include in your letter – or even the tone you adopt.

Create a template letter. Keeping in mind the different markets you are marketing your story idea to, write the generic part of the letter – the part of the letter that will be the same for everyone. If you have a couple of different types of letters, you could write certain sections two different ways, and simply delete the one you don’t want in your query to a specific publication. If you are appealing to two or three very different types of markets, you might even want to write two different query templates.

Customize each query letter. Open up your template; before doing anything else, select “Save As,” and give the file a distinct name, such as the publication the query is for. Then fill out the contact information and salutation. You should drop the name of the recipient’s publication into the letter at least once, as well as any other custom information that shows the reader that you’ve done your research and taken the time to write a custom letter. If it looks like a form letter that you’ve just mailed out to every publisher on a list, you will turn off more editors than you interest. Also, make sure you address the submission guidelines of individual publishers: provide the correct contact information, published clips, and a short bio as requested, and add a sentence you’re your query mentioning the enclosures.

Mass-producing queries in this manner can still take some time, but if you use a form letter you will considerably reduce the time you spend on it (as opposed to writing each query from scratch).

For more tips for writers, check out Swan’s blog.