Like fashion and TV programming trends, where one color is “in” or “out” by seasons, the advice on how many pages a query letter should be also goes “in” and “out” by seasons. And like fashion and TV programming trends, this one’s something I just don’t understand. At the beginning of the Internet era, short, snappy, to-the-point was in vogue. So what did professional writers do? They started sending out advice that one-page query letters were it. You either wrote a page, no more, no less, or you were doomed to the death of your magazine writing career.

Then suddenly a couple of writers discovered that longer query letters worked for them. News was spread. The community rejoiced. Two-page or longer query letters were here to stay.

Me, I missed all the action. I continued sending in e-mail queries without worrying about whether I was exceeding some imaginary word-limit and bagged regular assignments. Now that I look back at those successful query letters, I’m still not able to come up with a standard for you. Some were long, because I just had too much information crammed into my brain and I thought the editor might appreciate how much research I could do. In others, a couple of sentences did the trick. Maybe those editors were tricked into thinking that I’d be able to fit more information in a less number of words and they’d get away with buying so much more by paying less. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m a good writer, and it didn’t matter how long my query letter was as long as I was able to get and keep my editor’s attention.

If you’re rambling on just to get to two pages, forget it. The padding will be visible. Similarly, don’t try to cram all your information in one page. It shows. And not in a good way.

Whether you’re bordering on one page, or two, let the words flow. An editor’s not going to stop reading an interesting query simply because it exceeded a page limit. Oops, longer than one page, gotta stop reading. Say what you want, and then shut up.