Your query letter—or your jacket copy—KNOWS. It knows if you’ve got a whole story in there, if there’s an arc of change, if there are stakes, if there’s a why now and a why this and a why her/him. You just have to be willing to listen. Julie Artz, query coach extraordinaire, and KJ talk about mistakes writers make in our queries—and more importantly, the problems queries can reveal about our stories. DOWNLOAD JULIE’s 5 STEP QUERY LETTER AUDIT! Julie's 5 Step Query Audit Links from the Pod Podcast: The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Blog: Jet Reid’s The Query Shark Podcast: Queries Qualms and Quirks Previous episodes: Ep 343: Friends Don’t Let Friends Write Books Without Hooks Summer Blueprint Step 4: Your Jacket Copy is Your Promise to the Reader #AmReading Julie: The Book of Delights, Ross Gay Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver KJ: Inciting Joy, Ross Gay “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths about Fat People, Aubrey Gordon (also mentioned— Maintenance Phase Podcast) Julie Artz @julieartz on twitter and Instagram Is 2023 going to be the year you finally click through and start exploring the idea of becoming a book coach? If you’ve been intrigued by all the conversations we’ve had about book coaching over the years here at #Amwriting, maybe this is your year to make it happen. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, client intaking, and emotional skills necessary to launch your own book coaching business. I’ve done it, and even after years as an editor for the New York Times, I expanded my skills dramatically, and my approach to helping others with their books, and writing my own, is so much better. The best part: no publishing experience is necessary to be good at this work.  Are you curious to see if you have what it takes? Head to bookcoaches.com/podcasts now to take Author Accelerator’s free quiz to find out if you have the skills and characteristics needed to launch your own book coaching business and get paid to read books all day! Take the Book Coach Quiz Do you follow KJ’s Bookstagram?