Successful Queries: Laura Mazer and “Shame on You,” by Melissa Petro
The best way to learn how to write a successful query is to read one. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Laura Mazer for Melissa Petro’s book, Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification (Putnam).
Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find the query letter pitched to Laura Mazer for Melissa Petro's book Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, recently published by Putnam.
Melissa Petro is a journalist whose writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, Good Housekeeping, The Guardian, InStyle, and many other national publications. She was a finalist for the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize, and she holds a bachelor in Women’s Studies from Antioch and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School. She lives with her husband and two young children in Upstate New York.
Here's her original query:
Hey Laura,
You and I had talked over Facebook about my memoir project. I’m just circling back around to make sure it’s a good time to send you my proposal. Everything’s ready except for the sample chapters. Can we start there, and see if you’re still interested? Below is how I generally introduce the project.
HAPPY ENDINGS is the story of how six years working as a stripper and a call girl, and involvement in a national sex scandal, prepared me for marriage and motherhood. Over a decade ago, I found the courage to face society’s misconceptions and talk openly about my experiences in the sex industry. Today—in spite of my fear I’ll be cast as a bad mother—I’ve written a book that talks openly about the realities of motherhood, including the burnout and depression I experienced at the end of my first full year as a stay at home mom.
The book begins with the story of how I became a sex worker, my transition out of the industry to become an elementary school teacher, and how I lost this job as a result of a media firestorm instigated by a salacious cover on the NY Post. It goes on to describe what came after: I got married, my husband and I had a baby and I became a stay-at-home mom. On the face of it, I had everything I always wanted. I should’ve been happy.
Instead, I felt dismayed when any time I expressed anything less than absolute contentment, I was told to Be Grateful, and Enjoy Every Second because The Days are Long but the Years are Short and They Grow Up So Fast. Moms don’t want sentimentality, bunches of flowers and brunch one day a year. Like sex workers, we want legislative victories that protect our rights and afford us more freedoms. In the meantime, we want commiserations from other women in the trenches and practical strategies for surviving the years.
As a result of my unique journey I’ve landed on an urgent thesis: sex work and mothering are two of the most demanding jobs a woman can do— and the ways we’re compelled to stay quiet about our realities makes these difficult jobs even harder.
Beyond my personal story, I weave in reported aspects that draw in marginalized voices and a socio-political background to both sex work and motherhood in America, and offer a forward-looking aspect of how we need to understand and discuss what are arguably the two most divisive issues among women, especially among self-described feminists.
I’m a freelance writer with bylines in Marie Claire, Real Simple, and Pacific Standard Magazine, and on NY Magazine, Esquire, Allure, Instyle, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Guardian, Washington Post, The Week and many other places. In addition to full-time parenting, I’m currently a regular contributor at Business insider, where 5.4 million unique visitors can read my advice on sex, work, marriage and motherhood. An earlier version of this project was chosen as one of 3 Finalist for the PEN America / Fusion Young Emerging Writer's Prize judged by John Freeman, Roxane Gay, and Cristina Henríque. This is an annual award that recognizes a promising young writer of an unpublished work of nonfiction that addresses a global and/or multicultural issues.
Thanks for your consideration,
Melissa
Check out Melissa Petro's Shame on You here:
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Melissa's thoughts around the query:
I started querying agents back in 2010. Back then, the project was a memoir about my experiences in the sex trades—how I got into it, how I got out, and what I learned. I had a couple agents express interest, including some big names that got my hopes up and then broke my heart. I signed with someone once, but that person left the industry before the manuscript went out on submission. Maybe this happened a couple times.
Then I was humiliated in the New York Post, and the project morphed into Unbecoming (still a memoir). That manuscript was a finalist for a PEN Award, and I still struggled to find an agent. I finally found someone who took a memoir proposal out on submission, and something like two dozen editors passed. Even after that, I was determined to tell my story, so I folded that memoir into a project about mothering (I had, by then, become a mother) and that’s the book I queried Laura with. It was 2020, and I’d been rejected by at least 50 agents by that point.
In the query, you’ll see that I talk about weaving in reported aspects but I had no idea how to actually do this and I was actually very resistant to the idea. Laura and I talked on the phone and she told me she didn’t represent memoir but if I was willing to lean into the reporting, she’d help me re-conceptualize the project into something she could sell. I said yes, of course, sign me up, still secretly and sometimes (oftentimes) not-so-secretly feel resistant to the idea of writing anything but memoir.
I think it took two years of Laura patiently holding my hand to come up with the idea of Shame on You. It was one of those “It’s so obvious I can’t see it.” I really can’t overestimate how much she helped me—professionally, but also personally. When Laura and I met, I was still very much stuck in my story—in my shame. Laura forced me to see past what had happened to me, and to realize the thesis of my book.
Laura Mazer’s thoughts on Melissa’s query:
I knew Melissa was an exquisite writer and that her story would be meaningful to readers. But just as the other agents Melissa had queried were reluctant to represent the story as a memoir—a book entirely focused on retelling the events of Melissa’s public shaming and the aftermath—I was similarly unconvinced that a memoir would find a strong publisher or a substantial audience.
Still, I loved her writing and wanted to champion her. I knew that Melissa was a superb journalist, and I was confident that if she reshaped the book not only to tell her story but also to extrapolate why her story is emblematic of a culture that promotes women’s shame, then it could have an opportunity to shine without the burden of the memoir format. And that’s the book we sold to Putnam: In Shame on You, Melissa tells her story, but she also goes further, sharing other women’s experiences and providing sharp, eye-opening commentaries on the impact of shame on women every day.
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Laura Mazer is a longtime editor and literary agent with two decades of experience crafting diverse, prize-winning, and culturally relevant nonfiction and fiction. She loves to champion books in dynamic categories like popular culture, women's issues, social commentary, and personal development, and she has placed her authors’ books with top-tier imprints at Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, W.W. Norton, Chronicle Books, and many more. She sits on the board of The Op-Ed Project and teaches publishing seminars for aspiring authors.
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