Ever been curious about what a successful query letter looks like?  Voila…the query letter I used to snag my agent.  Note:  this book never sold.

Dear Fabulous Agent,

What is somewhat trashy, embarrassing to be caught reading, yet still capable of producing a generation of empowered women? My proposed nonfiction book, GIRLPORN: A MEMOIR OF READING GIRLS’ FICTION, answers that question and many more that face the women of Generation Y.

Long before today’s twenty-something women had given a moment’s thought to our eventual piercings and tattoos, before we had kissed our first quivering boy or learned to give or receive oral sex, we had already buried ourselves in something cheap, absorbing and slightly humiliating. No, it wasn’t our dad’s girly magazines or Mom’s copy of The Joy of Sex – but it was our version thereof. It was GIRLPORN – the books we girls read before we really entered the world, the books that, clad in cheap pink series covers or gaudy bindings, hovered between moralistic and sultry, feeding us great heaping mounds of ambiguity, self-hatred, confusion, moral politics and empowerment along with addictive narratives about the lives of teenage girls.

GIRLPORN straddles the line between academic study and manifesto, providing an entertaining analytical tool with which to revisit serial literature and girls’ fiction in an attempt to understand today’s political and social climate towards women. The book will address and embrace a topic that has been marginalized by both mainstream media and the academy – the power of girl culture. Covering books from Little Women to Sweet Valley High, GIRLPORN will appeal to readers who enjoyed books like Pink Think! (Lynn Peril), Where The Girls Are (Susan J. Douglas), and who follow magazines like BUST and websites like Nikol Lohr’s www.disgruntledhousewife.com.

As both a member of the book’s target audience and a freelance writer with a degree in history from UCLA, I feel uniquely qualified to speak to women of my generation about the books that us the people we are today. My academic pursuits focused on women in media and consumer culture, and I remain connected to a community of independent, idiosyncratic women through my involvement and publicity work for the current flat-track roller derby resurgence. My freelance writing on a variety of news and lifestyle subjects has appeared in local and national publications in print and online, including EMPOWERED! Magazine, San Diego Citybeat and Street Magazine.

Thank you for your time and consideration. May I send you my proposal and sample chapters?