Which email provider do you send queries from?

Submission protocol, query etiquette, and strategies that work
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EvelynEhrlich
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Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by EvelynEhrlich » March 7th, 2010, 11:02 pm

Hi all,
I'm curious if anyone else is having the same problems I am with pasting sample pages into the body of my email. Gmail automatically inserts blank lines between each paragraph, and Hotmail looks okay when you draft the email, but if you go into your sent box, HORROR OF HORRORS! The formatting is completely effed up - multiple blank lines between paragraphs, indentation different for each paragraph (some a few spaces in, others indented many spaces in). I'm about to have a heart attack because I just used hotmail to query one of the top agents on my list, and now he (or his assistant, actually), is going to reject me for being a technological idiot. (Backstory: I started with gmail, read their Help topics and realized the problem couldn't be fixed, so I opened a hotmail account, thinking that a Microsoft product must be able to handle cutting and pasting text from another Microsoft product. Apparently not.)

So please help! Which email has actually worked for you for pasting in text?

Thanks!

jkmcdonnell
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by jkmcdonnell » March 8th, 2010, 1:49 am

I've had similar issues with gmail - I queried one agent using it and it only sent half the sample pages through.

Also, I wonder what agents think of when see they an email from 'name@hotmail.com', etc. considering hotmail is pretty much the provider of choice for 13 year olds using myspace and forwarding chain letters. I wonder if they think I'm a complete amateur when I send from a hotmail address. Do agents have any sort of prejudices about these kinds of admin things?

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Holly
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Holly » March 8th, 2010, 3:19 am

EvelynEhrlich wrote:Hi all,
I'm curious if anyone else is having the same problems I am with pasting sample pages into the body of my email. Gmail automatically inserts blank lines between each paragraph, and Hotmail looks okay when you draft the email, but if you go into your sent box, HORROR OF HORRORS! The formatting is completely effed up - multiple blank lines between paragraphs, indentation different for each paragraph (some a few spaces in, others indented many spaces in). I'm about to have a heart attack because I just used hotmail to query one of the top agents on my list, and now he (or his assistant, actually), is going to reject me for being a technological idiot. (Backstory: I started with gmail, read their Help topics and realized the problem couldn't be fixed, so I opened a hotmail account, thinking that a Microsoft product must be able to handle cutting and pasting text from another Microsoft product. Apparently not.)

So please help! Which email has actually worked for you for pasting in text?

Thanks!
Thank you for posting this! I'm not ready to send out queries yet, but I opened a gmail account for them, and now I'm afraid to use it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the formatting problem with the material you sent to that agent. They must get that all the time. They will know it's the computer.

Some agents suggest sending queries as text only. You underline for italics.

You can also send the email to yourself and see what it looks like before you send it out to the world. Of course, the formatting will change again, so you will have to duplicate the email instead of forwarding it (it might add extra lines again if you forward).

What about email from Yahoo.com?

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Nathan Bransford
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Nathan Bransford » March 8th, 2010, 3:17 pm

As long as you don't try and fiddle with the formatting any of the major e-mail providers should be fine. Just don't try and mess with it. Block formatting, no idents, don't change the font. Less is more.

EvelynEhrlich
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by EvelynEhrlich » March 8th, 2010, 4:34 pm

Thanks, Nathan. You're right that it was my attempt to "fix" the indentations that actually made it worse. Even though the indents looked uneven in the draft I wrote, the "sent" version looked worse, and probably would have been okay had I not touched the formatting.

As for what I'm going to do - I'm going back to using gmail (even though it automatically adds line breaks between paragraphs), since that's my normal email provider and what I know best. I completely agree that hotmail is the realm of spam and internet neophytes - I personally only use my hotmail address for online shopping because I know I'll get spammed! (Except in this case -- as I mentioned in the original post, I opened a new hotmail account because I thought a Microsoft product would be able to handle cutting-and-pasting text from another Microsoft product. Wrong.)

Here's to hoping that agents will forgive our technological query issues, and that they know we will try very hard to making the formatting correct in the actual partials and fulls they request!

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Holly
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Holly » March 9th, 2010, 4:38 am

Nathan, a thank you from me, too. I really appreciate your friendly professionalism on the forums.

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shadow
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by shadow » March 9th, 2010, 8:02 pm

YAHOO
All things writing, visit my blog http://arielemerald.blogspot.com/

ImageImageImageImage

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Tycoon
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Tycoon » March 12th, 2010, 2:07 am

shadow wrote:YAHOO
Yahoo for me also!!

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Simpatico
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Simpatico » March 15th, 2010, 3:54 am

I'm assuming you used MS Word as it contains hidden format instructions in each document.

Just paste your except into Notepad (or any plain text editor) first and it will remove all the extraneous formatting. Then you won't have extra lines or weird formatting in your email.

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Matthew MacNish
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Matthew MacNish » March 15th, 2010, 7:51 am

If using gmail it may also help to click "plain text" right above the body of the email. Simpatico's advice about Notepad is great as well.

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mmcdonald64
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by mmcdonald64 » March 15th, 2010, 8:51 am

EvelynEhrlich wrote:Hi all,
I'm curious if anyone else is having the same problems I am with pasting sample pages into the body of my email. Gmail automatically inserts blank lines between each paragraph, and Hotmail looks okay when you draft the email, but if you go into your sent box, HORROR OF HORRORS! The formatting is completely effed up - multiple blank lines between paragraphs, indentation different for each paragraph (some a few spaces in, others indented many spaces in). I'm about to have a heart attack because I just used hotmail to query one of the top agents on my list, and now he (or his assistant, actually), is going to reject me for being a technological idiot. (Backstory: I started with gmail, read their Help topics and realized the problem couldn't be fixed, so I opened a hotmail account, thinking that a Microsoft product must be able to handle cutting and pasting text from another Microsoft product. Apparently not.)

So please help! Which email has actually worked for you for pasting in text?

Thanks!
I've had so much trouble with gmail. Sometimes, a line in my query will turn a different font for no reason that I can figure out. It also breaks two of my lines about half way through, and I have to correct it every time I send it out. I just opened a hotmail account hoping it would leave my formatting alone, but it seems people have had issues with that as well. I guess I'll try yahoo next.

ETA: Just thought I'd mention that my query was written in google docs, so even using the same 'system' is no guarantee it'll look the same from document to email format.

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slavandria
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by slavandria » March 15th, 2010, 2:05 pm

I use Gmail for all my professional e-mails and Yahoo for all my personal. I have never had an issue with Gmail from Internet Explorer; Firefox is a completely different issue, though. MIght be a host server issue. I also know some people have different results if sending from a Mac or PC.

http://www.jennykellerford.wordpress.com

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mmcdonald64
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by mmcdonald64 » March 15th, 2010, 2:24 pm

slavandria wrote:I use Gmail for all my professional e-mails and Yahoo for all my personal. I have never had an issue with Gmail from Internet Explorer; Firefox is a completely different issue, though. MIght be a host server issue. I also know some people have different results if sending from a Mac or PC.

http://www.jennykellerford.wordpress.com
I'm not sure if I tried IE for it. I've tried Firefox, Opera and Chrome though. lol. I really hate using IE, but maybe I'll give it a try.

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Kirril
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Kirril » March 15th, 2010, 4:08 pm

I've used gmail and MS Outlook to send queries. Before I send anything, I usually send a test query/sample pages to several of my email accounts spanning hotmail, gmail, my corporate email, and Earthlink. Everything usually comes out just fine. I do a copy/paste from my manuscript in MS Word directly into gmail. Most of the time I increase the font size a bit since it seems to make it smallish but that's it. I do worry about the double-spacing since gmail seems to decrease it to a 1.5 spacing, but it still leaves plenty of white space.

So send a test first to a couple email accounts with different providers to get a good idea. If it looks okay in those, then it'll likely look fine to the agent.

Unless your query is a complete and utterly unreadable mess due to fiddling with the email's formatting, I wouldn't worry. If the premise and writing appeal to the agent, you'll get a positive response.

However, if you want to GUARANTEE impressing an agent, write all of your queries on parchment using a quill. Practice this art until you've mastered it. Then start querying. If I didn't believe in this method, I wouldn't have underlined, bolded, italicized, and given the all-caps treatment to "guarantee". Take a minute and think about that. In fact, I recommend everyone on these forums start practicing today. For those agents that only accept e-queries, just scan it in!

For your health.

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Matthew MacNish
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Re: Which email provider do you send queries from?

Post by Matthew MacNish » March 16th, 2010, 6:38 am

Thanks for that Kirril, that made me chuckle.

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