You read queries for free.€75, written, in a week.
The query arrives by email with the first three chapters attached and “no pressure”. You read it on the train, you see the hook buried in paragraph three, and you either write two careful paragraphs for nothing or feel bad about not replying. This is the same reading with a price, a seven-day window and a refund if you miss it: a query critique, a first-ten-pages read, a strategy call, a weekly craft letter and a Discord for the people in the trenches. Representation decisions stay where they were.
Free to start. You keep 80%. Critiques you don't reach refund themselves at the deadline.
Refunded automatically if there's no reply by Tuesday 30 Sep, 18:00
The form they fill in
instead of the email.
The letter as a PDF, the genre and word count with two comps, and one honest paragraph about where they are. Nothing else. Four full requests and no offers is a different answer from thirty-two form rejections, and the form gets you that context before you read a word. The €130 tier adds the first ten pages; cap either at eight a week and the form closes itself.
Start from a blank formParagraph by paragraph.
Then a verdict.
One note per paragraph of the letter, one on the comps and bio, and a verdict: is it the letter or is it the pages. Written in the inbox, sent from the form. It is what makes the price defensible, what they forward to their critique group, and what makes a dispute almost impossible: the work is on the page, dated, within the window.
Buyer notified · €60 to your balance · 27 Sep
Five products,
switched on in this order.
Two forms first, because the reading is where the demand already is. Then the call, then the letter that fills both, then the community for the people who need company while they wait.
- 1Day one · Forms & Requests
Query-letter critique €75 · 7 days
PDF or pasted letter, genre and comps, one paragraph of context. Paragraph-by-paragraph notes and a verdict within seven days or an automatic refund. A “Why am I getting rejected?” variant with the rejections attached is the same form at a different price.
- 2Day one · Forms & Requests
First 10 pages + query €130 · 7 days
The letter plus the opening as a PDF. Margin notes on the pages, a note on where the story actually starts, and whether the letter and the pages are promising the same book. Cap at four a week; ten pages with notes is an hour.
- 3Week two · Bookings
Query strategy call €90 · 30 min
For the writer with four fulls and no offers. Intake: the list they've queried, the responses so far, the genre and the comps. Google Meet, evening slots, reminders at 24 h and 1 h.
- 4Week four · Newsletter
Craft essay + one teardown €7 / month
The essay and the market note free; an anonymised member query teardown and the first-page critique behind the €7 tier. The agent drafts from your notes; you edit.
- 5Week six · Community
Querying trenches, monthly agent AMA €10 / month
Discord with a weekly critique-swap thread, a trenches check-in and one agent or editor AMA a month. Yearly plan on, cap at 150 so the swaps stay useful. Waitlist when full.
#23 — The query that buried its hook in paragraph three
Inciting incidents are not events, they are decisions. Three openings that start on a choice, and why the fourth (which starts on a prophecy) got form rejections.
Two debuts from the spring list, one that sold in a pre-empt and one that didn't. The difference is on page two.
A member's letter, anonymised, before and after: 412 words to 287, the hook moved from paragraph three to sentence one, the sister subplot cut. Requests went from 1 in 20 to 3 in 9.
One member's opening page with margin notes: where the story starts (paragraph four), what the first sentence is doing (nothing), and the rewrite.
Two imprints opened to upmarket fantasy this month; romantasy submissions still closed at three. Two call slots left · AMA with an editor on the 14th.
What the weekly issue
actually contains.
One craft essay, one reading note, one query taken apart, one first page with margin notes, one market note. The essay and the market note are free, which is what gets it shared on Bluesky. The teardown and the first page are the paid part, which is what gets it renewed: writers in the trenches will pay €7 a month to watch someone else's letter get fixed.
Craft newsletters at $8 a month with a $500 founding tier are already a normal shape on Substack. You don't need a big list; you need two hundred paying readers who query.
Company in
the trenches.
Querying is months of silence punctuated by form rejections, and the people doing it want two things: someone to read their letter before they send it, and someone to tell them the silence is normal. A small Discord with a fixed weekly swap and a monthly AMA does both. ApplyForm grants and revokes the role as people pay and cancel; you show up once a week and once a month. Anything longer than a swap comment becomes a €75 form.
- MondayCritique-swap thread
Post a query or a first page, critique two others first. The rule keeps the ratio honest and the thread short.
- WednesdayTrenches check-in
Who queried, who got a request, who got a rejection. Accountability and the reminder that a 10% request rate is good.
- MonthlyAgent or editor AMA, 60 min
A colleague from the other side of the desk answers questions live. The reason people renew after they sign.
- MonthlyWrite-in and roundtable
Ninety minutes on camera with mics off, then twenty minutes on one craft question. Members bring the question.
Numbers from
the market.
More with pages attached; the marketplace lists 500+ editors who are ex-agents or ex-Big-5. €75 sits inside the band, and there is no marketplace between you and the writer.
$49 for a ten-minute query or first-page consult, $99 for query plus ten pages plus a fifteen-minute call. Writers already pay first and upload second; the form is that flow with a deadline attached.
Editorial Freelancers Association rate chart: query coaching $70–78 an hour, general coaching $75–100. A €75 critique and a €90 call are the entry to that.
$8 a month or $70 a year for the letter, a $500-a-year founding tier with one 1:1 call, application-only group coaching above it. The €7 tier is the first rung.
About $60,000 a year from the newsletter alone, plus a separate paid writing community. The ceiling on a letter about craft is higher than most editors assume.
Above the €200 form cap by design. The €130 first-pages read is the sample that earns the quote; the edit itself is invoiced the way you already do it.
Market figures from published industry and platform data, September 2026, rounded. Your prices, volume and retention will differ.
“Is a paid critique
an ethics problem?”
Not if it is firewalled. The critique is a service sold to any writer; representation is decided in the query inbox, not the critique inbox, and the page says so. Agents who sell critiques follow the association canon: if you later offer representation to a writer you critiqued, you refund the fee. The agent writes that sentence into your form's description and won't remove it.
The writer does. Every submission carries terms the buyer accepts before paying: they keep copyright, you get a limited licence to read and comment, nothing is confidential beyond that, and the files are deleted after the window closes. Nothing uploaded is ever used to train anything.
It is. Cap the €130 form at four a week and the €75 at eight. The seven-day window is long on purpose: read in one sitting, write the notes in another. Querying peaks in January and September; lower the caps when you're on submission yourself.
The buyer is refunded automatically and told why. You get a nudge at half-time and again near the end. A missed deadline costs you the €75, never the relationship.
Stop reading queries
for free.
Tell the agent your Substack or Bluesky handle. It reads what you post, proposes the two critique forms and the strategy call with prices from the market, and sets them up when you create the account.