A Few Quick Tips on Writing a Great Cover Letter to an Agent

Just the Facts

The letter should be succinct but include a great deal of important information. Here's what you don't want to leave out:

• What you’ve been up to
• What exciting projects you have coming up. Let your enthusiasm come through! 
• Why you think you’d be a good fit for the agency
• The letter should emanate the sense of the value you can bring to the organization.

      It's All Yours

Here is the exact template I used to land an agent. You'll notice it's short and to the point. Feel free to use the same format.

Hey Steve,

I wanted to drop you a quick line and let you know about a few recent career developments:

-- I’m currently helping to develop the stage version of the hit Gomorrah in which I play a lead role opposite Rocco Sisto. (The Sopranos)

-- I was recently called back for Law & Order: SVU and I have an upcoming audition for a new pilot on ABC.

-- Studying TV with Todd Thaler at One on One.
I would love the opportunity to meet with you about representation.

Best,

Nick Maccarone

Happy Friday 

      People are influenced in interesting ways. We're not always the rational beings we like to think we are. 

      Check out this study done by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his terrific book, Thinking, Fast and Slow

      A disturbing demonstration of depletion effects in judgment was recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The unwitting participants in the study were eight parole judges in Israel. They spend entire days reviewing applications for parole. The cases are presented in random order, and the judges spend little time on each one, an average of 6 minutes. (The default decision is denial of parole; only 35% of requests are approved. The exact time of each decision is recorded, and the times of the judges' three food breaks--morning break, lunch, and afternoon break--during the day are recorded as well.) The authors of the study plotted the proportion of approved requests against the time since the last food break. The proportion spikes after each meal, when about 65% of requests are granted. During the two hours or so until the judges' next feeding, the approval rate drops steadily, to about zero just before the meal. As you might expect, this is an unwelcome result and the authors carefully checked many alternative explanations.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/kahneman_mental.html

      This is a very dramatic way to nudge you to send the postcards out on a Wednesday or Thursday so the agents receive them on a Friday.

      They’ll likely be in a good mood!