Why don't you offer reports with e-mails, addresses, faxes, and phone numbers or sell lists with this information?

We don't provide this information, since many publishers, agents, producers, and production companies don't want this information distributed.  In updating our databases, we have obtained many private e-mail addresses, so we can't give them out, but these contacts will give them to you themselves when they respond to your query.   

Another reason we don't provide e-mails is because if these e-mails become widely used for queries by a number of writers, particularly if they have poorly written material, many contacts will start to regard these queries as spam.  Then, they will become less receptive to read any e-mails and may change them.   The system works because we only send out occasional e-mail queries, and so we need to protect them.  Otherwise this could undermine this service for others.

We also don't provide lists with contact information, since anyone could copy our hard to put together lists and promote a similar service, without the many hours and high expenses involved in putting together these databases and keeping them regularly updated (about 100 hours and counting!).  

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What is your "success rate" for sending unsolicited query letters to major publishers? Do these publishers read them and are your clients getting results with this strategy? 

It depends how you measure success.   Virtually all of our clients have gotten responses, some as many as 40 to 60, even 100 to 400 responses, and about 80-90% of our clients have gotten requests to send their materials.   And many have signed with agents, syndicates, publishers, and producers.  Go to our kudos section to see some of their comments (from over 60 clients). We can open the door for you and help you write a strong query letter that will be read.  But then your success depends on the strength of your material.

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I'm not sure whether to send an e-mail query, postal query, or both?  What do you recommend?

A good way to start is using an e-mail queries to those contacts with e-mails and see what kind of response you get.  Then, you can send a postal query to selected contacts who didn't respond to your e-mail query or who don't have e-mails or accept e-mail submissions.   There is great variation in who is open to e-mails in different fields, and sometimes contacts who say they don't accept e-mail submissions do when you send a compelling query with a project that interests them.   However, we have dropped some contacts who have made it clear they never accept e-mails.

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How do you select the contacts for your queries?

We use a number of industry sources, such as the Country Music Association Directory and the Hollywood Creative Music Directory.   We will be adding additional sources as the service grows.

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Where do you get the names of your contacts and why can't I just get them myself?

These names come from the major industry sources which are available to anyone either through published directories or online -- and sure, you could gather these names, type up lists, and organize the mailings yourself.  But we do this for you and put them in our own database, so we can quickly and easily select the contacts who would most likely be interested in your type of project and query them for you. 

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Can I contact record companies and labels myself or do I need a music publisher, agent, or manager? 

The answer is it depends, just as it does in the book world and film industry.  With some of the larger companies, you usually need an publisher, agent, or manager.  But if you hit an executive the right way with a compelling e-query or letter, you might still break through directly.  Alternatively, with some of the smaller and independent companies which are most open to new songwriters, you may be better able to contact them yourself, since the major publishers, agents, and managers may not contact them.   Also, if you can get your foot in the door with a smaller publisher or record company, you start building up your credibility which opens up the door for consideration by larger companies and agencies when you submit your next song.
 

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Even though I'm a writer, I'm still not sure about how to write the best query letter. Though your samples for clients are helpful in indicating what to write and about how long to make it, I'm still not sure about how to write this to be most effective.

Many writers have asked us about this, since these are essentially marketing pitch letters, and they require a different type of writing. Accordingly, we can write a powerful query letter for you. You send us a draft of what you want to say or 2-3 pages with a concept statement, synopsis of your project, and bio about you.  Then, we'll come up with a finished letter ready for you to review, and once you give your final okay, we'll send out your letter. The cost of this service is $90.  Generally, your letter will be ready within 24 hours.
 

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Won't good music publishers, record companies, and agents/managers be turned off by getting e-mails from you, if they get a lot of e-mails from writers with unsalable projects or poorly written queries? And if they get such e-mails, won't that make it difficult for me to query them myself?

First, the e-mails come from the writers, with their e-mail addresses and not from us. Secondly, we provide a preliminary screening, and make sure that the queries only go to contacts interested in a particular genre of music.  Also, during this screening, we can advise a writer if they have a poor query letter, so they can fix it or bring in a professional writer - or we'll refund their fee. But if we do get clearly unsalable projects, we're prepared to screen out such clients, because we know the continued success of this service depends on us sending out e-mails that our contacts want to read.  Then, too, as we grow, we may limit the number of clients we accept, so we don't send any one contact more than 1 or 2 e-mails a day for our clients.
 

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How can a scattershot approach to a group of agents, producers, or prodcos work, since different companies are looking for different types of projects.

Yes, we absolutely agree.  That's why this isn't a scattershot approach. Rather, we have categorized agents, management companies, producers, and prodcos by their  major areas of interest, so we target those that match your type of project when we do our mailing. Also, it doesn't matter if the writer knows nothing about these agents or editors. What's important is that we do know, so we can target your screenplay for you. 

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How do I know these agents, managers, producers, or executives at prodcos are still in their positions?  What if they leave their company or go out of business?  How do you keep your lists up-to-date?