Q & A 194

As word count expectations vary across genres. Do these expectations apply to the query letter? Is it somewhat expected that a query letter in fantasy, science fiction, or historical fiction will run longer than one where the setting/time is more familiar?

I certainly hope not, or books like War and Peace and the Bible would have query letters ten pages long. Devta, by Muhiyyu-d-Deen Nawaab, would have a 50-page query, which would be bad enough, but it would also be written in Urdu. 

The reason queries are supposed to be about a page has nothing to do with the length or genre; it's because that's as much as an agent or editor can bear to read. Chalk it up to short attention spans.