If you have aspirations of publishing a novel, you might think that once you’ve finished writing the manuscript, you’ve conquered the hardest part. Although this is a great accomplishment and an important step, it’s a relative piece of cake compared with what lies ahead. To realize your goals, you’ll probably need to secure representation by a literary agent, and for that, you’ll need a query letter. You may have heard that the agent query letter is the most important letter you will ever write, and likely rewrite upwards of 17,500 times.