This is the fifth “query letter” webinar I've attended, and I found some of the information given to be new and priceless, particularly the “Theory of Mind” concept: I'd never heard this before, and it makes so much sense to identify your main character in these easy-to-understand terms.
Then there was the “high concept” first line. I'd heard this before, but it was never explained in terms that were so easy to understand. One thing I did notice, though, was that most of the “comps” were movies and not books – not so easy to put in practice when you don't go to the movies, but read all the time. However, that won't keep me from applying this knowledge using books I've read.
There were also a few items that struck me as being totally different – almost opposite – from what I'd heard before. As the other webinars I attended were with agents, the length of the query wanted by an editor (150 words as opposed to 250-300 for agents) came as a big surprise. So did the personalization aspect of the QL, which was filtered down from a general level (like #MSWL) to the more specific (like reference to a single Tweet). Lastly, there was the advice to respond to rejections from editors: I've read and also been told that responding to agent rejections is a big, big no-no.
So all of that was good, and well worth the price of admission.
However, it seems to me that, in general, these webinars give some writers much more value for their money. There were about 10 attendees as far as I can tell: three had query letters virtually re-written in real time, while the remaining 2/3 got only the general advice. Since everyone pays the same fee, I wonder why this is considered equitable. Yet it seems to be standard procedure: in only one case where I paid for a webinar did I actually get any written feedback, and that only in the most general terms. (It's worth noting that the best feedback I received was for a webinar that was free.)
Finally, on a technical basis, my sound cut out 4 or 5 times over the course of the webinar, and I'm wondering if there's a better product that can be used for these sessions. I don't recall off-hand what product I used before, but I never had this problem. The webinar also ran overtime and when we got to 1.5 hours, I think a few-minute break should have been called. I have a medical condition (the same one that keeps me out of movie theatres), and since I scheduled according to the stated parameters, I had to miss a short part of the webinar.
Overall, for great new content and a few very useful surprises balanced against some technical glitches and a seeming state-of-the-webinar inequity, I rate the webinar 4.
