Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Querying Agents in Same Agency

Dear Rejecter:

From what I've read, it's okay (and recommended) to query several agents at once. However, what about querying agents within the same literary agency? I have a friend who assists two agents at a very well-known agency and if I should query the two agents for whom she works in the future, would that be frowned upon? (I am speaking generally as I know my friend's opinion.) How much do agents within an agency "gossip" about us unpublished writers? Would they pass on a query sent to everyone in the house (even though several of them represent my genre)?

It is considered fair to query different agents in the same house, but space it out over a few weeks, because it might be the same assistant reading (or at least sorting) the mail, and when a bunch of letters with the same handwriting come in on the same day it looks tacky.