Querying Multiple Agents at One Agency

One important rule of querying is that you can only query one agent at an agency at a time. 

When you make your agent list, you’re likely to come across multiple agents at a single agency who might be a good fit for your manuscript. This is normal, but you have to make sure that you’re not submitting to two of these agents at the same time. Why? Because you’d effectively be making these agents compete against each other if both of them want to offer representation. 

When you make your agent list, I recommend grouping the agents by agency. Then, rank order the agents within each agency, from best fit for your project on down. Then, before you make your batches, make sure you only have that best-fit agent from each agency on your list. Take the rest of those same-agency agents and pop them into a different list. 

Then, as you query, if you get a rejection from that top-choice agent, go into your separate list, find the next-best-fit agent from that agency, and go ahead and submit! Repeat this process until you either get an offer from an agent at that agency, or you work through all of the agents you wanted to query at that agency. 

There’s one exception to this rule: agencies where a no from one is a no from all. 

This usually happens at smaller agencies, where agents tend to pass manuscripts around if they think they would be a good fit for a colleague. For example, Root Literary is one such agency (at least at the time of this blog post). 

When these agencies are on your query list, you need to pay particular attention to which agent you choose to query. You effectively get one shot with the agency, so make sure you use it well!