Hi there,
Last year, I sent out two queries, first to a certain agent then to another agent within the same agency after the first rejection. The agency guidelines state that it is okay to query another agent in the agency in this way in case of a rejection. The first agent sent a polite rejection, to which I responded with a polite "thank you for your consideration." The second agent did not reply to the query, but honestly, this man receives a lot of queries even by major agent standards.
My submission to the first agent was botched, basically. I was very very nervous about the agent search and the submission had a number of mistakes. The query to the second agent was much much cleaner, but it is possible that despite querying him was within the agency guidelines, he may have rejected the query because the query to the previous agent was botched.
All of this was in the first days of last September. The agency states that a person may re-query if at least six months have passed and extensive changes have been made to the manuscript; both conditions are the case with me because the two rejections severely spooked me and I got some more test readers and did a lot of work on the manuscript that I think made it much better. Right now, I am quite certainly done with the manuscript and am approaching the agent search much more carefully and systematically.
My question is: do you think it is okay to re-query these two agents, given the fact that I am doing so by their agency guidelines, or do you think it's NOT okay to re-query them given that my prior submission was poorly executed? I am really impressed by both of them, but I certainly don't want to offend either one.
Thank you very much for your assistance.
Last year, I sent out two queries, first to a certain agent then to another agent within the same agency after the first rejection. The agency guidelines state that it is okay to query another agent in the agency in this way in case of a rejection. The first agent sent a polite rejection, to which I responded with a polite "thank you for your consideration." The second agent did not reply to the query, but honestly, this man receives a lot of queries even by major agent standards.
My submission to the first agent was botched, basically. I was very very nervous about the agent search and the submission had a number of mistakes. The query to the second agent was much much cleaner, but it is possible that despite querying him was within the agency guidelines, he may have rejected the query because the query to the previous agent was botched.
All of this was in the first days of last September. The agency states that a person may re-query if at least six months have passed and extensive changes have been made to the manuscript; both conditions are the case with me because the two rejections severely spooked me and I got some more test readers and did a lot of work on the manuscript that I think made it much better. Right now, I am quite certainly done with the manuscript and am approaching the agent search much more carefully and systematically.
My question is: do you think it is okay to re-query these two agents, given the fact that I am doing so by their agency guidelines, or do you think it's NOT okay to re-query them given that my prior submission was poorly executed? I am really impressed by both of them, but I certainly don't want to offend either one.
Thank you very much for your assistance.
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