The Art Of Finding An Agent - What Not To Do?

So, I sent an agency a query for my novel, and then I get the dreaded REJECTION letter, which, they don't really bother me all that much, because I expect to get rejection letters - it's the nature of the business.

What I loathe though is that some agents cannot even take the time to write "Dear Stephanie" on their basic form letter that all they have to do is copy and paste onto my original email query. So, below is the correspondence I had this week with a very reputable agency:

My original query was something like this--

Dear (NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE),

yada yada yada... (I won't bore you with the actual query I sent, but it was nicely written, professional, etc.)

Heard nothing. For what I considered to be ample time to respond. I emailed back, politely reminding them who I was, what I had written, "I know you are busy, yada yada yada," and just wanted to make sure my query was received.

I got this back:

Thank you for thinking of NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE Literary Agency. Unfortunately, we must decline your request for representation. Please forgive the necessity of this form letter; we truly wish we had the time to personally contact each writer who sends us his/her material, but it's just not possible given the number of letters and manuscripts we receive each week.

We like to give all writers who submit material to NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE Literary Agency every opportunity to establish a successful partnership with us. To that end, please be assured that if the agent you originally queried decided that your work might be right for a different agent here at NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE Literary Agency, she may have passed it along to an associate. For this reason, there's no need to submit your work to multiple NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE agents. Also, please keep in mind that we welcome queries for exciting new projects from authors who have previously submitted other projects to us.

For more information on our agency, please check out our website at:
www.NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE.com. Once again, thank you for approaching NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE Literary Agency. We wish you the best of luck with your writing career.

Regards,

soandsoagentlady
www.NOTMENTIONINGANYNAMESHERE.com

She got me on a BAAADDD day so I wrote back:

Hi, thanks for the response. Out of courtesy, could you just let me know if my info was forwarded to another agent in your office for review. Just want to know, and if, as you say, I can be "assured" then please assure me if this has happened. If not, I will continue my agent search elsewhere.

I sincerely do appreciate you taking the time to review and respond to me, although I'm not a big fan of the form letter. I think aspiring authors deserve more than that, even if it's a letter saying, "Dear Stephanie, your work sucks."

Thanks.

My new agent-search goal-besides pissing off those who have already rejected me and burning possible bridges I may need to cross later-is to send out three queries a night. I did this last night, and wouldn't you know it, two of the three requested partials of my manuscript. One rejected me, but very nicely, even using my name in the email. Now, that's what I call courtesy.