I just received a note from the Ampersand Agency, based in the United Kingdom. The note basically says that although they have always had a policy of taking on quality American writers, UK publishers are just not interested in writers from across the Atlantic.
Sigh. This brings up a bigger question – is it worth it at all to query a UK agency? There are plenty located overseas, and plenty take queries from American authors, but I so rarely hear a success story. This sounds like a good article topic for the 2009 Guide to Literary Agency upfront section…
I saw on the news that the money they dumped at Shire was fake, to represent the money he had raised. It wasn’t the actual money.