In a little over a week, we got a response back from that agent, saying she thought the book was very funny, but, after thinking it over, she really wasn’t sure where she could sell it–in part, she said, because she didn’t know much about superheroes, and therefore didn’t know which editors would be best for such a project.
But she thought we might have better luck with another agent she knew. His name was Robert Shepard, and she thought his sense of humor would be a good match for ours.
We sent Robert our standard query letter (as seen in this previous entry) with one important addition: at the very beginning, we told him on whose recommendation we were contacting him, and we quoted the part of the other agent’s e-mail where she talked about how much she liked our book, and why she thought Robert might be a good match for us.
Robert asked to read our manuscript–and when he had read it, he asked to represent us. Here are his thoughts on why he responded well to our query:

Our general query letter served us pretty well, but there were occasionally agents who specified that they wanted to see certain things in a query. Some wanted the first 500 words of the book, for example. (It should go without saying that we tailored our letter to suit the agent’s request; as bizarre as it sounds, there are apparently people who ignore agent’s requirements when querying, so I guess it doesn’t really go without saying after all.)
One agent’s web page specified a very particular format. Essentially,she wanted a condensed version of the book proposal one might send to a publisher. We put one together for her and sent it off. She replied almost immediately that she did indeed want to see the manuscript.
Here’s the proposal that got her to read our book:

One of the most common questions aspiring writers have is: how do I get an agent?
There’s no one answer, of course. But here’s how Matthew and I got an agent for The Government Manual for New Superheroes.