I got this question recently:
“Is it okay to send a query letter of one script to several production companies at the same time?”
Yes. It is okay to send out the same query letter to multiple production companies at the same time. Most of your query letters whether faxed, emailed or snail mailed will never get a response of any sort so if you wait to hear from every production company you submit to you won’t get very far. As a rule people in the industry understand when they get an unsolicited query letter it’s probably been sent to other production companies.
To be more specific here’s what you should do after reading my How to sell your screenplay (in a nutshell) article:
Get the Hollywood Creative Directory (you can buy it through Amazon.com by clicking here) and send your query letter out to 100 production companies. If you get roughly 5 requests* for your script it means you’re query letter and synopsis are working properly and you should then roll your campaign out to as many production companies as you can find and/or afford to submit to – like every single company listed in the Hollywood Creative Directory (I’m not kidding).
If you don’t get roughly 5 requests out of your 100 test you need to hone your query letter and synopsis and try again with another 100 letters. And then if you still don’t get 5 requests out of your second 100 test re-write your query letter and synopsis yet again.
If after your 3rd try you still can’t get any interest I would say either your story just isn’t marketable or you’re writing skills aren’t up to par. If anyone ever goes through three rounds of query letters and still can’t get any traction (and you’ve really rewritten your query and synopsis each time) please send your query and synopsis to me and I’ll be happy to try and help you get it to where it needs to be. It’s possible that your idea is simply not marketable, however, if you’ve really done the work and rewritten your package three times.
*I say roughly 5 requests out of 100 which would obviously be 5% – but I’m pretty flexible with this number. 3% is probably okay, too, but a little on the low side and you should probably think about testing a bit further to see if you get any better rate on your next batch of 100. If you use email as your query method I would say 2% is a pretty good response rate while if you send your query letters through regular mail your response rate should be closer to 7% – 10%, and faxes are usually somewhere in the middle. I explain the differences in delivery methods here in my post Getting your screenplay to producers and production companies.