Perhaps this is a dumb question but I'll ask anyway: Can a single author be represented by multiple agencies? If so, what are the benefits s and drawbacks? I was googling the agencies of authors i like, nothing serious, just for curiosities sake. and for my day job, i have to contact agents to book authors for events. I've noticed that some authors have more than one agent from different agencies (i should say that some authors appear on more than one agency's client list) and i'm curious as to why? Is it the norm?
I know a couple of writers who I believe have different agents for different, unrelated genres that they write in. I've always presumed it's for the expertise of what the best publishers are in that genre to shop a particular manuscript to.