I'm sure I've addressed this topic before

I posted this on the blog, but thought I'd email you as well. I sent my query letter to an agent and she was very interested in my novel - she emailed me back immediately and was really responsive. She emailed me several times over the course of a few days about it.

She asked to see my website with chapters of the work. I sent it to her, and now I haven't heard a word back - it's been three weeks and I've sent an email to see if she's read it.

My neurotic little brain is going nuts. 'Why was she so responsive, then, nothing?', 'Did she hate what she read?' or 'Is she just out of town?' God only knows the answer to this. And I'm not God. I am however, clueless as to what this means. Now I'm starting to sound like a pathetic ex, aren't I?


Any advice? Do I assume that she just isn't interested? Would love your advice!


I'm fairly sure I've covered this before - in these posts - but what the heck ... Those manuscripts and contracts and proposals and bazillion emails can wait.

THREE WEEKS? You've only given her THREE WEEKS? And you've already sent an email? If an agent can get back to you in three weeks about a submission then they probably have too much time and not enough clients, and you should worry about that. I'm lucky if I get back to myself in three weeks.

All right, so that was a slightly histrionic paragraph but I'm still surprised by how quickly writers turn into Chicken Little. You'll all spend months - years - writing a novel but then three weeks of silence from an agent and suddenly cluck, cluck, cluck.

Here's what's probably happened: she asked for the extra material and, granted, her initial super-enthusiasm may have given you the impression that you were moving to second base in a hurry, but what probably happened is that she read your email on a day in the office when she just felt like doing a bit of reading and was able to respond quickly. Those days are rare. So she requested your website link with the intention of reading further but then stuff intervened - she had to do some contracts or go to meetings or be interstate or take the dog to the vet. Three weeks is not a long time in publishing.

But you've already emailed her so now she's possibly thinking, 'Uh-oh, one of those', because we're fickle creatures, us agent-y types, and as much as we're keen on someone's writing, if they exhibit overzealous behaviour it's hard for us to envisage ourselves taking them on as a client because, well, that could just be all too much attention. I have a casually dysfunctional relationship with all my authors - I love them, they know it, but I don't want to know if they love me and I certainly don't want them to tell me. They can thank me in their acknowledgements once I've got them published. So if they get - er - clingy then, like someone with boundary *issues* I'm likely to distance myself. Of course, there's a chance I'm making this last part up because it's late in the afternoon and I have a headache.

Anyway, back to you. My advice is to not email her again for quite a while. If she likes your writing, don't worry, you'll hear from her. If she doesn't, you'll also hear from her. But give her a bit more time - say, two months. That's a long time in your world but it's a short time in ours.

The follow-up

After inviting me to send in my novel, it has been sitting with the same agent for almost a year. When I last heard from the agent in the middle of last year, she gave me permission to follow up if I'd not heard after a month or two. I have followed up with a couple of emails but had no response. What do you advise?

It's possible that the agent is feeling overwhelmed by the amount of reading she has; it's also possible that she's overwhelmed by the amount of email she has. Quite often I want to curl up in a ball and weep silently because I just can't get through the amount of reading I have and I feel guilty about letting people down. Agenting is often a mix of wanting to help out writers and then resenting the helpful impulse. Quite often I wonder why on earth I agreed to read those fifty manuscripts when I really just don't have the time - and the only answer is that I thought they'd be worth reading and I hoped the authors would understand if I ran a bit past the estimated time frame.

However, you've done all the right things in terms of following up - you've allowed a bit of time, you've followed up within the time frame suggested. It's possible the agent isn't getting back to you because she still hasn't read your manuscript, or she's read it and liked it but isn't sure whether she can take it on, so she's stalling you while she decides. But you don't know because you're not being told, so I'd suggest you send one last email, politely saying that as you haven't heard, you presume that the agent isn't interested in the manuscript and you're withdrawing it from consideration. Unless, of course, you really want to hang in there, in which case write the same email but end it with, 'If you'd still like to consider my manuscript but haven't had a chance to read it yet, it would be great if you could let me know how much longer you think you may need.' This may sound like sucking up, but you want something from her, right?

Many is the author I've rejected just because they didn't give me enough time or wouldn't understand if I was running late - and I've also taken on authors who were understanding about the fact that I was going as fast as I could, even if that was a glacial pace. Sometimes they have been authors of equal talent and the difference has been the attitude. I can only take on so many clients, and it doesn't take much to tip me either way. I'm sure I've said it before, but politeness is really underrated in all business relationships, not just between authors and agents. I respect the fact that it takes authors months and years to write manuscripts; I like it when they respect the fact that it takes me weeks and months to read their manuscripts. I wouldn't expect an author to churn out a novel in two weeks just because I'm waiting for them - that would be rude. So I do get annoyed when an author sends a full manuscript and gets huffy two months later when I haven't read it. I'm doing the best I can. Most agents are. The agent you've been dealing with is probably doing the best she can - but, having said that, you have been more than respectful of her time and you need to now do what you want to do with your manuscript.

Author in a hurry - part deux

This author has also written with more information - and it turns out her two different publishers are quite specialised. So I've somewhat wrongly accused her of being in a hurry - although I don't know her personally, so I really can't say for sure. She has also written that she 'certainly didn’t mean to sound like I was whinging about not being able to enter competitions! The "big break" is definitely being published, but for me it’s also about being able to establish a career of sorts ... It’s not about being published by as many publishers as possible or being in a ridiculous hurry, but about being proactive and knowing the limitations of my current relationships with publishers.'

Given what she's told me about her existing publishers - both with no presence 'in the trade', as we like to say - she is right to send submissions to other (trade) publishers. But here's my big warning: now is a really bad time to be submitting children's picture books. Or illustrated books for adults. Those books are expensive to produce, both in terms of paper and production, and the amount of time involved, so they're not the sorts of books publishers are rushing to take on in 'uncertain' times. Australian publishing is doing okay at the moment, but our northern hemisphere colleagues are cutting people and projects all over the place. Some of those colleagues work in the head offices of large multinational publishers who may soon turn their gaze south. And as the illustrated books usually come from the larger houses - as they have the bigger budgets - now is really not a good time. So if this author wants to make relationships with other publishers, she should ideally do it with non-fiction that doesn't need thick paper ...

Author in a hurry

I started taking my writing seriously in April ’08 after years of ‘dabbling’. To my utter joy and disbelief, the first manuscript I sent off was accepted. I am primarily a children’s author with a passion for picture books and have just signed two contracts with an overseas publisher. I am also awaiting a contract from a niche market Australian publisher which should arrive any day soon. I am actively submitting picture book manuscripts high and low and make sure I include my successes in my cover letter. I also include names of some of the magazines I’ve been published in recently.

My question is, how much does that count when a publisher receives my latest manuscript? I understand that a good manuscript will sell itself – and I’m only as good as my current submission – but do they look more closely because I’m beginning to establish myself in the market? Or am I just another ‘wanna-be’ in the slush pile?

Also, I have discovered one nasty little down side to my publishing success: I am no longer eligible to enter many of the competitions around the place. So now I feel like I’m in limbo. I’m not published enough to avoid going through the unsolicited submissions pile, but I’m too published to enter competitions where I could get my ‘big break’. I haven’t ‘made it’ by any stretch of the imagination. Any suggestions on where to from here? Just keep doing what I’m doing and do it well?? Try and build my freelance profile? Try and nab one of those will-o-wisps a.k.a. literary agents??

A handful of things about your email trouble me.

First, you have signed two contracts with overseas publishers and about to sign one with a small Australian publisher, yet you also say you haven't had your 'big break'. Um ... is getting published not the big break?

Second, you obviously have one (or two) overseas publishers and one Australian publisher and you're sending off what sounds like a lot of submissions to other publishers. Why? Why aren't you trying to consolidate your relationships with your existing publishers?

Third: you have three publishing contracts and yet you're bemoaning the fact you can't enter competitions any more. Well, uh, yeah ... they're usually for unpublished authors.

So I think there's information I'm missing here, and I have a suspicion that what you're not saying is that the 'overseas publishers' are some kind of co-publisher, which means you're putting up some of the money; or, if not that, then they're no-advance publishers, of the sort who usually have a not-so-hot contract. (If you'd like to email me again and give me some more information about your publishers, I'll try to answer this question more comprehensively.)

If this isn't the case, then you're just really, really in a hurry to get published by as many publishers possible, in as short a time as possible, and I have to tell ya, honey: that's a bad career strategy.

Learning to sit on your hands

I have sent my first novel to four publishers, and had encouraging feedback from all of them, but not to the extent that they want to publish my book! So I was advised to try to get an agent. A published writer friend sent a very nice introductory letter about me to a well-known Sydney agency (several chapters of the novel have won prizes in short story competitions, and one has been published in Island) but three weeks later we have had no response at all. Is this normal? Do you have any recommendations/suggestions/advice on how I might proceed? (The novel is not a collection of short stories as such, but the story/chapters are closely linked, and there is an overall narrative.)

Three weeks! This is but a nanosecond in reading-manuscript time. Well, a bit more than a nanosecond. But definitely not a minute. In order for a well-known agency to read a submission in three weeks, they would had to have lost 75% of their clients and all other submissions. There's a sort of formula for reading manuscripts that has as its result that the number of clients an agent has is in inverse proportion to the amount of time they have available to read submissions. As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, it's not because we don't want to read submissions, but it has to be done around our existing business. If the agency got back to you within three weeks, you should be worrying about how successful they really are. And I'm sorry to so that a letter of recommendation from a published writer won't speed things up - if they're a client of the agency it will get you read faster than other submissions, but it won't mean they drop everything to read it.

Three months is actually more feasible, and that's the point at which you can drop them a line and enquire about what's going on. If you feel that's too long, send out the submission to other agents - but let the first agency know that you're doing it. Email this information to them, rather than calling. And whatever you do, if it's before the three-month mark don't ask if they've read it yet.

The importance of patience

I finished my first novel about a month or so ago, and have a couple of published authors in the same genre reading it for me. So far the feedback has been all very positive, however I am still waiting on one author... But I'm getting impatient, more from the excitement of having finished than with her. Would it be rude or unwise of me to start submitting to agents before she gives me her feedback?

However long the author is taking to read your manuscript, you'll probably be waiting ten times as long for an agent to read it, and then twenty times as long for a publisher - so think of it as good practice! One month is really not a very long time, even though I know it seems an eternity when you are busting to send out your manuscript. But I can't overestimate the value of patience if you wish to be a successful writer.

It is worth waiting a little bit longer because if she comes back and says, 'This is great overall but this particular sub storyline is completely implausible', you'll be regretting that you sent it out before having a chance to fix any problems. You only have one shot at agents reading your manuscript - if we read your manuscript and you then call and ask if you can submit a revised version, the answer will be 'no'. Not because we don't necessarily like your manuscript, but because we don't have time to read manuscripts more than once for anyone other than our clients. (The mathematics of manuscript reading is: 1 full ms = approx. 8 hours of reading; time to read during average working week = 2 hours; ergo, time to read 1 ms = 4 weeks, if we're lucky. The figures are much more bloated for publishers). And all that was a slight digression but it leads me back to where I started: it's worth waiting a little bit longer.