Agent Submission Questions

[Gareth Lewis]

Does anyone have an idea how long after submitting an initial submission to an agent you should take no response as a lack of interest?

If they say on their site that they try to reply as soon as possible, should I consider the possibility open until I hear from them?

It's nearly four months since I sent the latest batch, and I've still to hear from two agents. I'm getting on with other writing, so I'm not purely waiting for responses, but it's getting close to the point where I'm thinking about submitting other stuff, so I'm not sure how to interpret the silence.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

 

[Tirellan]

Four months sounds like too long. Querytracker does record data for response times, many more agents these days only respond if interested but it is worth checking if these two are among them..

 

[Gareth Lewis]

Thanks for that. I've looked on Querytracker, and only one of them is listed.

It looks like he has responded to submissions he's rejected. Average response time is 40 days, and longest is 100 days. I'm over that, but not by too much. I suppose if he does have a record of responding I should still consider him a possibility.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Normal nudge time is 3 months but to be honest so many don't reply these days I mark it as a no after three months anyway.

 

[Steve Harrison]

I usually find that if an agent is interested, they get back to me within a few days. If not I rarely hear back at all.

However, this week, after I did my usual 10 week follow up on a bunch of unanswered queries - asking if they had any further interest - a UK agent requested my manuscript. There's a first time for everything!

 

[janeoreilly]

I would say to nudge at this point as well, then at least you know.

 

[Gareth Lewis]

I'll try polite nudges then.

Thanks.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

What is your process? I realize you've already made a decision to nudge, but as a general question: do you send a certain number of queries per day? Per week? Do you wait for a batch to respond before sending another batch?

Querying is one of those things for which there are scads of advice, much of it mutually contradictory. My own personal opinion (backed up by absolutely nothing) is that if an agent has a policy of not responding (no answer means no) then they have no reason to expect you to sit and wait.

 

[Gareth Lewis]

Process may be overstating it, as this is the first time in years I've been submitting the trad publishing route, so I've little idea what I'm doing. I'm sending batches and waiting. The list of possible agents has been small anyway, since I do skip around genres, so I've been looking for agents who cover a few, and reading interviews with them has cut the list further. I'm probably going to have to be less specific going forward.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

Okay, sounds more or less like what I did. I actually selected about 60 (IIRC) agents on querytracker and sent out one query per day. That allowed me to space the process over a couple of months, which allowed me to tweak my query based on any feedback.

Regarding the question of 'no answer', I didn't sweat it. If I got an offer, I'd stop querying. Until I got an offer, I kept querying. If I got multiple offers, I'd do a happy dance, then make a decision.

As it happens, I got nada on my first book, and an offer on the second query on my second book, so I really can't say how well this process works on any kind of objective basis.

 

[Aleph]

My last two agents got back to me within days. The partial and full requests never took more than a couple of weeks - maybe max 8 weeks? I queried a lot of people.