Waiting on agents

[Hazelwood63]

Hello. I'm just looking for company on this long waiting game. Anyone else waiting to hear back from agents at the moment? I sent out five initial submissions at the end of January. So far I've received a really encouraging rejection and two requests for the full. Nothing from the other two so far. It's coming up to a month since I sent off the first full ms, and just over three weeks for the other one. Has anyone else waited over a month for a response to a full and been offered representation, or is it maybe time to think of moving on?

She sounds bloody brilliant! Good luck with it

How do you tell agents that ask you to notify them if you get any full requests that you have gotten some? Do you reply to your original email, their auto-notification where they asked you to let them know, or write a new email altogether?

Congrats! I’ve been replying to my original email and attaching my submission material. Also adding Update Full MS Request to the subject heading

Thought i would give you an update! In the end I got three offers and signed with an agent today :)

Congratulations, @PearlClutchUser — can you say a bit about your genre etc? V exciting!

Congrats on the offers! Amazing news!

There was some talk on this group of a WhatsApp/discord group forming? does anyone know if that happened. Having overcome the first hurdle of getting an agent I’m now out on submission to publishers and achieving whole new levels of anxiety/neurosis etc. Anyone know if the group formed?

Congratulations @PearlClutchUser ! Hope it all goes smoothly for you 🎉

I'm still at zero interest. What's more, after I've improved my letter and first 3 chapters I'm back to ghosting 😂At least before I got two polite rejections with compliments.

Maybe my timings are off, I don't know. I'm sending 2-3 queries every 2-3 months (based on when the initial 2-3 requests 'expire'). Is that not enough? Should I send more and within shorter timeframes, so at least I can get more feedback/replies/rejections and gauge more intel on how my query is doing?

That sounds agonising to me! I think I sent to 15 or 16 out over about ten days or so when I was querying agents in January. I think my logic was that if there was no interest from those, it was a sign there was something wrong with the chapters or synopsis, or my pitch, and I needed to rethink some or all of it.

I realise that now. Agonising is the right word. 😭I haven't done myself any favours! I think my worry was that I'd run out of agents (?) and wouldn't find any more to send my fixed query to.

My issue is that very few agents so far seem to be looking for for what I wrote. Or if they do, their actual deals don't reflect the interest they advertised on their wish list! I think I just have to up the number and see what changes.

Well, you’re right in the sense that my method means that I would have blown my chances with my preferred agents if I’d sent them something substandard, but I suppose I trusted what I was sending to an extent..?

Are you querying something quite niche, though? Mine’s just litfic, which nearly everyone claims to be looking for, but quite often aren’t, really.

Thanks guys! My genre is literary suspense and I'd be interested in a Discord group!!

If its any help, I've done the querying/offers rodeo twice now and twice took the same approach: I got my opening chapters and query letter exactly as I thought they should be, basically as perfect as I could. Then I queried in a single big wave. My logic was "I'm not prepared to rework this". Obviously prepared to rework for an agent/publisher, but my thinking was that if I got no bites, I would be moving on to a new book. I wasn't prepared to rehash the existing books without an agent.

Thank you both @Hagstones and @PearlClutchUser . This is my first ever attempt and I read a lot of sometimes even conflicting advice on how to prepare a query letter, so after my first form rejection I straight-up panicked 😂

I think both the letter and the first chapters have improved a lot since my first query batch. I think the first chapters were a bit too 'aggressive' and they might have scared a few agents away. I would say my genre is not niche but falling quite broadly into commercial, though a couple of people I've spoken to referred to it as upmarket. To be perfectly honest, I'm quite confused on the subject!

Anyway, I'll try and gauge more impressions from the agents, now that I'm more confident in what I prepared for them. I am also interested in a discord group, so if this was ever created please let me know!

@PearlClutchUser Whoop! That’s amazing news. So delighted for you. The thread had gone so quiet and I wondered how it had worked out. Would love to hear more about the process for you between the full requests, then responses and now offer of rep. How did you choose your now agent? Do you have edits to do next, or are you good to go?

All going well with me too, meeting my dream agent later this month although no firm offer yet it’s looking hopeful.

Huge congratulations @PearlClutchUser !! Very glad to see even more success on this thread ❤️

The discord chat did get made (I think back in 2024!) but it's not really very active anymore. If anyone would like to make another I would be keen to join - I write regularly, have just started doing competitions and am still in the query trenches so could definitely do with the support of a writing community.

I have created a (very simple) discord server. Would anyone be happy if I posted an invite on here? Otherwise you can send me your discord details and I can add you to the server.

Thank you @TinySmallSteps , I will PM you my discord handle!

It's very tricky @TinySmallSteps . I wrote about hearing nothing from agents here earlier in the year. In the end, the only agent I could get to read any pages was one I'd met previously through a competition. She said she read the MS without reading the synopsis, liked it a lot, but got to the end and realised it wasn't a standalone book and instantly knew she couldn't represent it, as 'no one' is buying series in my genre at the moment.

Now, whether that's true or not, it seems that could've been a blocker for every other agent I'd sent it to and I only found out because I had a single one who felt a duty to reply. Otherwise I'd never have known.

Currently I'm writing three chapters of a new book to see if this single agent likes it enough to take it on. If not I need to write the whole thing and get back out there again. It's a hard old game and sometimes it's about being in the right place at the right time, too.

I’m also in the querying trenches, albeit only 3 weeks in! But so far I’ve sent roughly 15 queries, received one form rejection within hours and then a full request within 24 hours. It’s been roughly 7 days since I sent the full so I’m sat on tenterhooks here. 😅 No other responses thus far but it hasn’t been long. I wanted to ask if anyone has experience with United Agents or is repped by them as that’s who has my full at the moment?! The agents request was so lovely and personalised but I’m trying not to read the tea leaves here.

Congrats on the swift full request @MissJAG, that’s a great sign. I’ve found that nearly all my best interest (ie the agents that have asked to meet) are those who requested the full on the same day. Seven days feels like an eternity on this side of course but it isn’t on the other. Hard to hold that thought though. Fifteen is a fairly small batch, are you going to do more next month or wait for more rejections/fulls/feedback?

Thank you! Sorry to be totally nosy but could you tell me what sorts of things they said when they requested the full? No worries if you don’t want to and I know I’m totally still looking too far into wording 😅 I plan to see how these 15 go and will query more if needs be later.

Almost all agents said very little in replies to me other than they loved the opening pages. Many are so busy they don’t even type out manuscript but just say “ms” and I notice they almost all say “all best” instead of all the best. I think, again, because they’re so very busy ha.
It does make me smile that they often say “I’d love to read more if you’d be happy to share the ms” and I’m like … let me go away and think about that ;)

If you got more of a personalised request, I’d take that as a very positive sign!

When the agents ask to meet they’ll send some comments about what they liked. One of mine sent comps too, which were very complimentary (and not the comps I’d chosen myself)

One reason I’m loving publishing so far is how super polite everyone is. It’s so different from news journalism, which is my day job

Hi - hope it’s okay to hop on this thread; can I ask why you are going down the agent route rather than self publishing?