Two Books on Submission With Two Agents

Skodobah said:

Hi everyone,

I posted this dilemma in another thread within this forum, but wanted to break it out so it doesn't get buried.

I made the query-go-rounds in June/July with Book #1 and have one full request still out there. However, I wrote Book #2 and just started subbing that one around and got a full request yesterday.

Then I remembered that the first book is still out there, and I freaked because I don't want to piss-off anyone. What I want to know is... should I let the agent with the copy of the first book know about the second (as in, Nudge Nudge - how are things going? BTW, I have another book I'd like you to consider). I could just kick myself for getting into this predicament.

What the heck should I do? In a dream-yet-nightmare scenario, both agents would want the respective manuscripts they have. Then what... we should all have that problem, yes?

Thank you.

- Julie

Click to expand...

Relax. You can freely sub each book, without any issue. No need to tell either agent of the other unelss they specifically ask if any other agent has any of your work under consideration.

When and if one of them makes an offer, then they will likely ask about other books you ahve written, and maybe even want to see them too.

And on the offer, you will alert all agents with any of your books. So, you might have agent 1 offer based on book A and agent 2 offer based on book B, but in most circumstances, you are going to probably end up with one or the other, and hopefully whichever will be interested in repping the other book, too.

Then you accept whatever agent could best rep all your work, but you will likely only sign with one agent (for fiction), even if you have 10 different novels floating out there - you would just choose the agent.

Now, the caveat - I see as possible that you could have such divergent genres - ie, picture books and an adult novel, or fiction and non-fiction - that two agents could be interested who have no interest in the other agent's genre. Then I suppose you could end up with both agents, for different genres. But that would be more rare.

More often, once you have an offer on any of the novels, you end up notifying agents with any of the novels, and accept one agent and withdraw from all the others - hoping (and discussing with the agent) that the agent you chooses would be interested in most of your work.

good luck.

~suki

I don't think this is any different, really, than having more than one agent request a full or partial on a single book.

Listen to suki.