Double-Dipping

LOL, that's never happened to me, thankfully. But it certainly isn't what I would have thought just by reading your thread title.

It's happened to me more than once. I actually received 2 rejections from the same agent on the same day (2 diff envelopes, both with an 'anonymous' form letter)!

Probably forgot to check his little list indicating he'd already replied.

I got a reject from one agent three months after I had emailed him AND his assistant, withdrawing my manuscript because I had already gotten and was accepting an offer from another agent.

dantem42 said:

I got a reject from one agent three months after I had emailed him AND his assistant, withdrawing my manuscript because I had already gotten and was accepting an offer from another agent.

Click to expand...

I sent an email to an agent with a partial telling her I had an offer and was withdrawing. She responded with congratulations. Then about a month later I got a form rejection from her.

Well, I got a request for a full AND a form rejection from the SAME submission. (The full was later rejected as well, but that's a different submission.)

If a writer did something absent-minded like this to an agent, that agent -- if said agent had a blog -- would rant about how he or she can't believe how stupid some writers are, and how that submission would instantly be rejected, and my god why can't writers handle the simple act of mailing a letter?

But when an agent does it, it is -- I'm quite sure -- simply because the agent is very busy and only human and blah blah blah.

(Yes, I'm a little bitter about self-righteous agents. This will pass (when I next have to kneel before an agent, query letter in hand).)

I think, generally speaking, that agents are as overwhelmed as anyone else. And email is a funny thing. You send an email query or submission. It sits in a box. Then you send an email saying you have accepted representation. The agent clicks next and forgets about it. How many old emails do you have sitting waiting for action?

When it comes to hardcopies, the agent may be forgetful, or the agent may have told his or her assistant to send that one back and the assistant stuck in a form reject by habit. Or maybe the agent actually read the query even though you withdrew it and sent you his or her genuine thoughts on it, form or not, rejecting it.

I think worrying about an agent rejecting you more than once is likely not the best use of your time. Obviously this is not the agent for you. And if you really have a problem with his or her organizational abilities because he or she rejected you twice or after you withdrew the submission, then clearly you are lucky he or she is not in charge of submitting your book to publishers!

Z