The Cheney Agency / Elyse Cheney Literary Associates

On her own. She set up her own shop earlier this year.

Yeah, she's moving soon. Funny, I queried her today as well. Sent it to the new address, so I don't expect to be hearing anything on that for a while.

Does anyone have any other info on her? Her pm website was pretty bare.

http://publishersmarketplace.com/members/cheney/

Anybody have any recent info on this agency?

Thanks Cao - I'd seen they had fairly impressive sales posted to PM. I went ahead and sent a query to Nicole on 1/19. I'm curious if anyone has any recent communication or turnaround time experiences with this agency?

I snailed them a query 12/7, Leukman, and received SASE reject on 12/29. Pretty good turnaround for snail, I'd say.

Turn Around

I snail mailed a query to Nicole Steen on 1-20 and received an e-mail from her requesting a full on 1-31. I sent it as an attachment, as requested, and have not heard anything since. I figure I'll give her three months and then send a polite e-mail asking as to status.

Curious you both have had responses to your snail mail queries. Though I'd read on AQ that Nicole didn't take email queries, the website provides for that method, so I opted to do so. But I've had no response to my query from early January.

So today I'm putting it in the mail, and hoping I'm not duplicating something that was intentionally ignored.

I e-queried Nicole Steen yesterday and just got an email request for full ms. I'm thrilled!

Equired Nicole Steen two days ago and got a request for a full today.

I queried Nicole Steen last week and received a quick request for my full ms from her boss Elyse Cheney. Others' experience in their turnaround time would be welcome as my non-exclusive submission with this agency is open-ended at this point.

Angkor said:

I queried Nicole Steen last week and received a quick request for my full ms from her boss Elyse Cheney. Others' experience in their turnaround time would be welcome as my non-exclusive submission with this agency is open-ended at this point.

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Don't put all your eggs in this one basket, keep querying and sending out partials or fulls as requested. At the time I got an agent, I had 4 fulls out and numerous partials. I still haven't heard from 3 of the fulls and it's been over 2 months since they got them....and in the meantime, I found an agent that loved my book.

Congratulations Egyptian Goddess!
By the way, it took Ms. Steen three months to send a personal reply to my full. Alas, it was a rejection but what she told me prompted me to take another look at the manuscript. Rewriting as we speak. I really appreciated her telling me WHY she was rejected the submission.

Angkor said:

I queried Nicole Steen last week and received a quick request for my full ms from her boss Elyse Cheney. Others' experience in their turnaround time would be welcome as my non-exclusive submission with this agency is open-ended at this point.

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I've seen some of you mention you queried Nicole Steen directly. Did you actually email her? QueryTracker lists her email address, but the agency website asks all queries to go to the general email inbox ([email protected]).

The reason I ask is, Elyse doesn't rep YA but Nicole does and my book is YA.

Are either of them "no response=no thanks" types?

Mercurio: Steen's direct email address is listed in agentquery.com. Querytracker, however, lists only the general mailbox. Their so-called website appears to be a mere afterthought -- just a single page with the agency's title and the names of the two agents and little more. Funny how some agencies couldn't care less about their online presence.

Amyers27: no idea. Cheney seems to be very responsive, though.

I snail mailed my original query To Nicole Steen. She responded in ten days with a request for a full.

Snail mailed query to Nicole, request for full ten days later as well. Super excited!

River Rat said:

Congratulations Egyptian Goddess!
By the way, it took Ms. Steen three months to send a personal reply to my full. Alas, it was a rejection but what she told me prompted me to take another look at the manuscript. Rewriting as we speak. I really appreciated her telling me WHY she was rejected the submission.

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Hi River Rat,

I'm sorry you received a rejection, but am glad her personal response on the reason was so helpful to you.

I also have a full out with her. The three month mark is coming up in September.

I was wondering, did Nicole offer to look at your manuscript again if you made some of her suggested changes?

I sent my query off 8/29 and got a request for a full ms today. Request came from the assistant so there's no way to tell whether Cheney or Steen asked to see it (or neither, for that matter). I'm excited of course that someone has actually asked to see the whole thing, but also trying hard to temper that excitement, because QueryTracker shows that they don't ask for partials and that EC asks for fulls of 14% of queries, NS asks for fulls of 21% of queries. Which is good, in a way -- they're clearly more willing than a lot of agents to take a closer look. Not so quick to say no. But it also means they must say no to the vast majority of the fulls they ask to see.

I do think they're smart to ask for the full instead of the partial. If it's all electronic anyway, I can't see the harm in just asking for the full right away. It's just as easy to delete the full ms. from your computer after reading the first five pages as it is to delete a partial ms.

Anyhoo...now the wait begins.

Yes, it's been two weeks since I submitted my full to Nicole and I agree with you, it's so nice to think that someone is actually considering the whole work and not judging it just on the first three chapters or ten pages.
It's funny I've become immune to rejections now to the point that if I don't receive at least a rejection or two a week it feels like something is missing in my life. Who knows maybe this will be the one or at the very least maybe there will be some constructive criticism that will point me in the right direction.
Good luck everyone and I'll report back once I hear from them.