Simultaneous submissions?

I've read that at least one agent (Janet Reid, but I can't find the link) will be more likely to say "no" to a simultaneously submitted ms, whereas in other situations, she might spend more time giving an author feedback for a revise-and-resubmit. She won't bother if she knows you might well sell it elsewhere without revision. It wouldn't surprise me if publishers felt the same way.

I'm wondering, though, why you'd send your ms. to a publisher engaging in a business practice you find "silly."

Publishers who ask for exclusives are leveraging their market power. If a publisher can draw enough quality submissions while asking authors for exclusives, why shouldn't the publisher ask for exclusives? A publisher does unpaid labor every time he/she spends time reading a simultaneously-submitted manuscript that an author then decides to sell to someone else.

If a publisher seems like the perfect fit for you, follow the rules, give them the exclusive, and write something else while you wait it out. Publishing is not fast. If the publisher who wants an exclusive doesn't seem a rewarding/likely enough fit for the cost of your time, just send the ms. to somebody else.

+1 to what Anna wrote.

Follow the submissions guidelines to the letter. If they say no simultaneous submissions, don't send simultaneous submissions. It's not the sort of thing you can just kind of not mention.

One of the benefits of agents is that you can usually query more than one at a time. The agent then handles publisher submissions, opening doors that weren't there for you alone and potentially speeding the process along.

But even then submissions are slow, and that's just part of the business.