Should I nudge?

I've got a tricky situation. In the beginning of July I queried an agent at X agency. I was between querying her, (Agent A), an one other agent at X, (Agent B), who also would be awesomesauce for this book. To date I haven't had a response on my query From A, and we are at the 12 week mark. This wouldn't be an issue if not for two things:

1) Agent B 'favourited' my Pitmad Pitch, requesting a partial. When I told her I'd already queried A, she said to pop my book her way anyway, if I got a pass.

2) I've had a lot of interest in this book,. Eg. I did a Twitterpitch contest last Thursday and this morning have another full request. I'm currently at a writer's con and the agent I saw at the 1-2-1 asked me to query her with a full straight off the bat.

So I'm wondering if I should nudge Agent A because, really, if it's a pass I would like to give Agent B the chance to read my pages and request. If it's okay to nudge Agent A, how should I word this? It feels uncomfortable to say 'please may I have an answer because your colleague wants me to query'. Thx!

Thanks for any advice.

Thank you for all the answers. Sorry I'm not responding individually! I've decided to nudge the agent and see what happens. If'n I get a response I'll report back. Not sure whether I should give her the names of the agents who have the full? Because I understand people sometimes nudge, saying they have offers when they don't, and the agent might think I'm one of these people.

On an aside, it's a really odd feeling knowing that so many people might be reading my entire novel right now. Judging it and weighing up my writing and story to decide whether they 'love' this book. In the past I've had loads of 'did not fall in love with this as I'd hoped' responses to other books, so I'm steeling myself. Thanks again for the advice.

AcaciaNeem said:

I've been in a similar situation, and the lesson I learned was that it is better to wait for an offer from an agent before nudging others (unless 3 months/ or their stipulated time have passed), especially when the two agents are from the same agency. The relationship with an agent is (hopefully) a long-term relationship, so my subjective take would be not to rock the boat at the outset.

With the amount of interest you've been receiving (yay to that!) it may be possible that another agent will offer soon-ish.

Once you have that offer in hand, you could nudge the others, and at that point other agents do read very promptly (over the weekend, even), and come back with an offer if it is something that matches their requirements.

I did get rejected by some who I nudged after the offer, but others came back with positive responses, including the one who eventually became my agent.

(But this is based on just my personal experience, so pls take that into account-- I may not be right.)

I'm hoping you land offer/s very quickly!

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Thanks for the advice. I do appreciate you sharing your experience. And yes, if the three month mark hadn't passed I'd still be tempted to nudge, but I probably wouldn't. However, it's been 12 weeks, and because of all the interest I'm wanting to follow up on this request from the Twitter contest. After reading the agency pages on AW, Agent A seems to be a 'no response' when it's a Pass so I've sent the e-mail just now. *shrugs* The waiting begins...

Thanks again, and YAY that you attracted the agent you wanted.

Jeneral said:

I wouldn't tell the agent who all is reading the full when you nudge... they probably don't care. The purpose of this nudge is basically to clear the way for Agent B at the same agency, right? So I wouldn't bring up the number of agents with the full. I'd keep it to something like "Agent B has also expressed interest via Pitmad, please let me know if you are interested so that I may proceed accordingly."

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Okay, got it. That all makes sense. I thought maybe if A knew there was lots of interest she'd hurry up and either request the full, or pass so I could send the query to B. But I didn't mention the interest in the query. It felt...icky. See what a good writer I am? Thanks for the advice.

EMaree said:

Aye, I wouldn't give names unless asked. But don't be surprised if they ask, in my past experiences the agents always wanted to know. I think part of it is so they can warn a writer if the offer is from an unreputable source (and the other part is probably curiosity!).

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Ha, I can see that happening. Luckily for me I've got fulls with agents at good agencies. At the conference on Saturday, the agent I talked to wanted to know if I had fulls with other agents. I told her yes, and how many. I thought she'd cry off asking me for the book, but she didn't.

ETA: Well, it's been one week and no response to my nudge. Annoying.