Stringer Literary Agency, LLC (Marlene Stringer)

That is awesome!!!!!!!

Duo Xie!

Thanks for all the warm wishes and excitement on my behalf!

I e-queried Ms. Stringer via her agency's online form a few days ago; this morning I recieved a request from her for the synopsis and the full MS (suspense/thriller).

Fingers crossed, as she appears to be stellar!

Rollercoaster ride -- down

Ms. Stringer called me to discuss representation.

After some introductory chit-chat, in which she said lovely things about my novel, I told her that an earlier version had been represented/shopped around by an agent in 2006. I apologized for not having informed her earlier, but the fact that six years had passed ... and that the novel has been thoroughly revised & improved ... had led me to believe that this wouldn't be an issue when I first started querying.

Ms. Stringer expressed some reservations, and asked me to send her the list of where the earlier version had been submitted. I naturally agreed, and our conversation continued in a very promising vein -- about the sequel to the novel, and then the third in the series. I even pitched a non-fiction book proposal I have been working on. She said she very rarely handles non-fiction, but she found my topic of interest, and said it might be up her alley. She had some ideas of who might be interested in it, since one of the few non-fiction books she had taken on was somewhat related.

She told me about how she worked, what she saw her role as, her "handshake" agreement instead of a contract, etc.

The conversation ended on a positive note, and I was -- as you can imagine -- thrilled. I dug out an electronic version of the old 2006 submission list, and sent it to her that night.

I was crushed, then, when she wrote back the next day to say that she would not be offering representation because of the previous submission history.

Crushed, but only momentarily. I realized that it wasn't the end of the road for my novel, because obviously other agents see/have seen things differently.

For example, the first agent I queried about this revised/improved version of my novel was the chap who represented me in 2006. He certainly knew that a version had been shopped, and all the folks who had read it -- yet he still requested a partial without making any mention of any possible difficulty. And even when he eventually took a pass, he didn't mention that factor.

Furthermore, after being clued in to the possible significance of past submissions (no matter how long ago) by a posting somewhere here on AW, I began to inform agents of the history when the requested partials/fulls. One agent took no notice of it -- she's still considering my novel. Another agent said she had no problems with it so long as it hadn't gone to more than 20 publishing houses -- which it hadn't (more like 15).

So, just another reminder that agents are ... individuals.

Ms. Stringer, like the others, is a businesswoman. A successful one. Her business plan doesn't allow for past submissions, which is fine, but others might.

I'd like to add that she is a very charismatic, smart woman. She suggested that I put aside my novel, work on the sequel and pitch that first; then make my current novel a pre-quel. She said she would be interested in seeing my work if I did so.

That sucks, Thunderboots. Maybe you should in the end have changed the title and one chapter and if it ever came up say "oh, that old thing, the draft..?" Hehe.
Anyway, a friend of a friend queried this agency on June 23rd and got a form rejection on June 25th. Fast.

Queried Ms. Stringer yesterday via her online form. Just before lunch today, she requested my full and a synopsis.

Fingers crossed.

ralf58 said:

Queried Ms. Stringer yesterday via her online form. Just before lunch today, she requested my full and a synopsis.

Fingers crossed.

Click to expand...

Good luck ralf58!

Sent a query last night, would have been around 1 a.m. her time, and got a rejection in less than two minutes.

I'm sorry, but that seems a tad too fast IMHO, especially that late at night. And since I've had plenty of requests for partials and fulls on the same query its not like it was an obvious piece of crap to reject in the first five seconds of reading the query.

Whatever. Moving on to the next agent on the list.

Well, Ms. Stringer passed. Not much specific feedback. I wish I knew more about what wasn't working for her. However, her email did encourage me to query widely, which was my intention anyway.

Wow, this one has been quiet... After Marlene followed me on Twitter, we had some friendly exchanges. Today was Derby Day and we shared our love for Secretariat.

So, even though her agency had rejected my Women's Fiction a couple of years ago, I queried her with the much reworked YA I had broken out from the Women's Fiction. She requested the full within a half hour.

BAM!

Awesome Chumplet!

So, today (five weeks later) I received an email on my smart phone while at work. I stared at the subject line and asked my co-worker, "Do I really want to open this here and now, and start crying in the middle of the office from another rejection?"

I opened the email, wincing. It said, "Reading now. M."

She almost scared the crapola out of me! Anyway, still keeping my fingers crossed! It's been a few hours, so she hasn't thrown it away in disgust yet.

Oh, fingers crossed for you, Chumplet!

Okay, she got back to me today with a lovely, thoughtful and encouraging... rejection. She took the whole weekend to think about it, but few editors seem to be receptive to YA set in the 70s.

She did say that when I "make it" I can probably break some rules, so not to give up on this particular book.

I had a good sob, mentally gave her a big hug, and went out to mow the lawn.

Yet another agent who says I'm a good writer, which keeps me plugging away at this crazy craft. After a healthy cry, of course.

Wow, I've read a bunch of your stories here about your experiences with Ms. Stringer . . . it seems like she really gives very nice feedback on full manuscripts and tends to be quick with rejections and requests. I queried her once upon a time and she was actually the FASTEST agent to ever request my novel (full manuscript); she did so within ten minutes, and yes, late at night (like a previous poster also experienced).

Ultimately it was a rejection for me with Ms. Stringer, though there was a revision request in there for a completely different direction she would have liked to see the book go in and a suggestion that my pacing was too slow.

I declined to rewrite as per her suggestion, and later another agent told me the pace was slow. When another interested agent said she wanted me to cut the word count BEFORE she'd take a look, I figured the pacing issues mentioned by Ms. Stringer and the other agent might well be fixed with a slim-down, and elected to undertake it. The word-cap-requesting agent later signed me, and I think my experience with Ms. Stringer helped me prepare for that success, so I'm really grateful to her for her careful consideration and feedback.

What a happy ending, JulieSondra! Good luck with your book.

Thank you. I'm generally very receptive to feedback and it was refreshing to receive that kind of careful attention from an agent. She only took a month to review my full manuscript, too. She's kind of a superwoman. (I have also completed a minor rewrite based on editor rejection since going on submission--I think it's very important that if publishing industry professionals are going to offer their opinions to us, we do something with them, though obviously we're not obligated to take every suggestion into consideration if the advice does not mesh with our vision for our books.)

I think anyone who gets accepted by Ms. Stringer will be in very good hands. I imagine she is just as hands-on and attentive when it comes to her clients.

Well, gang... I had been exchanging friendly tweets with Marlene for a while, and when I mentioned my polo murder mystery on a few #MSWL and #Pitmad threads, she reminded me how much she likes horse mysteries.

I let her know last night that my current book was ready to query, and this morning she asked for the full and synopsis.

I hadn't updated my synopsis, so after a lunch meeting, I quickly inserted the new bits and sent the package off.

This, and the one other query I sent last night garnered a full request from another (Canadian) agent this afternoon. She had wanted an exclusive, but I informed her that I already had another full in the pond. She said that was okay.

So... two bites on my reworked query!

Chumplet said:

Well, gang... I had been exchanging friendly tweets with Marlene for a while, and when I mentioned my polo murder mystery on a few #MSWL and #Pitmad threads, she reminded me how much she likes horse mysteries.

I let her know last night that my current book was ready to query, and this morning she asked for the full and synopsis.

I hadn't updated my synopsis, so after a lunch meeting, I quickly inserted the new bits and sent the package off.

This, and the one other query I sent last night garnered a full request from another (Canadian) agent this afternoon. She had wanted an exclusive, but I informed her that I already had another full in the pond. She said that was okay.

So... two bites on my reworked query!

Click to expand...

Yay! Good luck!

Good luck, Chumplet!

I had a response tonight from my January full request. At first, it looked like an outright rejection, with several attachments on the email. The wording in the email contained a lot of helpful suggestions, but it was cut off. I found a pdf in the attachments, which contained a detailed markup of my first pages.

Great, I thought. She's fantastic to provide this, even though it is a rejection. I sent a Thank You note, with the sincere regret that we couldn't work together.

Then, I started attempting to open the other attachments, which included book covers (perfectly okay) and some empty .htm files. But one of them was the rest of the email!

...which contained further helpful editing tools, and the offer to take another look if I went over the manuscript again.

The email opened properly on my tablet, so something must have gone wonky with the other email. I quickly sent another response, assuring her that I'll go over the MS again.

Boy, sometimes I think I'm in a frickin' sitcom.

Good luck, Chumplet. Keep us up to date with how it goes!

Queried: 11/12/16
Full Request: 11/12/16
(Nudged after three months and no response)
Rejected: 5/12/17

Buckle up, because I have some things to say about this one. Two weeks ago I received a (nonexclusive) R&R from another agent. I emailed Marlene to ask if she would like the updated MS. Her response (just moments after my email): "Don't you have an ethical dilemma taking notes from one agent, using them, then pitching them to another agent? I do. Not interested."

To answer, no, I don't, because I will always present the best form of my work. If the other agent asked for an exclusive rewrite, that would be different - and neither was I promised representation upon resubmitting the MS, I might also add. This is common practice, to my knowledge, to update agents with revised versions of your work (even Janet Reid says so). Perhaps it was a mistake to let Marlene know it was based on general agent feedback, though. There's a way to say things without being completely RUDE, and I don't know if she just had a bad day, misunderstood my email, or what, but that doesn't excuse her uncalled for and out of line email. I've spoken with other authors, with query contest creators, with ex-agents, getting every possible angle to see if I could have done or said something differently - but I can't explain her bizarre response.

Dodged a bullet. I will never, ever recommend this agent to anyone.

Okay, good to know.

Just gonna piggyback on what Jadahmac said.
Here's my story about Marlene Stringer:

I got the fantastic "Let's talk about your book email"
Marlene and I arranged a time for later that afternoon. Conversation goes good. She asks me if anyone else has the manuscript - I tell her that three other agents do.
She offers rep and then says that she'll give the other agents 48 hours to respond.
Just for the record industry standard is one week - sometimes longer.
So I hustled to email all the agents. One of those agents had originally rejected the manuscript (close to a year ago) but we would up talking about what wasn't working and what was and she said "if you do a revision send it my way." So I did. There was nothing exclusive about this. The other agent knew I was querying other people after I sent it to her.
That agent wrote me and said she was in conferences all week and there was no way she could turn it around in 48 hours. She also was very concerned about that deadline - re-iterating that industry standard was a week and said "Why should the agent rush you? It's a decision about your career. Most agents give authors at least a week to close out remaining submissions, and I always tell authors to take as long as they need, even up to two weeks if necessary...Just please be aware that 48 hours is not normal practice in the industry, so be careful who you are signing with.."
Honestly I agreed. I was feeling rushed and pressured. The other two agents came back saying something similar about the never having seen such a tight deadline. The agent who I had been in conversation with asked if she could have a week. So I emailed Marlene asking if that was possible, citing industry standards and the fact that this agent was in conferences. I was trying my best to be professional and fair.
Marlene wrote me back the following:
If you were in conversations/feedback with another agent on a previous draft and resent to her, at the very least I would have given her time to get back before you queried other agents. You may not have given her an exclusive, but you obviously
feel obligated to her now that you have to make a choice.

I made clear that my offer was good for 48 hours. You did not make clear that you accepted counsel from another agent on this project and resubmitted.

It puts me in an awkward situation. I would not like another agent using my work.
I am withdrawing my offer.

Again, I reiterated that the other agent did not request and exclusive and more importantly didn't do any "work". There were no line edits, it was a general conversation and technically wasn't even an R&R. It was a rejection from which a conversation grew. All the same, I kind of feel like I dodged a bullet here. In addition, while there are a couple of Big 5 house sales, much of her sales are to places that don't require an agent. When we talked I asked her specifically what made my book stand out from all the manuscripts she gets and she had a really stock answer. Ultimately I want someone who loves my stuff.

Anyway just sharing my experience.