No, not insuperable, but...
I am given to understand that once thing many agents hate is to send in an ms., only to find out that it has already been rejected by the recipient. Or, worse yet, is loved by the recipient, but has already been turned down by the recipient's boss, or the boss's boss.
If you don't tell an agent that a manuscript has been shopped around, you'll be in deep kim chee if she finds out otherwise.
If you know it may have been shopped but you're not sure where or to whom, no, this may not be a deal-killer vis-a-vis a second agent repping it, but I'm guessing it would give most of them pause...
HapiSofi said:Look, let's say I have a submission from an agent. Then I hear that agent's parted ways with that author. At that moment the submission's dead. If I'm nice, I send it back to the agent, though it could be recycled just as well from my office as from theirs. Whether or not I get it resubmitted to me by the new agent is up to the new agent.
It would only be a little bit different if I'd read it and loved it and gone through the whole whoop-te-do and rigamarole of selling it to my house. It'd still be a dead submission when the author broke with the agent, but I'd more passionately hope the new agent submitted it to me. I might even be Forward and Immodest about asking for it.
If I'd decided I didn't much like it, but hadn't got round to writing the letter yet? The changeover wouldn't much matter.
I'll grant, absolutely, that it would be a good thing to find out what Ms. Ellis did with one's manuscript. I just don't think it's an insuperable barrier.
I am given to understand that once thing many agents hate is to send in an ms., only to find out that it has already been rejected by the recipient. Or, worse yet, is loved by the recipient, but has already been turned down by the recipient's boss, or the boss's boss.
If you don't tell an agent that a manuscript has been shopped around, you'll be in deep kim chee if she finds out otherwise.
If you know it may have been shopped but you're not sure where or to whom, no, this may not be a deal-killer vis-a-vis a second agent repping it, but I'm guessing it would give most of them pause...