Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation

Which sounds awesome, btw.

I just hope agents like it!

pepperlandgirl said:

I sent Joanna a query with the first five pages. Within an hour, she requested the full. She sounds like a really great agent...I hope she likes my MS!

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Good luck!!!

Keep us posted.

RoseColoredSkies said:

Uh about a girl named Abbie who discovers she's one of the Greek Muses, along with 2 other girls. They're kidnapped by Persephone and have to learn to use their abilities to escape and stop Persephone before she wreaks havoc.

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That sounds very original! I'm sure the agents will love it.

It's been about a month and a half since I sent my partial to Joanna. Is that too early to send a little follow up email? I have had interest from other agents who also have partials, but I want to make sure Joanna gives it a look. Any suggestions?

katpaws said:

It's been about a month and a half since I sent my partial to Joanna. Is that too early to send a little follow up email? I have had interest from other agents who also have partials, but I want to make sure Joanna gives it a look. Any suggestions?

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I just sent off a revised partial to her and when I did I let her know that I have two other agents requesting fulls. She was the one who suggested the revisions, so I sent it to her first. She thanked me for letting her know (keeping her up to date) and said that she would try and get to it quickly since I had interest from others. If you haven't emailed her already letting her know of the other interest, I'm sure it's fine to do so.

Huh.
Joanna has my full, but so do 4 other agents, all requested after she did. I never told her, but I always assumed you just nudged when and if another agent made an offer for representation.
Maybe I'm wrong?

Nikki said:

Huh.
Joanna has my full, but so do 4 other agents, all requested after she did. I never told her, but I always assumed you just nudged when and if another agent made an offer for representation.
Maybe I'm wrong?

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Maybe it's different in the UK, but I dropped the agents I was approaching a line when I had a full MS request, just saying, "Hi, I was told that if another agent requested the MS, it was polite to let you know, and someone has. Best wishes, etc.".

Nobody minds that, but I think they mind any kind of implication of "so why haven't you read it yet?".

Maybe the US is different, but I can't see how it would be *that* different. Surely it's better to know if something in your slush pile is exciting interest elsewhere rather than not, and so long as you're just being given a heads-up rather than nagged I can't imagine why an agent would object.

And I definitely think if you've got four requests for the book, I'd tell her. I'm quite sure it speeded things up for me.

Well, in addition to my few other partials, I just received my first request for a full so maybe now would be a good time to nudge? I don't want to overstep or rush her or anything...

Nikki said:

Huh.
Joanna has my full, but so do 4 other agents, all requested after she did. I never told her, but I always assumed you just nudged when and if another agent made an offer for representation.
Maybe I'm wrong?

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That's what I did. The first any agent knew that any other agent had made a request was when Janet asked shortly before making an offer.

I've never heard of letting any previous agent know when a new agent requests a full, though I don't see anything wrong with what Wonderlander sent.

I was told to let agents know I'd had full MS requests by a friend of mine who has a UK agent, and in addition, another friend from my writing group was told that this was the thing to do by John Berlyne from Zeno (another UK agency), so I thought, why the hell not?

Obviously the UK culture is different (we send a partial as part of our first contact with the agent - we can include a US-style query letter, but it's not standard to just send that with no sample), but I was astounded by how fast things moved once I started letting them know other people were interested.

Again, I say this with the proviso it worked for me in the UK.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I COULD let her know... but since we all know she reads this thread from time to time, I'll bet she knows soon anyway...;-)
I would so hate to be the writer who nudged an agent into rejecting her MS.
But that's me.
Good luck, everyone who's getting read. Never give up! Never surrender!

Just wanted to stop by and give my best to everyone waiting on responses. I'll be joining you shortly.

And just my opinion, but you might want to just let Joanna know that you have some other agents considering the MS.

Thanks to everyone for the input! It's always a comfort to know what other aspiring authors' experiences are

Nikki said:

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I COULD let her know... but since we all know she reads this thread from time to time, I'll bet she knows soon anyway...;-)
I would so hate to be the writer who nudged an agent into rejecting her MS.
But that's me.
Good luck, everyone who's getting read. Never give up! Never surrender!

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I also think you should let her know. It's what I've done with the agents who currently are looking at my full. No one has just rejected me because of that

Joanna passed on my revised partial but gave great feedback, even sending the first few pages with notes back to me. She said if I don't sign with an agent to think of her for my next project. From the back and forth I've had with her, she seems like a great agent and everyone who signs with her is in great hands.

*hugs Seeker4* Well good luck subbing to other agents. I'm sure you'll find the right person for you and your book!

Nikki said:

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I COULD let her know... but since we all know she reads this thread from time to time, I'll bet she knows soon anyway...;-)
I would so hate to be the writer who nudged an agent into rejecting her MS.
But that's me.
Good luck, everyone who's getting read. Never give up! Never surrender!

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I was thinking about this some more. My agent search just ended recently, so it's only just now I'm able to consider it from a position of not being totally caught up in Query Hell. After meeting some of these people and talking to them, a couple of things became astoundingly clear.

The important thing to remember is that you can't alienate her by simply being polite. You're not asking her anything, you're telling her something. She'll take the book if she views you as a revenue stream, pure and simple. If not, she won't. She won't toss your book out because you sent her an email, particularly if it's one saying other people are interested in you, UNLESS she thinks she might not get you and she's wasting her time reading any further (I was in this position with one agent). Since she and the agency clearly have form, that's unlikely to happen. And in the off-chance it did, she'd tell you to come back if you didn't sign with someone else.

If you're worried, just leave it to the next chase to tell her. But four other agents reckon your stuff has the potential to generate revenue, and I'd be surprised if she wasn't interested in knowing that.

Thanks for the insight Wonderlander

Joanna passed on my full after she'd had it for nearly six months. She said some nice things about it in her note, though.

Thanks Rose. I hope so. I have two fulls out there to two other agents. ::keeping fingers crossed:::

Sorry, PV.

Joanna officially passed on Evangeline yesterday. Which I have been expecting. She did give me a bit of good feedback, but I feel like it might be time to trunk it, learn from it, and devote my energy to my new WIP.

Maybe some day I'll figure out how to fix it.

Sorry to hear about the R, TereLiz. It probably is time to focus on your new WIP for a bit. Good luck!

Good luck everyone. And sorry about the rejections.
Joanna is my DREAM agent. I've heard nothing but positive things about her.

RoseColoredSkies said:

Sorry to hear about the R, TereLiz. It probably is time to focus on your new WIP for a bit. Good luck!

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Thanks! I'm already 20K in and I've only been typing for about a month. I'm trying to write 1K per day, but more importantly, I feel like I know the character better.

Good luck to everyone still waiting on their own submissions. I will definitely think of Joanna first when I'm ready to query my new novel.