Ask Jennifer Laughran! Tireless agent-in-residence!

Prawn said:

Some of the larger agencies have several agents who rep my genre but they "respond only if interested". Since that means they may never respond to me at all, how long should I give agent A before querying agent B? Is a month long enough? If the agency doesn't specifically say they don't like simultaneous submissions, can I go ahead and query two agents at the same agency?

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At my agency, a "no" from one is a no from all. It is frustrating and a waste of everyone's time when someone queries us one-after-the-other, or even more tragically, all-at-the-same-time - because we work together, we share the mss between us, and when people don't follow directions, they usually wind up just getting put in the trash.

There are probably other agencies that don't mind if you query Agent B if Agent A declines. I don't know which agencies, but they are probably out there. However, I cannot imagine ANY agency that would be OK with your sending to Agents A, B & C at the same time. "Simultaneous" means "sending to more than one agency", not "sending to every agent at an agency." What if (best case) they ALL want you?? Then they have to have a fight about it and it turns into a mess. This is the same reason why, though agents certainly send things to multiple publishers, we don't send to more than one editor at a given publisher/imprint. Either it won't pan out with any of them, or it will cause bad blood with all of them. Who needs the headache?

For those who only respond if interested, if they don't give a timeline (we say 6 weeks, for example), then I would consider three months between queries at a minimum.

Thanks for the advice. Some agencies have a policy stated on their webpage, for example Writers House (Please do not query two agents within our agency simultaneously) and others say what you say, "A no from one is a no from all". The question for me was what to do with agencies that don't have a specific guideline. I appreciate your guideline of waiting 3 months between querying agents at the same agency.

Thanks!

P

Jennifer_Laughran said:

At my agency, a "no" from one is a no from all. It is frustrating and a waste of everyone's time when someone queries us one-after-the-other, or even more tragically, all-at-the-same-time - because we work together, we share the mss between us, and when people don't follow directions, they usually wind up just getting put in the trash.

There are probably other agencies that don't mind if you query Agent B if Agent A declines. I don't know which agencies, but they are probably out there. However, I cannot imagine ANY agency that would be OK with your sending to Agents A, B & C at the same time. "Simultaneous" means "sending to more than one agency", not "sending to every agent at an agency." What if (best case) they ALL want you?? Then they have to have a fight about it and it turns into a mess. This is the same reason why, though agents certainly send things to multiple publishers, we don't send to more than one editor at a given publisher/imprint. Either it won't pan out with any of them, or it will cause bad blood with all of them. Who needs the headache?

For those who only respond if interested, if they don't give a timeline (we say 6 weeks, for example), then I would consider three months between queries at a minimum.

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What is the generally accepted practice for resubmitting a query to an agency? I submitted back in April to 20 plus agents and I've decided to go through a vigorous rewrite. I'm almost done and wondering could I resubmit a new query to the same agents? What is the time frame? I was thinking early 2009 or is it a faux pas?

Thanks.

Hi Jennifer,

I was wondering how to interpret my rejection letter. Do I just take it and move on or is it possible to ask for feedback? Or is the rejection letter as much feedback I can expect? Totally new to the industry and don't want to harass the publisher unnecessarily, so thought I could harass you to find out first??

Nat
x

Hi again!

I have a few questions about the agenting profession. I'm curious how many clients an agent is comfortable with. Is there an average number, or does it vary wildly from agent to agent? At what point does an agent decide her list is full? And when you are submitting projects to editors, are you focusing on one project/client at a time, or are you submitting multiple clients' projects concurrently (and even to the same editors if they're a good fit)?

Thanks for letting us pick your brain!

Hello Jennifer,
Thanks for joining this forum. Can you help with a bizarre problem? I'm an unagented novelist. Supported by a hip NY fiction editor (who loved my work but passed) and by the executive editor of a national magazine I've written for, The Advocate, I submitted my work to Alyson Books, an affiliate of The Advocate. I followed the submission guidelines to the letter. Since Alyson requires that you send your heirloom jewelry and car title along with your submission, imagine my frustration when THE EMAIL WAS RETURNED NON DELIVERABLE TO THE PUBLISHED ADDRESS!

For two weeks now, i have been unable to contact anyone or anything at Alyson. The email addresses do not work. There is no longer any telephone listing in NY on 17th street. i can't get a land line for Shannon Berning, who used to edit fiction there, and whose spam filter has probably junked my message at Kaplan, her new workplace. I am aware that Alyson was sold by Planet Out in August, but nothing has since been printed in PW about any transition difficulties. But the new parent entity, here! Network, has disconnected its Madison Avenue telephone line. How do I get in touch with this publisher and find out what is going on? Thanks very much for your guidance. Suzanne Stroh

Suzanne, you might want to cross-post this in Bewares and Background Checks. Someone there might know better.

Hey Jennifer and welcome! I haven't been here long myself and I must say, you are one in a million to come here and brave the onslaught. I do have a question about word length for YA: I notice that earlier in this thread you mentioned that you would consider anything above 80K too long. Now, the project I have in mind is for the kind of YA market that I call "the Twilight market", i.e. 17/18 year olds. I have no idea how long the Twilight series books are, but when I look at them in bookstores they seem quite fat. What kind of word count are we talking when thinking of a contemporary fantasy romance for the older teen market? 50K? 80K? I'm just trying to get a sense of what to aim for, because my 17 year old daughter remarked that Twilight was "really long."

Thanks so much for being here, we are so grateful !

A.J.

ebenstone said:

What is the generally accepted practice for resubmitting a query to an agency? I submitted back in April to 20 plus agents and I've decided to go through a vigorous rewrite. I'm almost done and wondering could I resubmit a new query to the same agents? What is the time frame? I was thinking early 2009 or is it a faux pas?

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I don't think it is a faux pas IF you think that the book is changed so significantly as to be basically a different work. If not, they said no once already.

natsplat said:

I was wondering how to interpret my rejection letter. Do I just take it and move on or is it possible to ask for feedback? Or is the rejection letter as much feedback I can expect? Totally new to the industry and don't want to harass the publisher unnecessarily, so thought I could harass you to find out first??

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Personally, if I were you, I'd take it and move on. If I think it needs work, work like x y z, and then I'd like to see it again, that is what I say. If I just don't want it, I usually say something vague and nice, but useless - and the important thing is the NO. All the rest of it is filler for the paragraph.

RLB said:

I have a few questions about the agenting profession. I'm curious how many clients an agent is comfortable with. Is there an average number, or does it vary wildly from agent to agent? At what point does an agent decide her list is full? And when you are submitting projects to editors, are you focusing on one project/client at a time, or are you submitting multiple clients' projects concurrently (and even to the same editors if they're a good fit)?

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It is our agency policy not to discuss how many clients we have. If I gave a number that somebody thinks is too high, my clients or prospective clients might think I'd have no time for them. Too low, and I'm unpopular! I can just say that the number of clients an agent takes on varies wildly from agent to agent, and depends on their energy level and what KIND of clients are they taking on (is it a superstar, highly successful with million dollar deals? a picture book author that writes 15 small books a year? Somebody with a steady one-book-a-year who already has an editor they always work with? Newbie with a debut novel that needs some editing? Each of these require a different amount of work and level of time on the agents part.)

I submit multiple clients work simultaneously, but generally not to the same editors unless there is some pressing reason to do so. I don't like overloading one editor with too much at once, because I feel like that slows it down for everyone. I can't speak for anyone else on the subject, though.

Suzanne Stroh said:

Can you help with a bizarre problem?

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In some cases, yes. Sadly, in this case, I have no idea. Best of luck, though!

If several agents have requested partials and one of them offers representation, would it be okay to e-mail the others and give them a week to make a decision?

Should I tell them who has offered representation?

Would it be rude to attach the full to the e-mail, saying, "I have included the full in case you need it to make your decision"?

Thanks for answering these delicate questions.

AJWilde said:

I do have a question about word length for YA: I notice that earlier in this thread you mentioned that you would consider anything above 80K too long. Now, the project I have in mind is for the kind of YA market that I call "the Twilight market", i.e. 17/18 year olds. I have no idea how long the Twilight series books are, but when I look at them in bookstores they seem quite fat. What kind of word count are we talking when thinking of a contemporary fantasy romance for the older teen market? 50K? 80K? I'm just trying to get a sense of what to aim for, because my 17 year old daughter remarked that Twilight was "really long."

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You can look at "text stats" on Amazon - Twilight is about 540 pages, 115k words. The books after that are much longer.

Lots of kids like to "get lost" in a long book, but that is about 50-100 pages too long, in my personal opinion, especially for a debut novel. There are always outliers that work despite the odds - but the chances that you are another Stephenie Meyer are quite slim. So try and keep it under 100k. (50-70 is fine for realistic contemp. YA, 60-90 for fantasy is OK.)

Prawn said:

If several agents have requested partials and one of them offers representation, would it be okay to e-mail the others and give them a week to make a decision?

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Sure. That is nice. Unless the one who offered is your number one choice and you know you are going to say yes, in which case, write the others a polite note and withdraw.

Should I tell them who has offered representation?

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Sure, if they ask. This is not a trick question - I very often ask, particularly if I also want to offer. First of all, if I like your work that much, I want to make sure you are getting a legit agent with a good rep (even if it isn't me). Also, it will let me know what kind of competition I have. Anyway, agents are generally curious people.

Would it be rude to attach the full to the e-mail, saying, "I have included the full in case you need it to make your decision"?

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I have no feelings about this either way, but I don't think it is RUDE.

Thanks Jennifer. Suzanne

Hey Tom

Hey Tom,

This may not be helpful at all (in fact, I'm sure it's not) but your story sounds awesome! It could just be that I love anything to do with time travel, but it really sounds like a fantastic concept. Any chance I could read a sample chapter? I'm no one important, just an avid reader and a lover of literature.

-adam

Tom Johnson said:

Hi Jennifer, and welcome to AW!
I'm currently working on a young adult sci-fi about three young girls, age 16, accidentally sent back through time from the 23rd century. However, my question concerns the class situation in the 23rd century. Basically, the structure consist of the upper and leadership class, and the lower and working class population. Race is not mentioned. The girls discuss the class situation in a couple paragrapgs in the story, is this considered acceptible in YA stories? My SF usually involves Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers stuff, not YA, so I don't want to make a mistake with my first one.

"The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruit!"

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Hello Jennifer,

Thank you for taking the time to read through mine and other writers' questions!
I queried an agent in early August and she asked for a full within a week. I sent an email in early October just to check in and see if there was anything more I could provide to help her in her decision. I haven't heard from her since she asked (well, her assistant) for the full. Would it be wrong for me to email again for an update, say, the first week of December? Could the Holidays have anything to do with the delay, or do fulls generally take time? This Agent is from a pretty large Agency also. Could that have anything to do with it? I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I'm not hearing anything! Thank you in advance to your answering my questions!

Lately I've been reading in many places--blogs, reports from conferences, etc.--that publishers are "desperate" for MG right now. I'm wondering just what that means. It sure seems like there's a lot of fabulous MG coming out these days, and there are an awful lot of us trying to get our books published....

So what are the needs that aren't being met? Are there certain genres in MG that editors aren't seeing? Too much fantasy, not enough realism? They'd love to see more fantasy, if it were something unusual? More mysteries, more sports, more humor? Or do they just mean that most of what they're seeing isn't good enough, and they're desperate for MG of a higher quality?

Any insights?

What's MG?

MG = middle-grade (between chapter books and YA)

I wondered that too when I first saw the term in a YA thread.

Is there a chart somewhere that lists all these terms? Some of them are fairly recent (within last 20 years for sure) as far as being 'official' for agents/publishers/marketing.

Here's a nice guideline on the different categories of children's books:

http://writingfiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/writing_for_children

Bella D'Ball said:

I queried an agent in early August and she asked for a full within a week. I sent an email in early October just to check in and see if there was anything more I could provide to help her in her decision. I haven't heard from her since she asked (well, her assistant) for the full. Would it be wrong for me to email again for an update, say, the first week of December? Could the Holidays have anything to do with the delay, or do fulls generally take time? This Agent is from a pretty large Agency also. Could that have anything to do with it? I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I'm not hearing anything!

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Yes, it is a long time -- but I am sorry to say, not a DREADFULLY long time. i am still sorting out a few fulls from August, and I think I am considered a pretty fast reader. A polite nudge in December would be fine.

My book could arguably be classified as upper MG or lower YA. While I have found agents that are actively seeking YA work, I haven't come across as many who are specifically requesting MG work, so, up until now, I have queried it as a YA fantasy.

I have read through your previous post about MG/YA differences, but I still find it difficult to place the book. I've also heard other agents classify MG or YA according to vocabulary/word count, and I wonder if this may be a subjective distinction. At this point, I am tempted to submit it as YA to agents seeking YA work and juvenile fiction and trust the agent's expertise in classifying the book as MG or YA.

What I'm wondering is whether an agent would disregard my query if I've identified my work as YA instead of MG or vice versa.

Thanks for all your posts.