How many submissions?

I tried to keep 6-8 balls in the air at a given time. More than that and I'd start to lose track.

I have been sending out queries in batches of 8-10. Unless the agent requests partials with the initial query, then 2-3 at a time. I track everything on a spreadsheet that I keep on my laptop so I know who has what and if I got any response.

As many queries as you can juggle is the answer.....but you should only have one agent reading your full ms at any given time. My agent told me they get pretty annoyed if they find, having invested the time to read some work, a writer buggers off with another agent.

Queries

scfirenice said:

How many subs do you send at a time (barring the few that ask for exclusives)? How many queries do you have out at once? Just curious.

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If you mean queries to agents, I always preferred one at a time, well researched, well aimed, as perfect for that agent as possible. Your novel gets once chance with each agent, and not allowing feedback from one agent at a time can mean trouble. If something is wrong, and you query a bunch of agents at once, it means you'll be crossing all those agents off your list.

Do intensive research, find the best agent for the novel, and odds go up of getting a yes. Or, if you get a no, there's a good chance the feedback will let you fix a problem before you submit to the next agent.

I never have believe in the shotgun approach. It's faster, yes, but I'd rather have a slow yes than a lot of fast no's.

Jamesaritchie said:

I never have believe in the shotgun approach. It's faster, yes, but I'd rather have a slow yes than a lot of fast no's.

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Good advice - wish I'd heard it earlier! I made a few "scattered" approaches and with each one I learned a lot. Seems I finally got it right with the third batch, and now I have three requests for full mss, and that's a tricky one to handle!