DAW

I believe (might be wrong) Jim C. Hines managed to get published that way; he's still with DAW; I'd check out his site.

I cannot say how long DAW takes at present, but I can give you an example of how long they could take a few years ago.

March 6, 2006: My agent informs me that the first reader at DAW liked it and has passed the book on to the final reader, the editor-in-chief.

I omit here ten e-mails over the next 29 months about the agent's attempts to nudge the editor.

August 21, 2008: My agent informs me that as far as he can tell, the editor started to read the book, lost interest, and will probably not read it again. [However, I never did get an "official" final decision from the editor.]
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Patience, they say, is a virtue. Good luck. For my part, I self-published.

http://andiriel.blogspot.com

That matches my experience fifteen years ago. Agent submitted material to DAW, material made it to second reader, material dropped off the face of the earth for 17 months. Agent told me they'd probably lost it, or lost interest.
It was an okay book, but before we could try another round of revisions my career ate my writing time. Eventually, agent and I parted ways with a handshake. He's not agenting my genre right now, or I might be back with him.

As for unagented response times, that seems to be luck of the draw. I'd say be prepared to wait at least a year, maybe a year and a half.

Filigree

Oberon89 said:

I believe (might be wrong) Jim C. Hines managed to get published that way; he's still with DAW; I'd check out his site.

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Nope. I had an agent. Full story is here. (Though I do know of a few people who submitted to DAW directly and got a deal that way.)

Unfortunately, several years is not unusual. It's not just DAW, either. I had a 2.5 year wait for an acceptance from Baen, way back when.

jchines said:

Nope. I had an agent. Full story is here. (Though I do know of a few people who submitted to DAW directly and got a deal that way.)

Unfortunately, several years is not unusual. It's not just DAW, either. I had a 2.5 year wait for an acceptance from Baen, way back when.

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Ah, thanks Jim! Sorry about the mistake.

I submitted to DAW without an agent last summer. Took them about 3 weeks to reject my book.

Just gonna throw this out there- maybe it's time to re-write it and sub it somewhere else?

whistlelock said:

Just gonna throw this out there- maybe it's time to re-write it and sub it somewhere else?

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Here's a great piece of advice that was given to me by both Kevin J. Anderson AND Brandon Sanderson:

(Paraphrasing)

We're writers. We write. We don't just write ONE story. Writing stories is what we do. So, don't dwell on one story, write more. If you're waiting to hear back on one story, you're not doing your job. WRITE.

At one time, Kevin J. Anderson had the most rejections BY WEIGHT of any author, now he has over 40 Bestselling works (and over 100 published books).

Brandon Sanderson's Elantris was the sixth novel he wrote and tried to sell, I think he said he'd actually written TEN before he sold any.

Inarticulate Babbler said:

Here's a great piece of advice that was given to me by both Kevin J. Anderson AND Brandon Sanderson:

(Paraphrasing)

We're writers. We write. We don't just write ONE story. Writing stories is what we do. So, don't dwell on one story, write more. If you're waiting to hear back on one story, you're not doing your job. WRITE.

At one time, Kevin J. Anderson had the most rejections BY WEIGHT of any author, now he has over 40 Bestselling works (and over 100 published books).

Brandon Sanderson's Elantris was the sixth novel he wrote and tried to sell, I think he said he'd actually written TEN before he sold any.

Click to expand...

That is great advice.