Other Interested Parties

It seems to me that you need to make a choice for what you want with your book. If you're going to accept the offer of publication then yes, you should tell all of these agents what's happening. And yes, definitely tell them it's a publisher. What the agents decide to do at that point is up to them.

Unless you're going to get a good advance, the agents won't be interested.

Getting in touch with a publisher was a horrible, horrible idea. You just jerked the rug out from under every agent looking at you manuscript, and may have guaranteed that your book will either not be published at all, or will be published by a publisher that will harm your career.

You should never, for any reason whatsoever, approach any publisher while your manuscript is out with agents.

Jamesaritchie said:

You should never, for any reason whatsoever, approach any publisher while your manuscript is out with agents.

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I think you can probably approach publishers you know agents would not want to work with. Doing so wouldn't necessarily burn any bridges for your eventual agent. If a publisher does not offer an advance or the advance is very small and they don't have particularly wide distribution or promotion (meaning royalties will be slim), an agent is not likely to think the relationship will be worth his or her time.

That wouldn't be my strategy, though. My goal is to be well and widely published, so I plan to start at the top and work my way down. You should sub to publishers after you've exhausted all your agent choices.

I think you only inform agents of other interest if you've received an offer you're considering accepting. So right now, I think you need to decide whether you're going to accept the offer from the publisher (which you might or might not have already done). I think you've got three things you can tell the agents who have your MS:

1) I'm accepting an offer from Big, Advance-paying Publisher and I'm looking for help negotiating my contract.

2) I'm withdrawing my MS from consideration because I have accepted a publishing offer from Small, Non-royalty paying publisher.

3) I have received a publishing offer from Small, Non-royalty Paying Publisher and have asked for two weeks to decide in order to give you time to consider my manuscript.

In one of the ask the agent threads, this question got asked. The agent said: Send emails out to all the agents with the subject line: "Offer from publisher pending" That will get you put onto the top of their query list. It is desirable since they know they have a buyer right off the bat and will get free money. Generally they can get you a better deal than you'd get without them, so it's what I would suggest.