How long to do agent edits?

As quickly as possible without compromising the quality. Or, when in doubt, ask your agent when she wants it back.

My agent is a former novelist, and so we did a few rounds of edits. We did one tweak of my main character, which took about a week. Then she took the manuscript with her to Florida and marked it up pretty extensively. This line editing took me another couple of weeks.

Then we waited until the editors had returned from Christmas vacation.

Then she submitted.

All in all? A little over two months from when I signed the contract with the agency to when I signed the contract with the publisher.

I have the "first pass" pages with me now, and I'm STILL finding mistakes. I bet I've gone over this thing 15 times by now. It's maddening...but exciting at the same time.

I got through edits with my agent in about a week and a half -- three passes in all, the first with a couple of big changes (I had to add scenes).

But I'm weird. I work fast and at a high volume output, because I've been working for a magazine for ten years... deadlines, whee.

My agent wanted what I thought was an important scene of my novel removed. We discussed why I thought it was important and why he thought it shouldn't be in there, then we compromised. I rewrote the scene so both of us were happy. About two days, but then I'm obsessed.