Multiple submissions

[James_Wilde]

Hand on heart, now, how many of you recognize yourself in this scenario.

You send out a book to an agent/publisher. You wait 6-12 weeks for the Dear John letter. You send it out to a new agent/publisher. Two years later you've sent it out to about ten agents/publishers.

Are you ever tempted to send it out to, say, ten agents/publishers at the same time, knowing that you can always recall it from the others if one of them accepts? Result: 6-12 weeks later, you've had a reply from ten agents/publishers.

And having been tempted, have you ever done it?

[gmw]

Ooo-aahh ... do we have to set up secret identities to answer this one?

One of the thoughts I have had on this subject is that by sending out to multiple at once you can freely say that the manuscript has not yet been rejected by anyone else and be totally truthful. Doing it serially doesn't leave you with that freedom.

I can understand agents objecting if you have already sent the manuscript to publishers. I can't see a problem with sending to multiple agents at once. (Assuming you can find multiple - in Australia there is a real dearth of publishers/agents that will accept fantasy novels from unknown authors.)

ETA: To actually answer the question: No, I haven't. But perhaps due to lack of choice rather than lack of temptation.

[kennyc]

I've always thought this was stupid, but hey I've followed it on occasion as well.

[Suzanna]

I think attitudes are changing about this. I've read multiple blog posts from agents that say you should always multiple submit when searching for an agent for precisely the reasons you cite - the wheels of publishing move excruciatingly slowly. That you should only grant an exclusive to an agent if they specifically ask you for one, but before agreeing you should negotiate a term for that exclusive - eg, two weeks, one month. After that it's understood that you'll be submitting elsewhere.

I'll be starting an agent search soon (though I'm not exactly holding my breath!) and plan to multiple submit. I'd be foolish to do otherwise.

You must keep in mind that if you multiple submit, the polite thing to do is to formally remove your work from consideration from other publishers/agents if you sell it. Nothing pisses an agent or editor off more (which can potentially affect future sales) than wasting their time on a submission that has already sold elsewhere.

ETA: I found a blog post from former agent Nathan Bransford that discusses this very thing here. Of particular note:

Agents expect that you're querying simultaneously and widely, and frankly, if they don't, they should. If you're querying agents one-by-one I hope you plan to live as long as Methuselah because that's how long you're going to be querying. Remember to target your agent search, personalize your queries, and don't query the entire agent world all at once, but also don't needlessly slow down your search by waiting on exclusive queries.

[EileenG]

My attitude is that I'm a professional writer and I don't have time to wait for individual rejections before I query someone else. However, each query should be tailored to the person you are submitting to.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by EileenG

My attitude is that I'm a professional writer and I don't have time to wait for individual rejections before I query someone else. However, each query should be tailored to the person you are submitting to.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by Suzanna

Agents expect that you're querying simultaneously and widely, and frankly, if they don't, they should. If you're querying agents one-by-one I hope you plan to live as long as Methuselah because that's how long you're going to be querying. Remember to target your agent search, personalize your queries, and don't query the entire agent world all at once, but also don't needlessly slow down your search by waiting on exclusive queries.

Wow, thanks, Susanna, that does it for me.

Glad to see some names I recognize in this thread, Kenny, Eileen, GMW.

[Jeff Mariotte]

I've been with my agent for years and years and dozens of books, so haven't had to seek one out lately. But when he goes out with a book, he takes it to ten or twelve publishers at once, and nobody expects that they're the only one in the running.

That being the case, I can't imagine that agents would object to being treated the same way. The old argument against multiple subs to publishers was that if you accept an offer from one, then the others have wasted their time reading it (if they have) and you might have burned your bridges with those other publishers. That's a fairly lame argument to begin with--you're better off letting the others know that you have an offer, and if they want to beat it they'd better step up. But worst-case scenario, you've pissed off an editor or two.

In the case of agents, though, once you have one you don't need the others, at least, unless your agent doesn't pan out, in which case you'll be searching again. But that could be years from now.

So really, you've got nothing to lose with multiple subs to agents.

[James_Wilde]

That about covers it all, Jeff. Thanks.