I was lucky enough to have a meeting with an agent following a debut submission earlier this year. All very encouraging, lots of lovely things were said about the work and some helpful and reasonable suggestions for revisions were given. So far, so good - I got busy with a rewrite. Now comes the tricky bit - 4 months after resubmitting (longer than the response period to my original submission) I've heard nothing. I've chased via e-mail a couple of times and left one phone message, so I hopefully haven't been a nuisance. I'm very aware that I'm not officially a client and therefore not a priority.
That said, the question is, is it bad form to start submitting elsewhere? Am I being unreasonably impatient in feeling that 4 months is too long to give an agent an exclusive viewing period (as there have been no other agents in the mix)?
Any thoughts would be appreciated as I can't find any sources that give advice on something like this.
Many thanks
Sarah
Thanks everyone for your thoughts (very helpful) and your good wishes. I met with the agent after he read the full, original submission. When he said, 'We'd like to work with you on this', I stopped submitting elsewhere while I concentrated on the rewrite and he was aware of that and so was his assistant - that said, he's part of a big agency, pretty senior and probably extremely busy.
Time to leave him alone and move on I think - it'll take some time for any answers to new submissions to come through anyway and you never know, I might hear something in the meantime...
Thanks again, everyone. Good luck to you all!
Sarah
It all depends on what they asked for. Did they ask you to re-submit? Did they give you a named agent to send to, or just an open invitation? Did they mention exclusivity, or did the agent merely make suggestions and leave it open as to what you did with your mss?
Bear in mind that their work is slow - they have to do a lot of selling to get a mss accepted by a publisher. On the other hand, a word or two to say they'd received it would have been polite, if they were really interested.
If they didn't specifically say 'Make these alterations and get back to us,' I'd think you're entitled to send it out to another agent. You'll have had good advice from this one, which you have applied, and which should help your mss on its way with the next one.
Good luck!
Yes, 4 months is too long for an exclusive submission - did they ask for it or did you just grant it? If they didn't ask, they may be unaware it's an exclusive. (2 weeks would be my outside for an exclusive and I'd have to feel pretty enamoured to grant it - I'm not going to sign with an agent without getting in touch with the people who have my MS, so all an exclusive does is hamstring me).
If the exclusive was asked for an agreed upon, I'd send them a polite note giving them a final time frame (one or two weeks?) to get back to you, then carry on sending it out.
Get other people to proof read your letter because it's going to be very easy to come across as "If you don't get back to me by XXX we're done! *flounce*".
If they didn't ask for an exclusive, just get on with sending it out.
Well done, and good luck!