Hello all, just wondering if there was an average wait for an agent to have (after requesting it) a full MSS. One agent has had mine for nearly eight weeks, but I don't want to start badgering people unnecessarily and put them off by appearing impatient. Any ideas? Is contacting them a no-no?

Colin M

Two months is not excessive, or unreasonable, Colin. I'm told that most London agents receive about 200-300 submissions per month. Out of these, they request about 2-4 MSS per month (so congratulations, you've done very well here). To be fair, they have their own authors' interests to deal with, full-time, so they fit in the extra reading when they can (usually at weekends or evenings). As a rule-of-thumb, I give them three months or more before stalking them.

Best
Sion

Cheers Sion. I think I just needed someone telling me not to worry. It's been a bit of a week. Ta for the congrats too.

Colin M

Hi Colin,

I think after requesting MSS (congrats, by the way!), that 8 weeks is a decent amount of time. 8 weeks is about how long I'd wait before contacting them, I think. Do you have an e-mail address for the agent?

Catherine

<Added>

Sorry for contradicting Scottwil! I wouldn't stalk them after 2 months, but I don't think a reminder e-mail is unreasonable.

Three months is about standard. Did they give you any indication about time when they requested?

No Anna, no indication, but I don't mind waiting another month or so. I probably wouldn't bother sending anything until the new year, just to be on the safe side. I have heard that a long wait isn't necessarily a bad thing. If the reader who requested likes it, then it will have to forwarded onto the next in line. So I'm hoping I don't hear anything for a while now.

Colin

ps, one other thing. This agent response is usually fast. I sent a submission to them last year and got a request for the full MSS after five days. They got back to me two weeks later with a good, fairly detailed response telling me why they didn't want it. That's why I'm hoping that a long wait might be good news.

Colin, congratulations. It’s a major step to have an agent ask for the full ms. I’d say give them three months, then send an email asking for an idea of how much longer they need to make a decision.

I’m loath to build your hopes up but I know that, with publishers, the longer they have your ms the further into their system it’s going – and the same thing could apply to the larger agencies.

Good luck – and keep us posted.

Dee
x

2-3 months by my reckoning although one in particular - PFD - got back to me like lightning. Then again, their childrens submissions specified 'one paragraph' so it can't have taken them long to appraise that and ask for more.

Once had a book back from a publisher 15 months after it went. To be honest, I'd totally forgotten it myself.

As I started out this thread I thought I might put a note in to say that the agent finally got back to me. I think I was just panicking, it turned out that I got the reply exactly nine weeks after sending. The response was good, and the agent, not a reader read the novel. She liked it enough to request a rewrite, developing one of the characters a little further, so I'm a busy boy from now until Christmas.

Colin M

Excellent, Colin - good luck!

Colin, that's excellent news!

Good luck.

Dee
x

Great news Colin.

You’ve worked so hard for this.

Good luck,
Dawn,