Hi All, I am new to this forum and am very excited to have the opportunity to chat to and gain experience from other writers.
I have a question - a few months ago I sent out my first batch of submissions to literary agents in London. Amongst the rejections I did have one agent looking for my full ms. I sent it via email a month ago and have yet to hear back, not even an acknowledgement of receipt.
I'm looking for any info on how long it will likely take to hear back? I have heard that it would be unwise to chase up or request acknowledgement. A reply from anyone who has experience of this would be much appreciated!

Hello Clara,

weldome to writewords!

Well, it could take any length of time, really, but 3 months is the usual rule of thumb before nudging.

As you may or may not know, a lot of agents have just been to Frankfurt for the week, for the Frankfurt bookfair, so this delays the rest of their work.

Seeing as you did not receive an acknowledgement, you could nudge in 2 weeks time, ie after 6 weeks, i'd say - give her/him the chance to recover from Frankfurt.

You could say something like 'i just wanted to check you received my manuscript. No problem, of course, if you are still considering it, but would you mind giving me some rough idea of when you might get back to me?'

See what the others think...

Welcome Clara!

I agree 100% with everything Petal said there. Some people don;t chase at all but I am far too impatient and believe a politely worded nudge after a decent amount of time has passed is perfectly reasonable.

Good luck!

Lots of good advice - I think if you haven't had an acknowledgement to an MS which they asked to see, it's certainly absolutely fair to check that they got it.

Thanks for your responses, I will follow your advice and email a carefully worded 'nudge' when it gets to the 6 week mark. I'm the same as you Caroline, patience isn't my strong point, I've been checking my inbox non stop since I emailed the ms! Have started a new project to give myself a distraction from the waiting.

Thanks again guys!

Hi, sorry to but into this, but i'm in a similar situation to Clara, sent off a full manuscript (per request) two weeks ago, and I've just chased them up to make sure they recieved it alright. I haven't copywrighted the novel, so am a bit nervous about waiting three months for them to get back to me, does anyone think i should try and get it copywrighted now, or have i left it too late?
Thanks in advance.

(and congratulations to clara!)

I don't think you can actively copyright a novel, can you? Doesn't the copyright automatically belong to you anyway?
I wouldn't worry too much about it - it does just take them months. My actual agent that I'm signed to will still take a month to read a manuscript I've sent her that she was looking forward to very much.

Baz- thank you for your Congratulations and same to you. SS- thanks for your response; I had assumed that if an agent was really interested they would read & respond quite quickly but your post proves otherwise which keeps my hope alive!!

Doesn't the copyright automatically belong to you anyway?

Yes. There's no need to do anything: your words belong to you as soon as you put them on the page.

If you want to prove that your words are yours, there are various ways - starting with depositing a sealed envelope at the bank and getting a receipt for it, or emailing it to yourself or to a friend, so that the email is dated. Or you could uploading the files to a website or online Cloud storage such as dropbox.

Some agents put likely response times on their websites, but three months isn't uncommon at all.

It's agony, waiting - the only cure, or at least palliative, is to get on with writing the next thing.

<Added>

You can get a free, downloadable guide to Copyright, written by the Society of Authors, here, along with guides to all sorts of other important things:

http://www.societyofauthors.org/guides-and-articles