Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hi Nathan- I am an unpublished, first-time novelist and have been in the query stage for the last 8 months. Here's my situation:

My full manuscript is out with several agents (a great thing), but I just had to reply awkwardly to a dream request, because she wanted an exclusive read. Even given the agent's fantastic reputation, I couldn't justify pulling from the others, just to have her consider me. I did offer, though, to send her the manuscript, stop querying more agents, and, if anyone else wanted to represent me, I would give her 3 weeks from that point to read my work and either pass or represent me. This is the long way of asking, is 3 weeks too much time to make another agent wait? 2 weeks seemed like a standard wait time, so I wanted her to see that, though I couldn't give her exclusivity, I am so very much interested. At the same time, representation from any of these agents would be a great thing.

Thanks for your thoughts. Your site is incredibly helpful.

firsttimer wrote:Hi Nathan- I am an unpublished, first-time novelist and have been in the query stage for the last 8 months. Here's my situation:

My full manuscript is out with several agents (a great thing), but I just had to reply awkwardly to a dream request, because she wanted an exclusive read. Even given the agent's fantastic reputation, I couldn't justify pulling from the others, just to have her consider me. I did offer, though, to send her the manuscript, stop querying more agents, and, if anyone else wanted to represent me, I would give her 3 weeks from that point to read my work and either pass or represent me. This is the long way of asking, is 3 weeks too much time to make another agent wait? 2 weeks seemed like a standard wait time, so I wanted her to see that, though I couldn't give her exclusivity, I am so very much interested. At the same time, representation from any of these agents would be a great thing.

Thanks for your thoughts. Your site is incredibly helpful.

That may be a bit generous, but it's already out there - if you have another offer in the meantime you can just let them know that you need to give the others a chance to consider but that you will try to wrap things up as soon as you can.