The truth about full manuscripts...
TL;DR - it is hard and chaotic
At the point of writing, I have a ‘guilt list’. This consists of full manuscripts I requested towards the end of 2023 or early 2024 but which I haven’t had a chance to dive into yet. I keep my guilt list on a piece of paper on my desk, in order of priority. The oldest of these manuscripts are from November and early December, meaning the authors have been waiting for approximately 6 months. Gulp.
From the outside, it’s very difficult to understand why agents can get so behind on fulls and what this wildly varying process of considering full manuscripts is really like - so, here I’m tackling the questions writers are maybe, perhaps, longing to ask but are too polite to do so…
How did you, an apparently functioning professional who works full-time as an agent, manage to get so behind?
This answer is personal to me and doesn’t necessarily apply to other agents. Ever since I started agenting in May last year, I almost immediately fell behind on reading fulls. In the beginning I certainly requested too many - my approach was ‘If I can see a lot of potential, I will read on and see how the story develops’. Unfortunately there are an awful lot of queries that have loads of potential and frankly, the ones I end up offering on are never the ones I felt indecisive about to begin with. Now, my approach is ‘if it’s not a “hell yes”, it’s a “no”’ - meaning, I have to be super confident about a query to request a full.
However, starting in the way I did, I put myself at a disadvantage. I’ve never stopped playing catch-up and although I now request many fewer fulls, I’m still feeling the effects of that initial enthusiasm!
What is your average response time to fulls? And is there any correlation between speed of response and making an offer? From the outside, it looks like all the successful books get offers really fast.
It varies wildly. Looking at my spreadsheet, which aggregates all the fulls I receive (many - e.g. from referrals - are not arriving via Query Manager), I tend to reply to the majority of fulls within 2-4 months. The quickest turnaround time e.g. in competitive situations (where the manuscript has another offer and an accompanying deadline) is a week or two. There’s no hard correlation between how fast I get to the full and whether I offer - I offered representation to one brilliant client after their manuscript had sat on my desk for 4 months (FYI, their book sold after only 5 weeks on sub). It’s easy to read far too much into how fast agents leap on a manuscript!
Do you read the whole of every full manuscript? If not, why not - surely authors deserve that much, and you’d need to read all of it to really make a judgement on the book?
Look, I hear you. But honestly, I just read enough of the manuscript for me to make a confident decision on whether I’d like to continue - I don’t have time for more than that. I generally ask for 2 or 3 chapters with the query. I may only read one additional chapter. Or, I may read 20%, 30% or 50% - basically, if I don’t feel like I want to read more, I’ll put down the full and decline it. One thing I’ve noticed is that if I get past 50% and I’m still feeling enthusiastic, I’m very likely to offer. There comes a point, around 75-80% where I set up a call with the author even though I haven’t finished yet - I call it the ‘nothing could change my mind’ moment! Even if the last quarter completely falls apart I know I’ll want to represent this story - and we can work on that ending together.
Since you’re not reading the whole of every full, how does it take so long to get back to people? One additional chapter could take you less than 15 minutes!
This one is tricky and I think it’s helpful to outline what else an agent might have on their plate, particularly as they get busier. My core job is to sell books to publishers - right now, I’m trying to catch up on sales after a quiet period (hey, publishing gods, send me some good news soon!). That means developing manuscripts and proposals by existing clients and getting them out on submission (and all that this involves e.g. researching and creating editor submission lists) - plus the many stages of negotiating and contracting books - is my number one priority.
My other major responsibility is managing my clients’ careers, ensuring their relationships with their editors/publishers are running smoothly and providing support where necessary - or, taking calls with my unpublished authors who want to discuss new projects, chat strategy… etc.
The time that’s left is dedicated to a lot of things: considering queries, calls with editors, admin tasks, attending conferences, agency-related business, and more… as well as reading fulls. Depending on how many of my clients deliver full manuscripts at any one time - and how many offers, contracts, meetings and so on are happening - I may have no time to read fulls at all for weeks.
Of course, sometimes a full manuscript is good enough that I simply drop anything and read it anyway… but this has to be done with extreme caution, as everything else will be waiting for me when I return to my desk!
It’s worth pointing out, too, that I never go into a full thinking ‘I’ll only read one more chapter’. So most of the time, even if I do only end up spending 15 minutes on that full, it can take so much time to even open that file and set aside the time and headspace to give the book the attention it deserves.
Do you offer detailed feedback on every full you turn down? And do you do R&Rs?
No, I don’t give detailed feedback any more. I did at the beginning - no matter how much I read, even if it was only one extra chapter. However, I’ve realized since that this doesn’t always go down well, can actually be quite disappointing for authors who expected me to read more, and is understandably counterproductive in many situations (‘You said I didn’t do xyz, but if you’d read the next chapter then you’d see that I did’). In my opinion, detailed feedback just isn’t always helpful - especially as it’s so subjective and mostly based on a partial reading. Nowadays, I’ll let the author know the main reason why I’ve decided to step away but I keep it to one or two lines. This also saves me a lot of time - thinking about and sensitively crafting feedback is very time-consuming and honestly, it’s not my job! (Something I’ve had to drill into myself as a former editor.)
I have occasionally done R&Rs but honestly, I err on the side of avoiding those except in case where I feel really on the line. They set up a lot of expectations and I think this goes back to ‘if it’s not a “hell yes” it should be a “no”.’
I hope this has been helpful and, as always, I would love your thoughts, comments and questions - plus ideas for future newsletters!
My big recent news is the announcement of Caroline Madden’s UK/Irl and US books deals! The Husband Whisperer is an incredible dark comedy which sits in the bookclub/women’s fiction area of the market. It’s about a resentful wife and mother who tries to fix her marriage with the help of a very unorthodox marriage therapist, whose methods grow more and more extreme. As well as being an incredibly talented writer, Caroline runs an amazing blog where she interviews other writers about how they got published - you should definitely check it out. (As others have been saying, she’ll have to interview herself now!)
In other news, I’ll be in London at the end of this month - eep! - attending the London Festival of Writing on the Sunday. There’s a great program and I’m so thrilled to have been asked to do one-to-one sessions (a few slots remain open…), an agent Q&A, and the keynote speech with my author Marvellous Michael Anson. I’ll have a chance to meet Marve and my other London authors in person for the first time - couldn’t be more excited!
Until next time,
Kesia
I really appreciate your transparency. Honestly, your process sounds similar to what most people go through simply reading for enjoyment - we buy a book, we really want to read it, then we buy another - our tbr list growns, our book shelves overflow. Then we must read the book club selection before the book club meeting, work on our own writing and research, etc. Not enough hours in a day:)
The whole process you just described sounds much like what a manager would do in reviewing the CVs and applications. It’s easy to fall behind, and there’s never enough time in the day.