by Rebecca Lee

Are you feeling tough? Because what’s coming might seem pretty brutal.

So, you’ve written a book, you’ve researched agents to submit it to, carefully followed their submission guidelines and sent off your precious work (on paper or ‘e’) to said agent. What happens next?

Well for you, you wait. Be patient.

For your manuscript, it begins a long and exciting journey in the ‘slush pile’. No, it’s not a very nice term, but wait till you’ve heard the full story before judging poor agents. Some agents receive around 100 unsolicited submissions every week. That’s 20 manuscripts to deal with every working day. That’s a lot of post.

Many agencies are tiny. Just a handful of people at most in a small office, or even working from the head agent’s home. They often rely on interns and work experience students to come in and help with their admin like filing, photocopying and opening the post.

So an intern, or at least the newest, most junior member of staff, will most likely be opening your submission. It might be their first day, they might not completely understand the filing or logging system for new submissions. They might be covering reception or telephone duties and fielding mad calls all day from irate would-be authors who haven’t heard back yet about their manuscripts. They will probably be scared. All they want is to survive the tea round without getting coffee thrown back in their faces, and to discover the next Kazuo Ishiguro. Is that too much to ask?

So make it as easy as possible for them to deal with your manuscript – adhere to the company’s submission guidelines. Put a rubber band around your papers so they don’t get lost in the giant pile of submissions. The intern might be bad at admin, and might get an actual job tomorrow, leaving the office and the slush pile in a big mess, and delaying a response to you. The agent is very sorry about this, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

The intern will start with your covering letter and be looking for Good Signs. Can this writer spell? Do they sound non-insane? Are they courteous and not immodest of their work? If yes to all three, the intern will relax a little and look forward to reading the synopsis of the book. They will then start to read the submitted chapters. The intern is already tired. They have been reading about child abuse, elf-munching wizard-dragons on Mars, explicit porn and clichéd chick lit all day. They WANT to find something good. They want to read a submission and an actual light bulb to go off over their heads saying, ‘Talent!’, but unfortunately there is a lot of dross going on in the slush.

Little intern will log and code the manuscript according the agency’s system, e.g.  ‘Reject’ or ‘Log to agent X’. (Agent X may know the writer, or have been recommended by a mutual acquaintance. In a business built on reputation, this is important. It’s helpful to have your manuscript be memorable if you have a prior connection to an agent, but don’t fabricate one – your work will speak for itself if it’s good enough.) Most will be a ‘Reject’. Sorry. Then the intern will start replying to manuscripts. Because of the volume of submissions, and amount of admin involved, this can take at least three months. Patience!

If a manuscript has been rejected straight off, you’ll get a standard form rejection letter. I hope you won’t be offended by this, especially when you see how many submissions an agency has to deal with every week. It just makes sense. And usually they’ll include some helpful advice, like getting the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and so on. Submit to more agents, but do take an objective look at it again. Can you improve it? Can you improve your covering letter? Have other people read your work, do they have any comments? If you’re serious about getting published, you’re going to need to get used to being edited.

On a more positive note, the intern might be impressed with your work. They might like it enough to say so to an agent, who will request a reader’s report from them. This is a bit like a school book review – a summary of plot and characters, writing style, audience, if it achieves its aims, if the intern liked it enough to want to read more. The agent will read the report and may request the rest of the manuscript from you. Hurrah! Send it straightaway, don’t be sycophantic, but do be quietly flattered. They probably will still reject it, but will send a more detailed rejection letter. If you get any feedback, take it seriously. Read it, see how you feel it applies to your work. You may disagree entirely. That’s fine, this is all opinion. Although, the agent brings a market-awareness of opinion that you don’t. Then again, it might just not be their ‘thing’. Above all, take away from this that someone liked something enough in your manuscript to read the whole submission and to take the time to comment on it. This is rare. Be flattered.

They have taken time over your submission – it’s good! But if they say ‘it’s not right for my list’ or ‘it’s not good enough yet’, they honestly mean that, it’s not a brush off. It’s good but it’s not right. It might be good and right for someone else – keep trying!

Now, in an even better scenario, the intern reads your submission, really likes it and tells the agent it’s good (little intern has become frightened of the word ‘good’ and any positive judgements of writing now that they realise how many terrible things they read all day, and their judgement is skewed). The agent reads your full manuscript, likes it and calls you in for a chat. Don’t be crazy. They want to work with you. They still might not take you on as a client, but this all means you are doing the right things and you are on the right track.

And then, the holy grail – the agent takes you on as a client! Read your contract carefully and get them to explain anything you don’t understand. Then…celebrate! Tell all your friends you’ve got an agent! It’s so exciting!

Together, you and your new agent will work on your manuscript to get it ready to send to publishers. Yes, that’s more re-drafting. You’re becoming a professional writer now, or should I say ‘re-writer’, you’ll have to do at least one more draft.

And then begins the rounds of submissions to publishers. And that, boys and girls, is a story for next time…