This is obviously good news and I'm very excited (only taken me twenty years after all), especially as the literary agency is very reputable with a raft of household names on their books. I sent a synopsis and first few chapters of my novel and received an invitation to send the whole thing within a week!
My question is how long I should wait until I follow up. I'm expecting it to take a good long while for them to read the book and make a decision and it isn't short (nearly 800 pages on single spacing), but it would be good to have an idea of what sort of timeframe to expect them to work to and whether or not I should consider getting in touch so the trail doesn't go cold.
This is my first time enjoying anything even approaching this level of success (I've only ever received either nothing or a polite rejection), so I have no idea what to expect or how I should behave.
Any thoughts or comments would be most welcome and yes I am very much aware of how lucky I am to be in this position.
Ha, it's so tempting to chomp at the bit, but waiting it out is best, I think. E-mails always make it nowadays, and agents are busy people. The usual time-frame tends to apply to requests, I think - a couple of months and then a polite nudge. Good luck!
Thanks for the reply, Helen. Much as I suspected as I'm sure they need to be thorough. I just got spooked as he asked for it to be emailed over and I didn't get a response saying he'd received it, leading the less developed part of my brain to assume that 'maybe he didn't get it.'
I think I'll do the sensible thing and sit it out.
Good luck to you too!
Hi Niall, I am in the same boat (and yes, it's a nice boat to be in) - an agent asked for my work in May and I am still waiting. I've been told it can take anywhere from a month to six months for them to look a MS over and make a decision. At the moment I am sitting on my hands trying not to send an email - I did ask the Agony Agent about it and they said I needed to be 'unflappable' while I waited and not bother them too much or I could be labelled a 'difficult writer'. So this is the hard part, though it was a huge relief to have someone be interested in my work. Good luck to you, hope they get through it quickly!