How to Find an Agent
for Your Book with Simultaneous Submissions
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
If you’re curious about how to find an agent for your book, you may have also heard about a practice called an “exclusive submission” to a single literary agent. This practice is worth discussing, as you’ll come across these terms in your submission journey. When I used to be an agent, I got questions from writers about exclusive submissions, or outright offers to submit a project to me exclusively. This means the writer is only sending their work to me (or whichever agent they’re targeting). At times, they'll offer a specific period—like an “'exclusive for three months,” and other times, they would leave their submission open-ended. This might seem strategic, but I’d say that a simultaneous submission is a much better choice for how to find an agent for your book. Read on to learn why.
How to Find an Agent for Your Book by Navigating Submission Strategy
The thinking is that submitting exclusively will make the submission stand out in some special way in the slush pile, so I get where these writers are coming from. Think about early decision or early action college applications—they tell a school that a particular applicant is really interested and will say yes if accepted. But this isn’t the best strategy for how to find an agent for your book for a number of reasons.
First, when someone would send me something exclusively without me requesting it exclusively, I would not be thrilled to see it. Sure, it’s always flattering that a writer is excited about querying a particular writing agent, and this is a little nudge to the agent to consider the project more seriously, but the truth is simply that an exclusive submission doesn't influence how an agent assesses the work. Like, at all. The quality of the writing sample and the story premise itself are all that matter in how to find an agent for your book.
Let’s go back to that early decision/early action comparison. This won’t make the university accept an unqualified student. This is not a sneaky way to turn a “no” or “maybe” into a “yes.” Exclusive submission to a literary agent won't guarantee you any kind of advantage. How to find an agent for your book hinges on presenting an excellent manuscript, not an exclusive submission.
Furthermore, seeing an exclusive submission can actually inspire anxiety and guilt—it can put extra pressure on agents to respond quickly or provide writing notes or a revise and resubmit letter to return the “favor” (which is not seen as such), and this kind of pressure doesn’t make the interaction enjoyable.
The Exception: Revise and Resubmit Requests
Now, after the query stage, some agents may actually ask a writer for an exclusive submission if they’re interested in a manuscript and hoping to see a revision. That makes sense: if you love the promise of something and have taken the time to render constructive criticism, you want to be the only one considering what comes from that early encouragement.
This typically occurs when the writer and the agent have discussed the project in depth and set an expectation of exclusivity. The agent might still send a writing rejection, but this is the gracious approach to let them consider the project on an exclusive basis. Some writers have been known to take the comments, revise the project based on one agent’s notes, and then circulate it among various writing agents. This isn't wrong technically a dealbreaker, but you might burn bridges. If you choose to do this, it’s a good idea to give the original agent a heads-up that they’re competing for the project that they gave notes on.
Do keep in mind that by offering or agreeing to an exclusive submission to a literary agent can be disadvantageous for the writer. If you query people exclusively or if you accept too many exclusive requests from agents, you could extend the time it’ll take you to eventually find a literary agent. It takes a long time to send a project, have it considered, and receive your submission results. That timeline stretches to even longer when you imagine sending to agents exclusively, one by one. This is not how to find an agent for your book, at least if you want to be expedient.
Think of it this way: if it takes twenty agents to finally find The One, and each agent has asked for exclusivity for three months, that’s sixty months of waiting around! FIVE YEARS. If you had done a simultaneous submission to everyone at once, you’d only be waiting four or five months (the average amount of time that it takes for all agents to consider your work, keeping varying timelines for a query letter response and a full manuscript response in mind) to learn your book’s fate.
Leveling the Playing Field And How to Find an Agent for Your Book
What do literary agents do? In the broadest sense, they seek out properties to sell. As it goes with any other competitive job, there are times when they get what they want and times when they don’t. That’s just how the process works. Personally, when I was agenting, I never expected a writer to submit—whether a query or full manuscript—exclusively to me (unless they were following up on a requested revision). Simultaneous submissions (meaning you send to a list of agents at once) are the industry standard.
If I’m a literary agent and truly interested in something, I will make time to read through it and get back to the writer as quickly as possible—just like everyone else is doing. That’s how the game should be played. Of course, if you feel passionate about granting someone an exclusive, go for it. There are also some agents out there who demand exclusive submissions, though I think that practice is such nonsense and completely unfair to writers. Those agents should compete with their peers. Think twice before you submit to an agent like this.
Also, remember that an exclusive request is a request. On the journey of how to find an agent for your book, you might be asked to submit exclusively—you can always say no. The agent might not like it, but if the manuscript is already out with other agents, you literally cannot send it to someone else exclusively. Tell them that you are happy to send a project along, but that you can’t grant exclusivity, and then it’s up to them whether or not they are interested.
It appears that the demand for exclusive submissions is fading, as many people realize how counterproductive it is for writers. Here's something to think about before submitting exclusively to an agent: It's your time, and it's precious when you're trying to get a career off the ground. How to find an agent for your book? Use simultaneous submissions only and take exclusive submissions off the table (with very few exceptions).
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Click here to purchase Successful Query Letters, my book on query letters, including over forty examples with comprehensive notes on each one. There’s a ton of submission advice, best practices, and insider information in these pages, and you’ll really enjoy seeing what other writers are doing in the slush.