Saying No to Exclusives

Years ago, I mean back when I was a baby agent, I sat on a conference panel with about three other agents. During the panel the question of exclusives came up. Since this has always been a (odd) passion of mine I spoke up to say how wrong I felt exclusives were. Another agent disagreed.

She spoke up and said that she always asked for an exclusive. Her reasoning was that it was a waste of time not to because if a "bigger" agent offered, writers were going to go with the bigger agent and she wasted her time. First, I was shocked that she didn't believe in herself enough to think authors would benefit from being with her and second, I was shocked that she actually justified locking authors in without any options.

So we argued. And it wasn't pretty, but I bet it was fun for the conference attendees.

Agents still ask for exclusives and authors still need to respond to that. My advice on saying no to an exclusive is you kind of don't.

When an agent asks for an exclusive I would still send the material and simply say in my letter, "I'm afraid I can't offer an exclusive since I have queries/requested material out elsewhere. However, I will gladly keep you informed should another agent come forward with an offer."

Simple and straightforward and my guess is that the agent will read your material anyway.

--jhf

How Exclusives Harm Authors

Last week I wrote a blog post about exclusives and I received a lot of great comments and questions. Rather than answer in the comments I decided to use the opportunity to write another blog post, or a few blog posts. That way anyone with the same questions can see the answers and I have filled yet another day (or days) on the blog :)

For those who might not know, an exclusive is when an agent asks for you to submit material exclusively to her. That means you stop querying other agents and if you do get a request on a query that is already out you must wait to either hear from the agent with the exclusive before sending to other agents, or wait until the exclusive time period is up.

Why is this a problem?

1. We all know how long agents can take with submissions. It's not because they want to take forever, it's because other things come up. Contracts must be negotiated or reviewed, an author's manuscript needs to be read or edited, or lunches with editors must be lunched. All of these things mean the submission pile grows and before long said agent (ahem) looks at her list and realizes she has requested material from as far back as February 1 (sorry about that).

2. Giving an exclusive, even with a strict time period, means that you've already committed to this agent. You've said, "yes I want you to read my work and if you like it and offer representation I'll sign with you because I have no other options." This is the part about exclusives that tweaks me the most.

When you commit to an agent you are hiring someone to work with you. Repeat this: YOU are HIRING someone to work WITH you. Would you ever agree to have a landscaping company give you a quote only if you give them an exclusive on that? Meaning you can't ask any other landscaping company to give you a quote. I hope not. And that's just to have someone cut your lawn.

By offering an exclusive you are giving someone the opportunity to manage your career, your dream career, without the chance to interview the right person for the job. And that's a big mistake.

One more analogy. You're a business owner. You have a vision for your business and you need to bring on a partner to help make things happen. You find about 10 people you'd like to interview for the job, but one of them tells you she wants an exclusive interview, which means that you eliminate the other 9 people without even having the chance to talk to them.

Would you do it? Because I've just described exactly what an exclusive is.

Later this week I'll discuss how to handle an offer in more detail. As for Exclusives:

Just Don't Do It.

--jhf

Why You Should Resist Giving Agents Exclusives

I can't even begin to think about the number of times I've written on this subject. One search of exclusives on the blog will probably bring up a ton of posts. And yet, I still get emails like this:

I'm sorry for bothering you, but I wanted to check in with you on the status of my romance novel, SECOND CHANCES. I first submitted the book eight weeks ago and I'd like to know if I should continue to wait or start querying other agents. Thanks again for this opportunity. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaah!

Why, oh why are you waiting for me to respond before querying? I never, ever, ever asked for an exclusive and I don't think I've ever asked for an exclusive. There are very few agents who will ask for an exclusive these days and if they do, ignore it and send your queries out anyway.

Your search for an agent is about finding the best partner for your career. Waiting months for a response from one person at a time is never going to help you kick that career off the ground. So query and submit widely, talk to as many agents as possible and choose the one who is the absolute best fit for your work.

--jhf

No Simultaneous Submissions

Obviously writers can't query one agent at a time - no one would ever get published in his or her lifetime. But several agencies are asking for not only a query letter but also for pages, anywhere from 5-50 (and I have to say, asking for 50 boggles my mind). I recently got a response from an agent asking for a partial (just 20 pages or so) and states that simultaneous submissions aren't considered. I don't know how to handle this. Technically the other queries are just that - queries. The agencies just happen to ask for more than just a single letter. So while the agent reads the partial, I still have chunks of manuscript at other houses waiting to be sorted through. I don't really know what to think of this. Any thoughts on how to handle it?

Before I get to the real question, let me clarify that 50 pages is basically a proposal. These are agents who are asking for more than just a query letter, but accept unsolicited proposals. Back in the day, and for quite a number of years, BookEnds had this same policy. At the time we were a fairly new agency and had more time to read submissions. We were also still feeling our way and learning what we liked, and of course it hopefully gave us a bit of an edge in that we got to see the writer’s work before everyone else.

It’s not uncommon for agents to ask that pages be included with the query. I don’t. I find that typically I’ll only read the pages if I would have requested them anyway, so I just ask for the query and request the pages when I want more. While I won’t reject authors for sending pages, I rarely read them anyway. However, I think it’s becoming more common and simply depends on the agent.

I think not accepting simultaneous submissions is the same thing as asking for an exclusive. Do a search on the blog for "exclusive" or "exclusives" and you’ll see a great deal of information. However, my suggestion is to simply send along the material and note in your cover letter that other agents are reviewing at this time, but you’ll do your best to keep her apprised if anything should happen. If she chooses not to read it, frankly, it’s her loss. I really think, though, that, in most cases, asking for exclusives or saying you don’t accept simultaneous submissions is nothing but a scare tactic on the agent’s part. She wants to make sure she doesn’t have competition, which to me says she doesn’t think highly enough of herself to think she can compete. Obviously these two issues are hot buttons for me. I think authors should have the chance to choose an agent if possible, and not accepting simultaneous submissions or asking for exclusives takes the power out of an author’s hand, power you should have since it’s your career.

So in case I didn’t make myself clear, send it anyway and let her know other agents are reviewing. And of course if any agent offers representation, my suggestion is always get in touch with all agents who have pages or material and any agents who still have a query, but who you are really interested in. Give yourself the opportunity to choose an agent rather than simply waiting for someone to choose you.

Jessica

More on Exclusives

I would like to know why agents would like to know whether they are seeing your manuscript exclusively. Does it make a difference in making their decision about your work?

It does not make a difference in an agent’s overall decision, but letting an agent know she has an exclusive gives her breathing room. If in fact you have given an exclusive (even voluntarily), she now knows there’s not a huge rush to get to it. In other words, it can easily go to the bottom of her reading pile since there’s no real competition. She also assumes that if she offers there’s not going to be any worry about whether or not you’ll accept. Of course you’ll accept because, again, there’s no competition.

It’s also a matter of curiosity. I know that if I find out that other agents, or editors, have also requested a full manuscript, the material has already received some sort of stamp of approval and might pique my interest more.

Jessica

Why Offer Exclusives?

Why do authors offer up exclusives when they aren’t even asked? This has happened to us on more than one occasion and I’ll never understand it. An author queries us and we reply that the project sounds interesting, please send along a partial. To which we hear, “I’ve promised that I will only send material to two agents at a time. Since two agents have already requested partials I’m afraid I can’t send it now, but if one should reject the material I will certainly get it out to you right away.”

Why, why, why!? [I’m banging my head on the wall to this.] It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you ever ask an agent to wait longer than they will already make you wait? Oftentimes enthusiasm has waned by this point or, worse yet, they get something similar (because there is always something similar) and offer on that project while you’re waiting patiently for exclusives that were never even requested.

Can you imagine if I queried editors and then said, “Sorry, Penguin and Random House, I already sent it to two other publishers. You’ll just have to wait.” I’m not sure they would like hearing that they’re second best and I’m not so sure their enthusiasm would be as high the next time I came around.

Don’t make this job harder on yourself than it already is. If you’re going to query 500 agents at once then be ready to submit partials to 500 agents. If you only want to submit to 2, 5, or 10 at a time, that’s fine. It’s your choice. But then you should only query 2, 5, or 10 at a time.

Jessica

Exclusives: Time's Up

As much as I preach against it, every once in a while some of you will go ahead and offer an agent an exclusive. Well, you know how I feel about that, or at least you should. I hate exclusives and think they are unfair to the author. I’ve written about this before so I’ll stay off my soapbox.

Instead I’m going to tell you how to handle that exclusive when you’ve gone and done it. Believe it or not, there are definitely times when it’s okay to offer an exclusive (although I would still never recommend it). If you’ve given one to an agent you know you want to work with and you know would be a good fit, then by all means go ahead and give that exclusive, but on your terms. In other words, nothing longer than four weeks and, if you ask me, nothing longer than two to three weeks.

The problem with an exclusive of any kind is that three weeks can be shot in a minute. If an agent has a conference, is out of the office for an emergency, or is suddenly handling a rash of sales, a week can go by in the blink of an eye. So what does it mean if she hasn’t responded in the allotted time frame? It could mean that she’s lost interest and it could mean that she’s been just too busy. In other words, in could mean anything. My advice to you is that when time is up, send a nice email reminding her that the exclusive period is up, that you are still anxiously awaiting word, but that you need to continue to submit to other agents.

Remember, exclusives don’t do the author any justice. Don’t sit around and wait for any agent, the same way you shouldn’t sit around and wait for any man (or woman) because yes, this is like dating. Nothing gets someone’s interest faster than a little competition, so if you really want to grab the agent of your dreams, dangle another man, (ahem) agent, in front of her face.

And because I know that no one ever listens to me, I’ll open this up to readers. How have you handled exclusives in the past?

Jessica

Reasons to Hate Exclusives

Yesterday I posted my thoughts on how to handle a request for an exclusive, and since I’m slow at coming down off my soapbox, I wanted to give you my top five reasons for why writers should avoid offering exclusives at all costs.

1. Offering an exclusive limits you to the possibility of working with only one agent. If that agent offers representation you have no other alternatives since no one else is reading your work. Therefore, you might find yourself stuck with an agent who isn’t the right agent for you or your work.

2. Exclusives greatly limit the number of submissions you can make. If every exclusive averages 3-6 weeks, you are limiting yourself to roughly 12 agents a year. At that rate it could easily take you 10 years to find one agent (of course it might take that long anyway).

3. If an agent isn’t aggressive enough to compete for your work with other agents, how aggressive will she be selling your work?

4. An agent with an exclusive is in no rush. She doesn’t have to worry about getting to your work since no one else is doing it. Therefore she can take her own sweet time and you’re stuck with nothing to do but wait.

5. Agents who ask for exclusives still have a 99% rejection rate—they just have it exclusively.

—Jessica

Handling Exclusive Requests

We got so many great questions in response to a recent request to readers. Here’s just one of many I’m going to address:

What would you recommend in this scenario?

An author queries twenty agents or so. Half a dozen respond with requests for partials or fulls. One agent requests an exclusive for three weeks, but the author has already sent out some requested fulls. What does the author do?

A) Wait for responses from agents who already have the full manuscript, at which point author would be able to grant an exclusive (of course, by that point, said agent may have lost interest);

B) Regretfully decline, because it's not possible to provide an exclusive; or

C) Send the manuscript anyway with an explanation that it has already been sent out but that author will not make a decision or send out any more fulls during the requested three-week period?

Can you shed some light on what an author should do in this case? Many thanks.

If you haven’t seen me there before, here’s a chance to watch me climb up on my soapbox. I HATE exclusives. I think they are unfair to the author and lazy on the part of the agent. I have heard agents defend exclusives by saying that they ask for them because they don’t want to compete with other agents or, frankly, think they can’t. And yes, I have heard agents say those exact words. If you can’t compete, don’t play the game.

Except in the case of an option clause, publishers don’t demand exclusives from agents and therefore I don’t think agents should ask any differently from authors. In fact, right now I’m in the middle of a bidding war with four different publishers over a book. Can you imagine how unfair it would have been to the author had the lowest-bidding publisher demanded an exclusive? It certainly wouldn’t have done much for the contract, or the final advance numbers.

So what’s my suggestion? C. If the agent is interested enough in you and your work to make it worth your while, she’ll read it whether or not other agents are also reviewing it. Be honest. Send it out and let her know that while you can’t grant an exclusive you will certainly let her know if any other agent makes an offer and give her a chance to also offer. If she won’t read it then she’s probably not that excited about your work in the first place.

—Jessica