Hi all
I need a sanity check.
I signed with my agent in February. He's the founder of the agency, has been in the industry a long time and has worked on books similar to mine. He was very enthusiastic about the material/pitch (it's non fiction) and we quickly turned it around to get it out to editors before London book fair. He told me I'd get a list of the publishers it was sent to and then he would forward all rejections to me.
Since then... Crickets. I've heard not one peep from them proactively l. I sent my finalised manuscript as an update after LBF and just asked how it was going. His assistant confirmed receipt and just said they were busy.
So after 6 weeks I emailed and asked if they really hadn't had any feedback and if so did that mean we should adjust the proposal or should I be revising the material? Again, his assistant replied saying the response wasn't what they had hoped but that they had had some rejections- and then forwarded me 15+ emails.
Another 5 weeks passed with nothing and so I messaged last week asking for a check in, is there anything I could be doing to adjust the proposal in line with feedback etc? This time, I haven't even had a response from his assistant.
I fully understand that they are busy and I am not their only client. I also appreciate that they may not have had the response they expected and maybe I've dropped down the priority list. But, from my professional experience, acknowledging an email is not a big ask. I've now got a really bad feeling about the whole thing and I'm just so disappointed that after the big "sell" he gave me, I don't even have an agent that I can build a relationship with.
Part of me wants to cut my losses, give notice and then prep the material for self publication. I have a medium sized social platform and could probably generate sales on my own. I'd wanted to explore trad pub options for reach and also legitimacy, but perhaps that was the wrong call.
But I also know it's only really been 2.5 months and publishing I slow, so perhaps I just need to accept that's how he works and get cracking on volume 2 of the series. Although part of me is feeling that even if that is the case, basic professional ways of working should be to respond to emails in a reasonable timeline.
Any advice gratefully received.