u/AccordingClerk7400

I posted a couple of weeks ago about my agent being MIA and absolutely rubbish at providing clarity on who he had submitted my proposal to and the status of the submissions.

I reviewed the contract and it actually had a clause specifying visibility and timeliness, so I went back to him and said that he wasn't meeting the terms of his own contract and I wanted to understand what he felt the next steps were.

He actually replied! All apologetic, hadn't got the response he hoped for, zero interest in coming up with a different strategy or trying anything else. I think he thought it would be an easy sell (which is odd, given I quite literally told him I knew it wouldn't be in our call) and when it wasn't, he moved on to other things.

Anyway, I've got the full submission list from him and managed to terminate the contract with zero notice period, so I'm back in control of my own destiny. It is sad, I had high hopes based on how enthusiastic and experienced he was in our early conversations, but sometimes that is just how it is!

I will self-publish if I don't find another route, and I'm happy with that - I always knew it was a long shot for trad pub anyway.

Now that is concluded I have been thinking about what I could have done differently to avoid this.

The only thing I wish I had done was push more on the question "what is your plan if we don't get a positive response to submission?". It would have been good to understand that and perhaps I could have spotted some red flags in his answers. But he was in "sales" mode and, as the founding agent in a well-respected european literary agency, I understand why I believed what he said. So I don't blame myself.

Anyway, onwards and upwards, the best journeys are never linear and I know that something great could be around the corner.

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.