[PubQ] Audio interest in my self-pubbed book that an agent has shown interest in...
This is an odd one, and sorry if I'm long-winded about it! I'm probably overthinking this hugely, but I suppose that's what happens when you've been in the querying trenches for...8 months. 🫠
The backstory:
I've been querying my novel (not the self-pubbed one), and have one final full request out with a very good agent (some may say a dream agent). If she passes, I'll be done querying. She was last on my list and is the last response I'm waiting for. I haven't had any offers.
When she asked for the full manuscript, she also asked about the sales history of one of my self-pubbed novels. When I told her (some decent sales but nothing huge), she said it sounded adorable and asked if I would be interested in taking that one the traditional route as well (I would be). At the time, I also told her that I'd been approached by one of the main audiobook publishers, but that I hadn't decided if I wanted to take their offer.
She's had my full manuscript for 87 days now, so I'm a little early to nudge in general, but I've been approached again by the same audio publisher about the self-pubbed novel. At this point, I've decided I'd like to go forward with negotiating with them and getting the book produced. It isn't a big advance, but the book has done only decently well, so it's about what I would expect after talking to other authors who've done this. But it isn't like this publisher's interest is making me sound super interesting to an agent.
So, now I feel a little stuck. My knee-jerk reaction is to just email the agent this update and ask if she would like me to hold off on audio negotiation to give her more time to see if she's interested. But I don't know if that's rude or too presumptuous, or if I look like I'm making way too big a deal out of nothing.
I suppose my options are:
- Continue with my self-pubbed book as if no agent has asked about it, aka just go forward with talking with the audio publisher.
- Email the agent now with the update.
- Wait until 90 days have passed to email her the update (it's only 3 days away anyway), as I've heard that it's generally polite to nudge after 90 days, and I could loop in a regular nudge with an "also let me update you on the self-pubbed book".
Again, I'm probably making a big deal out of nothing, but I guess that just comes with being a writer. 😂
Thank you ahead of time for any input!!
Signed,
A rather stressed-out author in the querying trenches.