Scattergun approach to submitting

Welcome to AW, DA!

One question: is this for short stories or query letters to agents/publishers for a novel?

If for short stories, be careful with sim subs. Each publisher's webpage will state whether or not sim subs are okay, as you already know.

For novels, it's almost assumed you are going to be querying multiple agents, so sim subs (or, more precisely, sim queries) are no problem unless an agent wants an exclusivity period, which will only happen if she or he requests more pages. You can usually query as many agents at a time as you want.

Many people suggest querying in batches of no more than ten, that way you don't burn through your whole list with a query letter than tanks.

I'm going to move this to Publishing General Discussion, where more people will see it than they will in FAQs.

D.A Watson said:

Just wondering if more experienced cats have a happy average number of simultaneous submissions.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from seven agents and publishers, but the other day I found a whole mess of others, 18 in fact, that I could potentialy bombard with my material. Obviously I'd check each ones' specific guidelines to see if they're cool with simultaneous subs, but I'm wondering if I should wait to hear back from the seven I've got on the go at the moment before sending out another round of begging letters.

Click to expand...

I know a few writers subscribe to the "revenge query" method, where as soon as they get a rejection they send that submission out to another agent/pub. The name is a bit silly but it's a good method, because you keep your submission list steady at a reasonable number.

Your current list of 7 subs out seems like a good number, I wouldn't go too far above that.

One story, one submission. That's how I work.

I don't have personal experience with self pubbing, but generally speaking, agents aren't interested in books that have been self pubbed unless you sold a large number of copies and are still selling (the number 20,000 is popping into my mind, but that could be wrong).

If you want to find an agent for the second one that you haven't self pubbed, I wouldn't even mention the first book--again, unless you sold a large number of copies.

I'm not sure how different it is submitting in the UK, but I think it's similar to the US where simultaneous submissions of queries are the norm.

http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/10/some-hard-numbers.html

http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2013/12/question-about-that-self-publishing.html

And a good conversation here: https://twitter.com/byobrooks/status/448915177418010624

Of course I have no idea what your numbers are like, but still...