I don't work in publishing, but it's clear in the litigation involving taking someone else's story that some publishers (if not most) have begun recording everything that comes over their door. Many wish they had started earlier.
Here's a simple scam scenario that publishers deal with every day. Author writes crappy book and sends out the manuscript to everybody and their brother. Ten years later, Big Publisher comes out with a book that vaguely looks like crappy author's book.
Crappy author screams that Big Publisher shared the manuscript with the author, who copied it in producing big best seller. Crappy author sues for millions.
Best defense for Big Publisher? We never got the book, and here's our log of all queries, manuscripts, and other assorted trash that came in. Second best defense? We got the manuscript, it stayed in intern's office, who rejected it the same day it came in and dump the manuscript in the trash.
Either of these defenses is better than having to say we don't know whether we got the manuscript or not. As I said, it's clear from the litigation in the field that this is the advice of attorneys to publishers to protect themselves.
I'm sure there are some publishers (and agents) who don't record this stuff. And I don't know the percentage of publishers who do log materials. But my guess is that the number is increasing every year.
So let's say the OP does not mention the manuscript's history. Agent decides to represent it, and gets six editors interested in looking at it. One of the editors takes the manuscript, gives it to secretary/intern/flunky and says, "Record this in the database." (More likely it gets recorded when the secretary/intern/flunky opens the envelope/opens and verifies the email.)
Secretary/intern/flunky starts entering it into the database, and the database spits out, "Hey, dude, this is already in here. You want to enter it again?"
Secretary/intern/flunky/dude goes to editor, relaying this information. How many of you want to listen in on the conversation between the editor and the agent? I do.
OP, you're only hope here is to let this age, and probably change the title. And by age, I mean at least a year, and probably at least two.
Best of luck,
Jim Clark-Dawe
