1. Immediately contact any publisher and/or agent your manuscript is currently with and let them know you have an offer on the table. Ask when they can get back to you. Let the publisher who has made the offer know that you need a little time to make your decision as you have other interest.

2. In my opinion, this is not the time to be sending the material to new people. Even if it’s been requested, unless someone was really enthusiastic about it–as in, “get this in my hands now”–it’s not fair to the publisher who’s made the offer to wait while your submission makes new rounds.

3. A lot of authors who get an offer immediately then try to get an agent. I know some agents are thrilled to work with someone who already has a deal on the table, some not so much. Here’s the important part: If you accept the terms of the deal to the publisher (advance, royalty, rights), the agent can only negotiate the general language of the contract (this where stuff like author copies would come into play, Alexis). If you tell the publisher you’re in the search for an agent and make no firm commitment, the agent has more negotiating room, but again you need to get back to the publisher within a few days, a week at most, so any potential agent needs to work fast (something they’re pretty used to anyway).

More to come, but if folks want to keep asking questions, I’ll answer them in the new post.

The whole contract thing is very confusing to me and I understand why writers use agents now. I only wish I had gone the route of using an agent. Is it too late to use an agent after you’ve already been offered a contract?

Thanks so much!

I do wonder however, should you mention to other publishers that you submit to that you’ve recently been made an offer by another publishing house? I say that in the hypothetical context that the publisher that made the author the first offer may not be the author’s first choice of publisher. Or is the subject of other offers something that the author should keep to themselves?

However, sometimes it’s a matter of trimming word count or changing a piece of the ending–bigger than a line edit, but smaller than “I like the concept, but I’d like a complete rewrite.”