Why You’re Getting Full Manuscript Requests – But No Offers of Rep

Perhaps one of the most frustrating experiences an author can face when querying is getting full manuscript requests, but no offers of representation. To be so close and yet not quite get over the line is maddening.

Getting full manuscript requests tells you you are getting so many things right: the pitch is strong, you’re approaching the right agents, and the opening of your manuscript works. So what makes agents say no?

Here is an attempt to answer that question – and some strategies to help.

If an agent has requested your full manuscript, the pitch of your novel must work for them: you have given them something to want to read on for. But there are two ways this can go wrong:

1. Your pitch is really strong and the agent is keen to read based on that – even though the opening pages didn’t quite live up to the pitch. They ask for the full regardless, because your writing is overall strong and they really want the novel to work – but when they read the full the set-up never really comes to fruition and the stakes/tension are never clear or high enough.

2. Your pitch is strong, the opening pages set-up the story well – but when the agent continues reading the rest of the manuscript the tension fizzles out, the stakes never increase, and everything falls flat.

Look at your manuscript ruthlessly. How quickly are you giving readers a reason to continue? Are the stakes clear enough quickly enough? Do you keep the tension high throughout – which might mean that the stakes change, the goal moves further away, something else happens to make it harder for the protagonist to get what they want?

If your stakes are set up at the beginning but never change, chances are the tension is going to drop off somewhere along the way.

Your pitch and your opening pages are a promise to your reader. If an agent requests the full manuscript based on those, and then the novel does not match, it’s unlikely that it is going to be a novel they want to represent.

Something I see often in my submissions inbox is that authors will comp their novel to books I have on my list of books I love on my website – but then the novel doesn’t live up to that at all. Or they will say the book is about a certain thing – but that only makes up a small proportion of the plot.

I know pitches are hard, but the most important thing above all else is that it represents the book well. If your pitch and opening chapters don’t represent the rest of the novel, either you are pitching the book wrong, or you have gone astray in the writing and need to edit further to pull things into line.

Having a strong pitch and opening is worthless if the novel doesn’t live up to it.

The contradiction of agenting is that we want something which fits the market but also feels fresh and new. If your novel is a cosy romcom set in a café, you better have a really clear reason why it is different to the million other cosy romcoms set in cafés out there. If it’s a serial-killer thriller, it needs to have something different to other serial-killer thrillers in order to get an agent to take a chance on it.

Agents get hundreds of submissions a month. Editors get hundreds of submissions a year. We have all seen a thousand cosy crime novels with retired protagonists, a thousand STEM romances, a thousand Gothic historicals set in haunted houses. FWIW, I love all those subgenres – but I am not going to take on a novel in any of them if it doesn’t have a more specific description than that.

Often I’ll request a full manuscript and think it’s great – but just not distinct enough for me to sell. I have to persuade editors that of all the examples of this kind of novel they get submitted to them, this is the one to take a chance on – and that is a really high bar.

Read on for some specific tips to counter all these problems – and to see my breakdown of what makes a novel go from a nice concept, solidly executed, to a ruthlessly commercial proposition agents will not be able to turn down.