Around three weeks ago I emailed a submission to an agent. They are a respected and highly regarded agency that represents a large number of authors. There are four agents working at this agency and I identified the one I felt was most suited to assess my work and sent it to him. I had a standard email back stating "If you hear nothing in three weeks you can assume your project is not the right one for me" etc. Now as you know, some agents ask for two or three chapters, some ask for several thousand words or whatever. This particular one asked for the first fifty pages. About a week and a half later I had an email back saying "Hi, can you send me the whole manuscript please?". I was quite excited by this and still am, but it has been just over a week since that happened and there has been no contact since, though I guess if it took them over a week to assess 50 pages, then for the full 170 page manuscript it would take a few more weeks. Do you think, simply for the fact they *have* asked to see the full manuscript, that even if it was rejected I would still get a more personal reply regarding its rejection (and constructive criticism) than the usual 'no reply whatsoever' that one usually gets if your work isnt suited to that particular agency ?
It's only been a week? Give them at least 3-6 months on the full before you decide they've rejected with a non-response. Publishing is slow
