What is the best time of year to approach an agent?

And why publishing slows down over the summer

Occasionally publishing moves quickly, but for the most part it can be quite a slow industry with a lot of waiting involved.

Over the summer it often slows down even more as people from every department across the business go on holiday. This can mean that everything from getting material ready for an acquisitions meeting (if one still goes ahead), to an agent having the time to read their slush pile, is delayed.

Some publishers still offer summer hours where you can finish at 1pm on a Friday as long as you make up your hours in the week. (I used to love this when I worked at Puffin!) It does however mean that by Friday afternoon, most publishing offices are operating with only a skeleton staff.

Some people might argue that all of this means that summer isn’t an ideal time to submit to an agent or an editor but I don’t think that’s true.

There are however, definitely times of the year I would recommend NOT submitting to an agent.

One of the first things I discovered during my first job at Puffin back in 2007 was just how seasonal the publishing industry is.

Ideally you want to submit your manuscript/portfolio to an agent when they will have time to consider it properly.

So, in this post we’re going to share the dates that the publishing calendar revolves around and tell you what the best time of year to submit to an agent or editor actually is…