As you travel along the track to publication, you may not see the next hurdle until you find yourself midair. One of the last, but perhaps most significant, obstacles is the process of editing your work with your agent before submission. Many writers approach this moment—which may be the first time an industry professional reads their manuscript—with little idea of what to expect. How much revision is typical? Are your agent’s suggestions required, or is there space to disagree? If the stars align, the book will be edited again by the editor, who might have a different take on its direction. So are you just getting the manuscript mostly ready, or are you polishing every surface?
Prepping a manuscript for submission is “a pretty opaque and mysterious process for a writer,” says Aram Fox of Massie McQuilkin & Altman. “It’s not for the agent.” Anecdotal evidence suggests this dichotomy is not only accurate at this stage of publishing, but also sums up most stages of publishing. So let’s dispel a little of the mystery.
The standard practice for this stage is reasonably straightforward: Expect to do at least one round of revision, often more. That revision might involve big changes to structure, story, and scene. An agent likely brings a more exacting level of editing than the writer will have received from their own creative community—not to mention a clearer sense of what is marketable and expected for the genre of the work. What “ready to submit” means might be different for every agent, so be sure to ask. The most important editorial conversation, however, should happen before you’ve signed on with the agent. That’s the time to get a clear understanding of what the agent thinks the manuscript needs in order to go out on submission. Every agent I spoke with considers this discussion essential.
Katherine Fausset of Curtis Brown says this is a crucial step in the agent interview process. “We have a conversation about the degree and kind of edits that I would be asking for,” she says. This early stage is when any fundamental mismatch between agent and writer should be evident. Their ideas may be more comprehensive than the writer hoped, but the vision should align with the writer’s, and by the time you’re signed with the agency and receiving editorial notes, the overall gist of the feedback shouldn’t be brand-new information.
“If you’re a writer, and this is your first time working with an agent, and they’re suggesting edits that you maybe don’t feel 100 percent comfortable with, you think, Well, the agent knows best. And, yes, sometimes we do,” says Fausset. “Yes, we may know best about what’s going to sell better…but we don’t know what’s best for the kind of book that you want to write.” If the agent’s suggestions seem to be for a different category of book—say, they’re playing up its qualities as a romance when you see it as a historical thriller—“then I think that’s really crucial information to have at that stage,” she says. Pause to reflect on whether this direction feels right for your book.
While you can generally count on at least one editorial pass from your agent, every agent has a unique editorial style, which may also vary from book to book. There are successful agents who do no editing at all and others who practically function as a mini MFA. A likely process would be at least one big-picture discussion of structure and story and then another of more granular edits. Two rounds is a common expectation, but more is common too. The agent edit is so expected that writers may worry if they receive no revision ideas, in which case a conversation about the agent’s assessment of the book should reveal whether they genuinely believe it is ready to go or if they are overworked or otherwise disengaged from the manuscript.
Emily Forland of Brandt & Hochman describes herself as having a “first, do no harm” approach. “Every book comes in with its own set of needs, and sometimes I think I might know what a book needs. And sometimes I might do less. It really depends,” says Forland. “If I read a book and I think it needs something, but I don’t know what it needs, I might not take it on. It’s always a conversation.”
This last point is key. None of the agents I spoke to discussed their work in absolutist terms. All were there to make each individual book the finest version of itself. (It’s worth noting that plenty of agents have prior experience as in-house editors themselves.)
Fausset says she is likely to do more work with a debut author, but even in a long partnership an agent may find it necessary to offer a rare major revision suggestion. Overall, Fausset views her job as more foundational than fine tuning. “My role in the editorial process is helping them build the foundation of the house that is the book, knowing and hoping that an editor will be the person to be working on the paint, the moldings, all those things. That said…there are often times when I know an editor will come along and make a big structural change to the novel and a needed one. And so I don’t want to get so much in the weeds with an author about the crown molding when an editor may just say, Look, we don’t even want that wing of the house.”
Forland concurs: “I’m also mindful that it’s a relay and that ideally the book is going to land with an editor who’s going to do more editing. So the editing [I do] maybe is a little more preliminary.”
Even when you trust your agent’s vision, the revision process also lays bare one of the many minor terrors of publication: when an aspect of your book feels deeply important to you, but you are hearing consistent suggestions from agents and editors to change it. Even this might be a more nuanced discussion than you realize. Uttama Kirit Patel, whose debut novel, Shape of an Apostrophe, was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2025, found herself considering a question like this. Her novel originally contained a significant layer of magical realism to which she was committed. Her agent suggested a change, but he left it to Patel to decide. As the manuscript gathered interest from publishers, the same feedback came up more than once, and Patel could see that if the book were to be published at all, that element would have to go.
“When I understood how much stronger it had become because of [the change], I was more open to those edits,” she says. “Sometimes I think that layer perhaps could have been in the book in a different way.” While she wouldn’t change her overall revision choices, she does think she could have framed the question less in terms of “is this good or bad?” and more as a question of how to fix a faulty element.
Here the tenor of the relationship can play a large role. Productive disagreement will happen, but ideally both parties can still talk in good faith.
“I’m very mindful,” says Forland, “that it’s not my name on the book. It is the author’s book. A lot of agenting is this sort of funny push-pull between being protective and being the one on the front lines.” The agent, she says, needs to thread the needle “between knowing that it is really hard out there and that a book gets only one shot at an enthusiastic first read—and wanting to be very protective of it and making sure we put our best feet forward.”
It’s also important for agents to keep an eye on the writer in this stage. “Revision fatigue is real,” says Fox. “If I feel like it’s setting in, I often make the most obvious suggestion, which is: Take a step back, take a little bit of time off. The one thing that I can offer a writer is that I’m never on a deadline. I can take as much time as we need. I don’t need to have submitted a book within a certain amount of time in order to feel like this was a worthwhile endeavor.”
The agent is acutely aware of the backdrop to all of this work: a marketplace that has only gotten more ruthless. For this reason an eager writer should pay attention to the agent’s opinion on whether the book is ready. Fox frames a reluctant-to-submit agent this way: “Every agent is working for free until they sell your book. So it’s a little bit like a surgeon who advises against surgery. If your agent is advising against submission, that’s advice you should listen to.”
When all is said and done, the editing that happens before submission may look very similar to the work an in-house editor does. The publisher’s edits might even be less rigorous. “Once it got to my publishers after those two rounds of edits with my agent,” says Patel, “my publishers were like, This is pretty good. I expected a lot more edits with my publisher than I had. And I think that was because of that bit with my agent.”
Michelle Wildgen is the author of four novels, most recently Wine People (Zibby Publishing, 2023), and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review and the New York Times’ Modern Love column; O, the Oprah Magazine; and Best American Food Writing. She is a freelance editor and cofounder of the Madison Writers’ Studio in Madison, Wisconsin.
Thumbnail credit: Nick Wilkes; Fausset: Sylvie Rosokoff; Forland: Mark Abrams