More irregular agentry

I've been looking at my pile of queries and material requested, and came across something that I felt begged another "Advice From An Agent" column. It's a pretty simple one, too:

Be ready to send out your material.

If you write a kick-ass query, and an agent requests material, whether it's the first chapter, three chapters, five, or the whole thing, be ready to send it out. Don't query, and then respond to a request with something along the lines of, "Great! As soon as I finish it/finish revising, I'll send it off to you." Be ready to send it out IMMEDIATELY.

When I look at my pile of letters I've requested material on, most of them do get moved into the next pile pretty quickly, as chapters come in. Some, however, sit for ages. I'm not talking about the people who, when I ask for a submission via email, chose to send a hard copy instead. I'm talking about the people who query, then wait weeks or months before sending me material or never respond at all. Now, I can think positive with the best of them, and hope that this means they got another agent to jump on the query and sign them before I ever got to them, but mostly this is just sloppy, poor business sense. Even if you do get picked up by someone else in the time it took me to respond, it does your future career well to send off a quick email, "Thanks for your request, but Agent Q moved more quickly, and I've already signed with her."

Because like an elephant in fancy shoes, I remember things.