Blurred Line

I was doing some submission reading for Fusion Fragment today and one of the things that struck me was how many submissions there were without any cover letters. Just something that said "Please consider my story" or, even worse, an entirely blank email with the story attached. Now, before I start out here, let me just say that having a cover letter has pretty much no effect on whether I choose to pick up a story or not.

That said, write a cover letter! Most of the stories I've accepted (I can think of only one exception) have had cover letters. And I think this has a lot to do with the fact that writers who've been around a while know enough to include them. So, no cover letter = newbie writer = probably not a good story, until the writing proves otherwise. Now, I'm just one man, but I'm pretty sure that the general consensus is that it's a bad idea to give an editor a reason to dislike a submission before the story's even been opened.

There's a number of places online where you can find out what to include in a cover letter, but here's what I prefer: the name of the story, the approximate wordcount, an extremely brief description that'll give me an idea about what I'll be reading (ie. "post-apocalyptic satire" or "story of first contact"), a couple of previous publications if applicable (and a note: quality is better than quantity). Personally, if the author's got a webpage or blog, I like it when that's included -- but maybe that's just a curiousity thing. So, overall, you're looking at about two or three sentences.

Oh, and being a NaNoWriMo "winner" doesn't really count as an award. Sure, it's impressive and might make me a little envious (you highly productive bastard, you!) but it still has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. I'd have thought that was obvious, but it's happened more than once so far this month.

One final piece of advice: if you're including the name of the market or the editor somewhere in your cover letter, make sure you get it right. I've received some pretty hilarious interpretations of my name, not to mention a few times where the editor's name was somebody else entirely. That kind of stuff always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Thursday, December 18, 2008 - Blank slates; Editorial exhortations I was doing some submission reading for Fusion Fragment today and one of the things that struck me was how many submissions there were without any cover letters. Just something that said "Please consider my story" or, even worse, an entirely blank email with the story attached. Now, before I start out here, let me just say that having a cover letter has pretty much no effect on whether I choose to pick up a story or not. That said, write a cover letter! Most of the stories I've accepted (I can think of only one exception) have had cover letters. And I think this has a lot to do with the fact that writers who've been around a while know enough to include them. So, no cover letter = newbie writer = probably not a good story, until the writing proves otherwise. Now, I'm just one man, but I'm pretty sure that the general consensus is that it's a bad idea to give an editor a reason to dislike a submission before the story's even been opened. There's a number of places online where you can find out what to include in a cover letter, but here's what I prefer: the name of the story, the approximate wordcount, an extremely brief description that'll give me an idea about what I'll be reading (ie. "post-apocalyptic satire" or "story of first contact"), a couple of previous publications if applicable (and a note: quality is better than quantity). Personally, if the author's got a webpage or blog, I like it when that's included -- but maybe that's just a curiousity thing. So, overall, you're looking at about two or three sentences. Oh, and being a NaNoWriMo "winner" doesn't really count as an award. Sure, it's impressive and might make me a little envious (you highly productive bastard, you!) but it still has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. I'd have thought that was obvious, but it's happened more than once so far this month. One final piece of advice: if you're including the name of the market or the editor somewhere in your cover letter, make sure you get it right. I've received some pretty hilarious interpretations of my name, not to mention a few times where the editor's name was somebody else entirely. That kind of stuff always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Cavan blogged at 9:04 PM \| 0 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart