What should be in a cover letter for short story submission to a magazine?
It's been about five years since I last submitted any of my work for publication, and my memory of what I was taught then to put in my cover letter is getting rusty.
What kind of information should I provide when sending a short story to a small literary magazine?
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It depends on the magazine. Many publications have submission guidelines, and you might check those for what anything required in the cover letter. I found an interesting variety of requests with a few minutes of googling.
Asimov's Science-Fiction is clear on what they want:
Your cover letter should contain the length of your story, your publishing history and any other relevant information (e.g., if you send us a story about a medical disaster and you happen to be an emergency room nurse, mention that.).
The Briar Cliff Review is a little vaguer:
Please send a cover letter and short biographical note with all submissions.
McSweeny's is nearly as vague, but more interesting:
Please keep [your cover letter] brief, though we do like to hear from people who read and like the magazine. We're not concerned about writing degrees or past publications, though, so don't be daunted if you don't have an MFA or much in the way of previously published work.
In short, make certain to read the submission guidelines. (Online and print requirements may differ, even within the same publication.) A manuscript in the wrong format is not going to be read quickly, if at all. I don't know if the tone of the cover letter matters or not, although if I were submitting to McSweeny's I'd spend more time on that letter.
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Two tips for submissions (no matter how short the story is):
- Write just a letter/email and ask for permission to send them your story.
- In this letter (like in every cover letter) you should describe your story and yourself shortly and you should put in there, why they should publish your story. Why is it fantastic? Why do people really want to read it? What's different from all these other boring 50 submissions they got?
Yeah, I know, the second one is harder than the first ...
Edit:
To be more specific about describing your story:
It's not about: "It's a crime story about incest."
It's about: "It's about a woman killing her ex-husband to conceal that she has married her own son."
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/716. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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