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How to Write a Good Cover Letter

December 18, 2013 1 Submitting Your Work , , , Permalink 0

DicksMany moons ago, while I was still a graduate student, I worked as an Assistant Fiction Editor for Willow Springs in Spokane, Washington.

When you work as member of a literary magazine’s editorial staff, it’s easy to become jaded; you quickly learn “what not to do” by reading through piles of unsolicited manuscripts.

For one thing, you’ll be amazed how many writers fail to read and adhere to your magazine’s submission guidelines. As part of these guidelines, many magazines will request some additional information from you in the form of a cover letter.

At Willow Springs, a few cover letters were pinned to a cork board for ridicule in our main office. These cover letters were truly awful. One spanned four pages, walking us through the details of a man’s sad life. (Magazines want quality poetry and prose; they don’t care about your life story.) Another contained a headshot of a very ugly woman. (Including a headshot in your cover letter is unprofessional and unnecessary; magazines don’t care what you look like.) Most readers on editorial staffs are looking for reasons to send you a rejection letter. Don’t let them find these reasons while reading your cover letter.

First, make sure to address your given editor by name. If you are submitting fiction, find the fiction editor’s name on the masthead and address your submission directly to her/him. Even if your manuscript gets rerouted to other readers, you will still give these readers the impression that you are familiar with their magazine. Just make sure that you spell her/his name correctly. And since some first names are difficult to distinguish as being male or female, I use the person’s full name in the address.

The goal of a cover letter is to establish your own credibility as a professional and give yourself a fair read. As such, you will want to share any past publications you’ve had. If you haven’t had any yet, that’s OK. Many magazines pride themselves on publishing unknown writers. They want to be able to say, “We publish X new writers per year” or “We published her first story before she ‘blew up.'” As such, to signal the close of your letter, if you haven’t been published yet, I highly recommend explicitly stating, “This would be my first published piece.”

Make sure you edit and proofread your cover letter. Your sentence skills in the cover letter give readers a first impression of your grammar and punctuation skills. Be sure to make this a positive first impression.

Unlike this post, your cover letter should also be short and sweet. Editors are reading tons of manuscripts. Send them into yours with momentum, and hopefully, positive thoughts.

Here’s what I currently use as a cover letter:

 

Dear [Fiction Editor’s full name],

Please find attached my X-word short story, “Title.”

To tell you a little about myself, I hold an MFA from Eastern Washington University; and my previous work has appeared in Live Wire, Almost Five Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Breakwater Review, Penumbra, Double Dare Press, and Konundrum Engine Literary Review. In 2007, I placed third in Zoetrope’s Short Fiction Contest. In my free time, I contribute to my blog, “A Labor of Love: A Blog for Struggling Fiction Writers by a Struggling Fiction Writer” (RyanShiroma.com). I live with my wife in Southern California, where I teach English at Fullerton College and El Camino College.

I hope you like my story. Thank you for your time.

Best,

Ryan Shiroma

 

Well, there you have it! I hope this information helps you create your own professional cover letters when you’re ready to submit your work for publication. (And if you’re ever in Spokane, I recommend Dicks Hamburgers.) Write your heart out!

 

Photo credit: Patrick Q / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Don’t Pay to Submit Your Work

September 25, 2013 0 Submitting Your Work , , , , Permalink 0

Scratch OffsThere are a lot of literary magazines that include a reader fee as part of the submission process–so as you prepare to send them your manuscript (your baby!), you must also decide if you will send these magazines payments through PayPal.

To be honest, I hate this idea.

I understand that some literary magazines need the money to pay their staff. (We are coming out of a recession, after all.) But I doubt this much needed cash should come at the expense of the struggling writer.

There’s enough difficulty in getting our work read by editors, let alone getting it actually published. Paying for the privilege seems ridiculous. And expensive.

Like playing the lottery, we’re gambling that editors will like our work as much as we do. Since magazines will rarely pay the writer enough to compensate for all of these reader fees, if we’re lucky enough, we’ll walk away with a publishing credit and two contributor copies.

The good news is that there are plenty of reputable literary magazines that continue to accept fiction submissions for free. Some will even pay you upon publishing your work. I highly recommend sending work to these magazines.

On a side note, most literary magazines sponsor annual contests. These will almost always involve a contest fee. Most fall between $5 to $25, and some will include a one-year subscription to the magazine. If you must pay for someone to read your work, these are the better bet. Upon publication, some magazines will even send your work to several agencies as an additional bonus.

In 2007, I submitted two short stories to a few contests. At that time, everything had to be sent in as hard copies, which meant a lot of paper and ink. And I wrote checks that totaled a couple hundred dollars in contest fees. Well, I was rejected by all of the magazines except one, the most prestigious of the bunch: Zoetrope: All Story. The Editor, Michael Ray, contacted me by email to tell me that Joyce Carol Oates had selected my short story to win Third Prize out of over 2,000 submissions!

Though the contest results were later published in the magazine, only the first-prize-winning story was published on their online companion site. So after all the dust had settled, I still did not have the story published, and the money only compensated for all of my expenses in the first place.

If I were you, I would still write my heart out, but I would also approach any of these fees with trepidation.

What do you think?

 

Photo credit: aaronmcintyrephotography / Foter / CC BY

Judging Books by Their Titles

August 21, 2013 0 General Advice, Modern Writer v1.0 , , , , Permalink 0

Banned Books Week Banner

It probably goes without saying that strong titles are absolutely necessary to catch the attention of editors and readers alike.

A while ago, I read somewhere that people purchase books after first studying their covers and then reading their titles. (Though this doesn’t account for the power of positive reviews and word of mouth!)

If you’re like me, you probably spend a lot of time worrying about the titles of your stories/books. And it seems like every writer approaches titles a little differently: Some will create a title from the very beginning of a new writing project; it just comes to them. Others will wait until the project is completed.

I fall into the latter category. I hardly ever have the foresight to name my work before it’s finished.

Here are a few of my thoughts on this tricky business:

  1. List all of your favorite titles from your favorite authors. Analyze what they have in common. See if you can find patterns to steal. More than likely, each title uses active, specific language. You should, too! (I particularly like titles from Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami.)
  2. If you’re having real trouble naming your story/book, it could be that it just isn’t quite finished yet. Generally, when a story knows itself, it’s easier to name.
  3. Scan your work for a line or phrase that you could use as a title. Listen to what your characters say or think.
  4. Your title should give a hint as to what it is about, but it should also give a slight indicator of its tone. The most important aspect, though, is its ability to intrigue readers.
  5. Sometimes editors will rename your book to something that has more promise of selling.
  6. On a similar note, short story collections are not always titled by the best story in the collection. I used to spend lots of time analyzing title choices of some of these books, only to hear authors uncandidly confess that weaker stories often supplied a collection its title just because it sounded cool.

For an alternative approach to titling a book, you can also use Lulu’s Titlescorer. It will score the likelihood of commercial success for your book by referencing data from past bestsellers’ titles. (Although I’ve played around with this, and some of my favorite books fail to score well by its standards.)

So how about it? Do you place a high importance on titles for your work, or the books that you read? What are some of your favorite book titles? Please send me a comment or two below, and thank you for reading.

Write your heart out!

 

Photo credit: DML East Branch / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Formatting Your Fiction Manuscript for Publication

July 31, 2013 0 Submitting Your Work , , , , Permalink 0

When the Moon Breaks DownA lot of you may not know this, but many moons ago, before I ever began teaching English, I dabbled in editing as a possible career.

I worked for three literary magazines: I was an intern for Swink, a fiction editor for Willow Springs, and the editor for Inroads.

From being on the other side of the publishing spectrum, I’ve compiled a list of tips to help give you the best possible chance of receiving a fair read.

How you format your manuscript is certainly one of these tips.

I want you to imagine that you are part of an editorial staff. Your job as a reader is to sift through the slush pile of submissions. (“Slush” refers to anything unsolicited.) You might have a specific quota per week–say fifty manuscripts. After reading manuscripts for some time, you eventually find yourself skimming them, searching for reasons to give a rejection, thereby allowing you to move on to the next submission in your ever-growing stack of slush.

My point is: Although formatting may not be an egregious error, it can give the editor a negative impression before she/he ever begins to read your first paragraph, and that negative impression will, more often that not, prove fatal.

Think of this process as selecting your outfit for a job interview. The way you present your manuscript can tell a lot about you as a writer, both good and bad. If you show little attention to detail while formatting, chances are, you’ll show little attention to detail with your story. And that signals danger to any reader.

Most magazines will have specific submission guidelines that the staff would like you to follow. However, these guidelines are relatively standard:

  1. Use Microsoft Word, or any similar word processing program, to create a .doc or .docx file.
  2. Use 1″ margins.
  3. Double-space the entire document.
  4. Use 12 pt. Times New Roman.
  5. Include your approximate word count on your first page.
  6. Include your contact information on the first page, too.
  7. Include your last name, title, and page number in the header of each following page.

(On a side note, some magazines only accept blind submissions. These magazines will instruct you to remove any identifiable personal information from the manuscript. This is usually to give the impression that the editorial staff is judging each submission purely off of its content, not your fame or network connections.)

I’ve provided a copy of my manuscript template for you to download below. Please feel free to use it when you submit your own work. I hope you find it helpful!

[wpdm_file id=2]

That’s it for now. Write your heart out!

 

Photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg / Foter.com / CC BY-SA

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