Co-Opting Political Space with Technical Minutia About Writing. Plus, a PodCaslte Plug.

Always been curious about how to write a cover letter when you’re submitting a piece of fiction or poetry? Search no longer, for your primer has arrived.

Actually, this is a good time to — once again — plug PodCastle, the world’s first audio fantasy magazine. I am the editor who does story selection for the podcast, and we’re interested in your fantasy stories. If they reflect your feminist beliefs, so much the better. We’re also explicitly interested in stories by non-white writers, writers who are poor, writers of color, and queer writers.

We accept submissions at submit@podcastle.org. We’re mostly a reprint market, like our sister podcast Escape Pod which publishes primarily science fiction. We do accept original fiction, though. (Shout out: Mythago, I hope to see your name pop up in our slush sometime!)

We already have some great stuff on tap, including work by Peter Beagle of The Last Unicorn, a California fairy tale by Benjamin Rosenbaum, and a dark story about torture from the usually light-hearted Sarah Prineas. If you’ve got questions about the magazine, I’ll be happy to answer them for you.

Now, onto my formula for writing cover letters:

On another blog, I recently read a plea for a formula for cover letters.

For something that I don’t think is very complicated, cover letters seem to cause some people an enormous amount of grief. I hear people say that they don’t send things out because they’re afraid of writing cover letters. At PodCastle, about 75% of the cover letters we receive are unprofessional.

This is the template I use for writing cover letters. It’s not the only functional template out there, but it’s one that works:

Dear [Mr./Ms. Editor’s Last Name (if you can’t tell the editor’s gender from hir name it’s okay to write Dear Pat Last Name),]

Please find [attached/enclosed/below] my [word count] short story, “[Title].”

I am a student at [applicable creative writing program] and a graduate of [applicable writing workshop]. My work has appeared in “Recognizable Market #1,” “Distinguished Market #2,” and “Semi-Pro Zine #3.”

Thank you for your consideration,

[Author’s name]
[Address]
[phone number]
[e-mail]

If you aren’t a graduate of or student at a prestigious writing school or workshop, omit that sentence. If you aren’t published in respectable markets, omit that sentence. If you have relevant and recognizable awards (for instance the Asimovs Dell Youth award), add in a sentence about those.

If you are an unpublished author with no student credits, don’t feel ashamed to send in a cover letter that reads:

Dear [Appropriate honoriffic] [Editor’s Last Name,]

Please find [attached] my [2,000] word short story, “[Stitch in Time].”

Thank you for your consideration,

[author info]

If you can’t find the editor’s name after searching high and low, it’s okay to write Dear Editor. If there are multiple editors, it’s often better to address them as Dear Editors rather than listing all their last names. (I believe the Strange Horizons editors prefer to be addressed together as “Dear Editors.”)

Donts:

• Don’t be chatty, unless you know the editor or are genuinely building up a relationship with them. It’s okay to note “We met at Wiscon, and you asked me to send you any material I had in stock.” If this is your fifth sub, and the editor’s giving you personal responses, it’s probably okay to include a joke. If you have something you’re bursting to say (like “I recently read every back issue of your magazine, and I think the stories you publish are ducky”) confine it to a brief sentence or two. A P.S. is a good place to include this sort of thing.
• Don’t include more than three credits. I know you’re proud, and congratulations on being prolific and published, but if you include more than three credits, you come off as trying too hard.
• It does you no good to be affiliated with a disreputable market (this includes most, but not all, non-paying markets). If you’ve just made your first sale to someplace with a poor reputation, it’s okay to include one crappy credit (IMO). But under no circumstances — even if someone is holding a gun to your head while you write your letter, and despite your mother’s entreaties and the swelling of pride that’s inflated your head to fifty times normal size — never, ever, ever, list more than three crappy credits. We sometimes receive cover letters listing fifty prior publications, of which I’ve heard of — say — two. With rare exceptions, these cover letters are attached to the worst submissions in the slush, submissions that are much worse than those of unpublished authors with no credits. If your cover letter might be read as if you’re compensating for something, you probably are. There’s no need to broadcast that to me in your cover letter.

  Honestly, I include this list item because of the rare exceptions to this rule. It sucks when your cover letter is broadcasting you as less accomplished than you actually are.

A few controversial points:

• I say include Clarion, Clarion West, etc. Other people say don’t. It probably doesn’t ultimately matter, except that there are markets that give an automatic pass through the slush to people who have attended relevant workshops.
• Some people say not to include credits that are down-level from the magazine you’re submitting to — e.g. if submitting to F&SF, don’t include credits from any market except for its peers, such as Asimov’s or Analog. I don’t agree with this. For one thing, there are many scales of reckoning. In some circumstances, a Lady Churchill’s credit can be more prestigious than an F&SF credit. Rather than fiddling around with a hierarchy, in my opinion you should include credits you feel proud of, and expect to still be proud of in five years.

As to whether cover letters are important or not — of course they’re only infinitessimally important compared to the story itself. Still, they give me a broader context for understanding your work and remembering you. They also give me a signal about your professionality. There *is* a correlation between professional cover letters and quality of work, and it would be silly for any writer not to be as professional as possible in all areas of their working life.