Jeremy's Submissions Tip: Summarizing Your Story?

We see a lot of submissions at the FB that summarize the story in the body of the email. I recommend against this. We don't call for it in our guidelines, and all I can think is that there is some writing advice out there that suggests this. I personally can't think of a speculative fiction magazine that does ask for this, and I find it rarely makes me more interested in reading the story when I am the editor. In my opinion, the story should stand on its own.

For us, the cover letter should be nothing more than your name, the story name and word length, your contact information including email address, and finally, a short bio that should be written not with the editors as the audience, but for use on our website should we buy your story.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section. Next time, I'll talk about the pros and cons of listing credits in the cover letter.

Posted by JeremyT at October 7, 2004 04:24 PM