John Joseph Adams, the Slush God (erstwhile assistent editor at the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction [F&SF]) provided a post recently discussing a submission he received for F&SF. You see, instead of following instructions like these from William Shunn, the person felt they could do their own thing with the submission. Things like:
[I]t was full of red, white, and blue stars, which got all over the place when I opened the envelope.
Not a good idea. You need to think of sending in a submission like a job interview. You wouldn't walk into an interview and throw a handful of confetti all over the person, would you? F&SF has pretty clear submission guidelines. Nowhere in them does it state that the editors would like a handful of confetti with the story.
I'll never understand why, 1) authors don't follow the guidelines put forth by the publication, and 2) authors want to question guidelines. The guidelines are there to make sure you have the minimum sense of following instructions. Should an editor like your story, most likely you will have to follow more instructions before the story is published. Instructions such as editorial notes where the editor tells you what problems to fix in your story. Don't take it personally. Everyone needs editing, and I mean everyone.
You'll hopefully see a set of page proofs to make sure there are no errors in the final form of the manuscript, and the editor will give a deadline to turn those in. Ignore the deadline instructions, and that egregious error you discovered will not get fixed. If the editor wants the manuscript set in Courier, do it. Not doing so gives the editor an easy way to say no to your submission.
You think this doesn't happen on the job front? If the job ad says send in your resume, salary history, and three references, and you only send in the resume, you won't get called. You've already shown that you can't complete a task set forth by the company. A simple task at that. If you can't follow the job application instructions, why would you be able to perform any of the tasks associated with the job?
Here is a quick list of don'ts when it comes to submissions: don't send your submissions set in cute typefaces or any typeface different from what the editor asks for (unsure, use Courier), don't send your submissions on funny colored paper, don't ask if you can e-mail a submission when the guidelines say they don't accept e-mail submission (I guarantee the editor will remember your name when and if you mail in the submission), and finally, don't send confetti, prizes, toys, food, or anything other than a cover letter and SASE with your submission.
The editor already has limited space for fiction, don't give him or her easy (and stupid) reasons to toss your submission in the trash.
John Klima
Editor
Electric Velocipede
Tags: submission guidelines, science fiction, Slush God, instructions
writers, writing, publishing, zine
3 comments:
Tell it, John.
Ah, if only you could tattoo these things upon a writer's forehead.
When I was working at Del Rey, they used to receive some of the most bizarre unsolicited manuscript submissions ever. Once, a feller sent baby-back ribs with the manuscript, paacked in dry ice. Just nuts!
I'm stealing this from Anna Louise, but here's her thoughts on this:
"I used to keep track of all my submissions. Date opened, first and last name of author, title, whether or not it was agented -- and then date of rejection, whether or not I used a form letter. There was also a "notes" field. I stopped keeping track around Dec. 05 -- it just took up so much freaking time to enter all the submissions into the database. It took almost more time than I would spend reading the freaking submission.
"But since these submissions were from back when I used the database, I went and looked. Every single one of those submissions had been sent without an SASE.
"If you're reading this, people who submitted without an SASE, you can go hang. Especially if you're one of the two people who actually sent their queries about status without an SASE."
JK
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