Jeremiah Tolbert

Where “per­fect cover let­ter” is to mean the cover let­ters that work best for me in my edi­to­r­ial capac­ity at Escape Pod.  I may very well con­tra­dict the writ­ten guide­lines of Escape Pod when I describe what I believe to be the per­fect cover let­ter for a mag­a­zine sub­mis­sion.  If my advice is fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent, I will get those updated.  Also, I have no idea what con­sti­tutes a good cover let­ter for sub­mit­ting your novel, but I imag­ine there are a lot of folks out there that can explain that to you.

So here is what I both put in my cover let­ters and what I would like to see in cover let­ters attached to sub­mis­sions I read, as well as some things I don’t want to see, and yet occa­sion­ally and most unfor­tu­nately do.

Do These Things

• Contact Information.  A no-​​brainer.  If we can’t write you back  to accept or reject your story, the whole process falls apart.
• A sub­ject line that starts with the word SUBMISSION: .  A lot of ran­dom junk can end up in the sub­mis­sions box.   Your story can eas­ily be mis­taken for that if you don’t put the word SUBMISSION in front of it.  This makes it eas­ier for us to sort, and any­thing that makes the editor’s job easy to do is some­thing you should do.
• A salu­ta­tion with the editor’s name.  When in doubt, pick the edi­tor in chief.  Do not address “Editor.”
• Here is the most cru­cial ele­ment that is often done badly.  A short one sen­tence list of recent pub­li­ca­tions, specif­i­cally any well known and accepted major pub­li­ca­tions.  This cor­re­lates mostly to pay, but some mar­kets have high pres­tige and lower pay. More on this in what not to do.
• I think it’s okay to men­tion if you’ve attended a major work­shop like Clarion.  It is a neu­tral point with me, maybe a slight pos­i­tive.  At the very least, it tells me you’re serious.
• For Escape Pod, where and when the story was orig­i­nally pub­lished.  We  do accept unpub­lished work, but think about your odds here.  Your story, which has not been tested, is going up against pretty much all the fic­tion that has ever been pub­lished, ever.  Originals are going to have to be really spe­cial.  Besides, we’re like free money if you crack a major mar­ket with a good story.  Selling to us first may pre­vent you from sell­ing to them later, but not vice versa.  We encour­age you to try print mar­kets before us.
• A quick thank you, sign off, whatever.
• Optional:  pro­vide me a con­text for who you are.  If we met at a con­ven­tion and shared a drink at the bar, it can’t hurt for you to remind me of that. It won’t nec­es­sar­ily help, but  it pro­vides a pos­i­tive context.

Don’t Do These Things

• Do not include a sum­mary of the story.  I don’t know who is teach­ing writ­ers to do this for short story mar­kets, but if you find out, tell them I said stop or I’ll kick them square in the kid­neys.  Nothing is a surer sign to me of a writer who doesn’t know what they are doing than when I open up an email and am pre­sented with a sum­mary of the story before read­ing it.  DO NOT DO THIS.
• I can­not stress this enough, but let me try.  DO NOT DO THIS. List every pub­li­ca­tion and every sale or credit to every for-​​the-​​love, semi-​​pro, and local news­pa­per pub­li­ca­tion that you have ever had.  Also every award nom­i­na­tion,   and that one time your mother gave you a com­pli­ment.  Remember here that  your cred­its bit should not be more than a para­graph.  If you have the cred­its to impress me, I most likely already know who you are and what you’ve pub­lished.  If you don’t have those cred­its, list­ing cred­its that I haven’t  heard of  does the oppo­site.  It’s the Bambi rule as applied to sub­mit­ting your work.  If you don’t have some­thing nice to say about your­self, omit it.  Here are the awards I care about:
  • Hugos
  • Nebulas
  • The Campbell
  • BSFA
  • That Canadian one
  • Writers of the Future, if it was actu­ally printed
• Do not include non­fic­tion cred­its.  Your abil­ity to write an arti­cle does not  tend to have much bear­ing on whether or not you can tell a good story.  Sorry, I don’t really need to know about non­fic­tion credits.
• Please do not tell me that this is your first sub­mis­sion ever or that you are unpub­lished.  If you leave out the cred­its bit, which you should if you have none, then you’re doing your­self a favor.  We know what it means, but it doesn’t draw as much atten­tion to itself as when you state it.  I am a con­scious and a sub­con­scious crea­ture, and I don’t want that knowl­edge influ­enc­ing how I approach your story.  Because it is true:  if I have faith in you as a writer, I will come to your story with more faith, and will be will­ing to look past a few early mis­takes to see where the story goes.  With writ­ers who are still green, those early mis­takes are not likely to be over­come later in the story.

And Now, The Truth

Some edi­tors will tell you that they don’t read cover let­ters at all, or at least until they have already read the story to the point of mak­ing a deci­sion.  I used to be in the for­mer camp.  I read them now at Escape Pod because I am look­ing to sort out and pare down my back­log quickly.  I search cover let­ters for pub­li­ca­tions in major pro­fes­sional venues, from authors who work I am famil­iar with, in order to set them aside for later read­ing.  Does this help them get pub­lished in Escape Pod?  Not as much as you might think.  Just because Stan Schmidt liked a story doesn’t mean I will.  And cer­tainly vice-versa–I have the rejec­tions to prove it.

Cover let­ters are the very first impres­sion your story makes on me.  I would like to say that I take each story as it is, but cover let­ters in all hon­esty can do three things.

• No influ­ence.  A neu­tral cover let­ter.  This is what you should aim for.  Informational.
• Hopeful.   You’re a vet­eran of the field and this story was nom­i­nated for the Nebula last year.  I will admit to being hope­ful about the story.
• Discouraged.  You’ve botched the cover let­ter so badly, so I don’t have much hope that you’re going to nail the story itself.

Yes, we are influ­enced by a bad cover let­ter.  And we get excited about cred­its from big­ger mar­kets.  But none of these are the sole basis of how we judge your sub­mis­sion.  We still read the story, or as much of it as we need to anyway.

Remember that it never counts against you to just leave them off entirely (but please still include the con­tact infor­ma­tion).  When I was just start­ing out, I didn’t even write a cover let­ter until I had a few sales from mar­kets the edi­tors would know.  Then I started includ­ing my very short cover letter.

So I hope that’s proved a lit­tle use­ful.  What do you think about cover let­ters?   Have you had good or  bad expe­ri­ences with them?  If you’re an edi­tor, feel free to point out in the com­ments where we dis­agree.  I don’t really pro­pose the above as th

You have the rest of today to hit me up with ques­tions over on Tuesday’s post.  I’ll be announc­ing the win­ner of the copy of Federations on Monday.

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