I’m going to astonish everyone today by posting a few serious notes on how not to submit a story to a magazine or anthology. There will be a distinctly low level of the usual sarcasm, irony or outright lies. Nor will I suggest that anyone should give up hope and consider a career in plastering. Besides, high quality plastering is quite difficult.

Do I have any justification for my comments? The answer is a resounding Possibly. I sell the majority of my own story submissions (a statement which will inevitably result in a string of dismissive outright rejections) – and then there’s the process of long-listing for a magazine, which has highlighted a lot of simple problems that others face.

Sam Gafford and I, with two or three experienced readers backing us, are currently long-listing for Occult Detective Quarterly. I come from a professional background in medical/social research, and I’m used to technical submissions, report-writing, journals and that sort of thing. I also edit anthologies. But selecting and editing such large amounts of pure fiction as a magazine receives has been a different experience (though I also have a background in specialist society magazines and fanzines, so have had some exposure).

What I offer today is meant to be helpful. No-one gets it right the first time. And this piece isn’t aimed at the old experienced hacks who drink a bottle of bourbon, write a story and despatch it the same evening – unless they post the bourbon bottle by accident. But you might want to think about the following points if you’re just getting into the Dreadful Game and have other submission calls coming up. Most things can be learned – if you’re willing to learn, and don’t merely set your teeth stubbornly on the principle that others don’t understand you. Which they don’t, of course…

1) The Covering Letter

Succinct and professional. That’s what most editors want, unless they’ve expressly asked for something else. The following are NOT terribly appropriate, even if they seemed like a good idea at the time:

1. Detailed listings of all the publications in which you’ve appeared for the last five years, and all the awards, minor or otherwise, that you’ve garnered. A letter where the editors have lost the will to live before they even get to your submission is a Bad Idea. Keep your publication history, if you are going to include it, down to a single line or two giving the highlights or general feel of what you’ve done in the past – if it’s relevant.
2. E-mail cover letters that are peppered with inserted signatures, blurbs, images and tag-lines proclaiming your experience or talent. They risk being annoying as the editors try to find the actual cover text, and they distract from your story. A single tag-line is better. Or nothing.
3. Jocular cover letters that try to draw the editors in. They almost always come over as naff, rather than the friendly, trying-to-establish-a-relationship thing that you intended. Only do this if you are well-acquainted with the editors, and even then, probably Don’t Do It. Not in the first covering letter.
4. Don’t sound desperate or doubtful about your work. I have on one or two occasions fired off a letter which said that my submission might not be up their alley, but I have never questioned the quality of what I sent. That’s up to others to decide if you’re expecting them to pay money for your story. If you express self-doubt straight away, you’re not inspiring confidence.
5. On the same theme, don’t write anything which points out how good your story is, or how much the editors will value it. The knee-jerk reaction is to bin it, on the grounds that it’s the editors’ job to find out if your story works for them.
6. Multiple hyperlinks or attachments which risk confusing the editors as to where the actually submission is – not useful. Ideally there should be no links except perhaps one to your author website/blog, which is usually OK to include (if you have such a thing),  and one attachment – your story.

2) The Submission

There are so many ways to go wrong here. Some points need highlighting.

1. The editors’ preference on document type means something. If they say they want a particular type of attachment – .doc, .docx, .rtf and so on – that’s what they want. Don’t ever send your story in another format – it may be thrown away unread.
2. Stated story length, as in a range (e.g. 2500 to 4000 words) means what it says. Some editors will take queries, and may even say “Ask if outside this range”, but never randomly fire off a submission with the wrong word count without checking first. This may also mean ‘straight in the bin’.
3. Weird or ‘stylish’ fonts – Don’t. A simple, readable serif or sans-serif font, preferably from the pool of commonly used fonts, is what the editors will want. Serif usually works best for continuous flow at this stage. Downloading font-packs or peering at artistic squiggles are not high on the editors’ list.
4. Over-formatting the text to produce effects isn’t always helpful at the reading stage. Strange blocks of words and unusual indents don’t make reading any easier – unless you have a Very Good Reason for having them.
5. Don’t make simultaneous submissions, unless the guidelines specifically say this is allowed. I love the theory of simultaneous submissions as a writer, because it speeds things up. I dislike it as an editor, because there are so many stories to be read. For the editors, a story that they read, consider seriously and is then withdrawn is a wasted time-slot in an exacting process.
6. If there is a specific theme for the magazine or anthology, read the theme notes three times. Even write them out on a piece of paper, until you have them embedded in your subconscious. Then take that story you already have which might sort of fit, if the editors don’t notice, and have a quiet chat with yourself. Is this actually what the editors asked for? Or is this you trying to shift a tale you already had that was meant for a quite different theme? You might get away with it, but often such tales stick out like sore thumbs with the hands and arms still attached.

And by the way, don’t query excitedly about your submission a few days after a deadline. Most publications will suggest an appropriate point at which to ask. That may be after a month, or after three months. All that early queries do is add to the editors’ workload and slow the whole decision-making process down.

You can disagree violently with the above. You can ignore it all if you want. There will always be one writer who sent a joky letter with a quickly rewritten story that was the wrong length, and still had the editors captivated. There will rarely be two.

And if you want a more robust and peculiar guide to writing, then go to our usual style of post, our occasional series How to be a Best-selling Author (as in July’s  how to be a best-selling author part two). But don’t take those too seriously, for goodness sake.

Back in a couple of days with a super interview with Jeffrey Shanks of the new Skelos Magazine, and then more folk-lore, longdogs and weird fiction features. The pain, the pain it never ends, aieee…