Fiction Submission Guidelines:
How to Write a Cover Letter
Last update: 19 February, 2008
There's a lot of confusion among authors about what to include in a cover letter when submitting short sf.
You don't need to include a cover letter at all. A cover letter is usually necessary only if you have relevant credits to briefly mention.
But if you do decide to include a cover letter, here are some guidelines. Most of these apply to all cover letters for short speculative fiction, submitted anywhere, but a few are relevant only to SH.
- The main purpose of a cover letter is to tell the editors about relevant "credits"—that is, validation your work has received from qualified people in the field. In addition to story sales, "credits" can include such things as participation in respected workshops, membership in respected professional organizations, or representation by a respected agent; in all of those cases, a credit indicates that respected professionals (such as editors, writers, or agents) think well of your work.
- Mention any relevant credits or expertise you might have, but limit the list to your most important five or six items. And that's usually all that should be in the cover letter. See below for examples.
- If you don't have any credits, don't explicitly tell us that you don't have any credits. Remember, you don't need to include a cover letter at all.
- Be as brief as possible. The longer the cover letter, the greater the chance that it will include embarrassing mistakes.
- Speaking of embarrassing mistakes, please proofread your cover letter. Did you spell your name correctly? Did you spell our names correctly?
- SH only: Address your cover letter to all three of us editors rather than to just one of us. "Dear Editors" is the salutation we prefer. "Dear Susan Marie Groppi, Jed Hartman, and Karen Meisner" is also acceptable, as is "Dear Ms. Groppi, Mr. Hartman, and Ms. Meisner". Don't use "Dear Sirs," because two of us are female. Don't use "Dear Mr. Hartman," because chances are two out of three that another editor will read your submission.
- SH only: Don't use curved or slanted quotation marks or apostrophes in your cover letter. Just use plain typewriter-style straight up-and-down quotation marks and apostrophes. (To avoid having your word processor automatically change the quotation marks, you may have to turn off the "smart quotation marks" or "curved quotation marks" or "autocorrect quotation marks" or "quickcorrect" option in your word processor before typing your cover letter. The option may have a different name; if you're not sure how to turn it off, check your word processor's help system.)
- Don't include information about your story's plot or theme or even genre in your cover letter; editors of short sf prefer stories to speak for themselves.
- Don't praise your story in your cover letter, or otherwise attempt to convince us to buy it. Also, of course, don't denigrate your story or otherwise give us reasons not to buy it, no matter how tempting that is.
- Don't tell us what rights you're offering; if you're submitting to us, we assume that you're offering the rights that we buy. (Which are first-printing English-language world exclusive rights for two months.)
- Don't tell us about your family, your age, your education, or your hobbies unless they're relevant to the story.
- Don't tell us how many unpublished novels you've written. Writing novels and sending them to an agent or publisher is not a credit; it's only a credit if the novel is accepted for representation or publication.
- If you have questions, please email us a query rather than including your questions in the cover letter.
- Bear in mind that we often don't read cover letters until after we've read the story.
- Also bear in mind that if we publish your story, our readers won't see your cover letter, so don't rely on the cover letter to convey essential information about the story.
Here's an example of a good cover letter:
Dear Editors, Please consider the following story. My fiction has appeared in _Asimov's_, _F&SF_, _Realms of Fantasy_, _New Squid Review_, and the Zloty Press anthology _The Zloty Chronicles_. Sincerely, Jane Zloty
Here's another example of a good (though unnecessary) cover letter:
Dear Editors, Please consider the following story. Sincerely, Jane Zloty