You’ve written, revised, and formatted a speculative short story, and you’re getting ready to send it off to your list of publication venues that you think might be interested in publishing your work. You look at the submission guidelines page for the first venue on your list and your heart sinks when you see the words “cover letter”.
Luckily for you, writing cover letters for submissions to the markets that publish short-form speculative fiction is delightfully simple. SF magazine editors generally want to see cover letters that are brief and to the point; the general expectation here is that the story itself should be all the editors need to read in order to make their decision about whether or not they want to publish it.
As an aside, I’m speaking here both as a writer who has sold a fair number of stories to a fair number of different short story markets and as someone who volunteers on an SF magazine’s reading team, where I have access to the cover letters included with story submissions. The advice in this post is based both on my own research into what SF magazine editors expect to see in a short story cover letter and what I, when reading story submissions, do and do not want to see. You can find other (and mostly quite similar) advice from SF writer and editor Alex Schvartsman, SF writer and editor Kel Coleman, iconic SF magazine Strange Horizons, and editor and industry icon Neil Clarke.
First of all: Read the magazine’s guidelines carefully before you submit! Some editors expect to see specific information in a cover letter. If that’s the case, they will tell you. Always go with what the editors ask for over any kind of more general advice. This post is to help you out when the editors don’t say what they want to see in a cover letter, in which case my advice should stand you in reasonably good stead.
When I’m submitting my own stories to SF magazines, I nearly always use the same cover letter template. Having a file with template cover letters and bios allows me to save time—and submission process angst—by simply copying the template, pasting it into the submission form or email, and editing slightly to tailor it to the specific venue to which I am submitting.
This is the current template I use for most submissions:
Dear [editor-in-chief’s full name(s)] and [Magazine Name] editorial team,
Please consider my short story “insert title here” (genre, 0,000 words).
My fiction has appeared in [Insert most relevant previous publication venue], [second most relevant], [third most relevant], and more.
Thank you for taking the time to read my work.
Sincerely,
Ariel Marken Jack
Note that this template is short. Note also that it does not contain a summary of the story, an author bio, or a full list of everything I have ever published. I will only include those details if a specific venue asks for them in their submission guidelines. Otherwise, they’re information that isn’t necessary, and cover letters should only contain information that is necessary. The sooner your cover letter ends, the sooner an editor can get to reading your story.
So, what does my template cover letter contain? And why?
First off, addressing the editor in chief by name (and listing the title of the magazine or anthology I want them to consider my work for) makes it clear that I have at least taken a cursory glance around the website of the venue I’m hoping will publish my work. This offers a tiny bit of hope that I have familiarized myself with the magazine and what they like to publish. I always use the editor’s full name as listed on the magazine’s masthead or about page and avoid using titles or honorifics unless the guidelines provide the title an editor prefers; this allows me to avoid the risk of making an incorrect guess about someone’s gender or general preferences, which means I can avoid causing accidental offence. Most editors are also fine with “Dear Editors,” but I like to be specific.
Including the title, genre, and an accurate word count of my story is also important. Including the title helps a team keep track of what they’re reading, which can be more helpful than you might think when navigating a sea of submissions. Including the genre (say, “dark fantasy” or “science fiction” or “body horror”) can help when assigning submissions to a specific member of the reading team (“oh, I’ll forward this to Ariel, they love body horror and I know one of our other team members hates it“). It can also be helpful, if you’re submitting a story with speculative elements that don’t start showing in the first few paragraphs, to let the magazine know that it is going to turn out to be a speculative story. Including the word count is also helpful, because it lets the editors know that you’ve read their guidelines for how long—or short—a story they can accept.
When it comes to listing my previous publications, I change those up depending on what magazine I am currently submitting a story to. If I’m submitting to a horror magazine, I’ll make sure they know I’ve been published by PseudoPod and Cursed Morsels Press. If I’m submitting fantasy, I’ll list Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Strange Horizons. If I’m submitting science fiction, I’ll list Dark Matter Magazine and Fusion Fragment. (And if I’m submitting to a Canadian literary magazine that isn’t necessarily going to be intrigued by genre fiction publications, I’ll list Prairie Fire and The New Quarterly.) It’s completely fine if you don’t have any relevant previous publications, or even any previous publications at all; plenty of magazine editors are happy to be the first to publish a new author, and we all understand that everyone has to start their publishing journey somewhere. Not having impressive lists of publications is not going to prevent your story from being accepted if it’s a good story and a good fit for a magazine’s current needs. Listing a few previous publications, if you have them, just lets the readers know that you have a little bit of previous experience working with editors and are keen to do so again (and, if the person reading your submission really loves your story, they might personally want to know where they can read more of your work; people who read submissions for SF magazines mostly do it because they love reading SF). Listing all of your publications, especially if you have a lot of them, can be a lot more to read than someone who is reading hundreds of submissions wants to spend time on—time they could be spending on reading the story you hope they will publish—so it’s best to be selective and just include your three most relevant credits.
Beyond that, it’s just a bit of politeness—thanking the readers for their time and consideration—and reminding them of the name attached to your submission in case for some reason the file situation gets a bit chaotic.
Now, what do I include when the guidelines do ask for a bio to be included in the cover letter? Once again, templates to the rescue! My submission file includes templates for bios as well as cover letters, and, once again, I just copy, paste, and edit as needed, using the bio to replace the section where I would otherwise include my top three relevant publications (as those are now included in the bio):
Dear [editor-in-chief’s full name(s)] and [Magazine Name] editorial team,
Please consider my short story “insert title here” (genre, 0,000 words).
My biographical information is as follows:
Ariel Marken Jack lives in Nova Scotia. Their fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Dark Matter Magazine, Prairie Fire, PseudoPod, Strange Horizons, and more. They curate #sfstoryoftheday, review short-form speculative fiction for Fusion Fragment, and muse about food and death in SF for Psychopomp.com. Find their work at arielmarkenjack.com.
Thank you for taking the time to read my work.
Sincerely,
Ariel Marken Jack
Again, I’ll edit specific details in the bio to tailor it to a particular magazine. I may change out the list of publication credits to be more relevant, include my pronouns if the guidelines request them, or use a shorter or longer bio. If the guidelines don’t state a preferred word count, I use the 50 word template in the example above, but I keep up-to-date templates for 25, 50, and 75 word bios so it’s easy to switch them out as needed. The important things are to include other publications you want the magazine or its readers (if they end up accepting and publishing your work) to know about, any other relevant work you do, and where to find you online if you have an online presence you’d like readers to find.
Notice that I don’t generally include my contact information in the cover letter. This is mostly because, unless it’s specifically requested in the guidelines that contact info be included in the cover letter, it’s probably redundant. My email address is going to be at the top of the story manuscript file I submit. If I’m submitting to a magazine that uses a submission management platform like Moksha or Submittable, I’ll be pasting my cover letter into a form that has a separate field for contact information. If I’m submitting to a magazine that accepts submissions through email, they’ll have my email address both on the manuscript and attached to the email I sent. This should be all the magazine reading team needs in order to contact you about your story submission. I don’t include a mailing address or phone number—even though some outdated submission guides recommend doing so—because editors simply should not need that information in order to decide whether or not they want to publish my story. Many SF magazines publish entirely online and pay writers via PayPal, so there is no reason they ever need to know where you live (beyond, maybe, the country you live in, which some magazines may need to know because their funding sources require them to publish mostly authors from within the country where the magazine is based—this is common for Canadian magazines that are funded by government arts grants). If they do publish a print edition or and will send you a free contributor copy of the issue your story is in, or they pay by cheque, they will ask for your mailing address in the contract and payment stage or when they are ready to start mailing out contributor copies. Protect your privacy and don’t tell strangers on the internet where you live unless there ends up being a valid reason to do so! You also don’t need to include your legal name on a submission unless it is the name you publish your stories under; if you publish under a pen name or you haven’t been able to change your deadname yet legally, you can just use your pen name when you submit and only give out your legal name if your story is accepted and you need to sign a contract.
It’s important to remember that my way is not the only way to write a good cover letter. You’ll find your own preferences as you submit more work and figure out how exactly you want to present yourself to editors and readers. Hopefully this advice will give you some courage if you’ve been struggling with what to say cover letters. Now, it’s time to go submit some stories. Get your work out there, and please drop me a line through my contact form when your stories get published; I’d love to add them to the #sfstoryoftheday reading list!