Fiction Submission Guidelines:
How to Write a Cover Letter
Last update: 25 March 2012
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. Most of the time, a cover letter is useful 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. Note that self-published material doesn't count as a credit in this context; it doesn't show that a professional liked your work.
- Mention any relevant credits or expertise you might have, but limit the list to your most important four or five 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. Avoid overly wordy sentences; for example, instead of saying things like "I hope that you will see fit to expend some of your valuable time on reading and considering and accepting the story that I enclose herein for your consideration for publication in your magazine Strange Horizons," you can just say "Please consider my story."
- Proofread your cover letter. Did you spell your name correctly? Did you spell our names correctly?
- SH only: Address your cover letter to all of the current fiction editors rather than just one of us, and don't imply that we're all male. In particular, don't use "Dear Mr. Hartman" or "Dear Sirs" as a salutation. Also, don't address your cover letter to Niall Harrison, who is not a fiction editor. And remember that chances are good that your story will be read by a First Reader instead of an editor. The following salutations (among others) are fine:
- "Dear Editors" (this is the one we prefer)
- "To Whom It May Concern"
- "Dear Brit Mandelo, Julia Rios, and Jed Hartman"
- "Dear Ms. Mandelo, Ms. Rios, and Mr. Hartman".
- "Greetings"
- There are plenty of other acceptable options.
- It's also fine to leave off the salutation entirely.
- SH only: Don't use curved or slanted quotation marks or apostrophes in your cover letter. (We'll probably see them as gibberish.) 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; like most editors of short sf, we 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 usually don't read the cover letter until after we've read the story. This is another reason that cover letters are generally unnecessary.
- 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