As a lit mag editor I agree that no one should spend too much time on their cover letter. Our decision is made solely on the work. Tell us some basics so we know you’re a real person not a troll. If the story would be your debut, let us know so we nominate you for prizes correspondingly. That said, I do appreciate the author mentioning that Submittable has retired that cover letter template feature because I was wondering why my template couldn’t populate in the submission form!
Thanks for providing the editor's perspective Claire. Sometimes I do wonder if the formality and speed of my letters detract from the authenticity. Does that come into play at all for you as either editor or submitter?
As a submitter I do the minimum like many others have shared: who I am; where I have been published; story title and the word count; polite appreciation for editor’s time and that’s it! As an editor I do get annoyed by pretentious cover letters that try too hard and 10 out of 10 times the work is not great either. But this is just me! It also depends on the journal’s style. There are journals that straight out say don’t tell us where you have published. Tell us about your dog!
We don't even have a field in our submission system for cover letters. They're unnecessary and besides, I read all work anonymously. If I want to publish the piece, great. I'll fire up an email and we'll get some communication going. The criteria ought to be the work itself, not the contents of a cover letter.
I don't worry much about cover letters anymore. If I have a relationship or invitation to send more there's a bit of personalization. Otherwise, it's a thanks for time/consideration and cut & paste my 3rd person bio. Life is so much easier this way!
Yep, I've been doing that for years. Since I write poetry, short fiction, novels, essays, and novels I have a bio for each. This is why I get so irritated with agents who don't respond to queries. I think that is SO rude. All they'd need to do is create a letter that stays on their desktop.
I don't worry about cover letters. Mine are brief and to the point. It would be so great if pubs omitted them altogether. Some do, and I say from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU!
Look at the work being submitted, not whether the author addressed the cover letter just right or didn't include a piece of info. If you want the work, that information can come later.
If you're responding to a previous communication, then a cover letter might be okay. But we still have email and it still gets messages from one person to another.
My reaction to the request for a cover letter is, "Now I have to compose a cover letter/bio, too? What the heck should I tell 'em?" Thank you, Arthur, for your guidance through this mystery.
It looks like you were using a normal Word .docx file as a template. If you create a proper Word template (.dotx file), you can then create a .docx based on that template in File + New from Template (everything in template will be copied to a new document), so you can’t accidentally edit the template. Similar approach with other word processors, eg, Pages.
Also, what about tucking that period inside the quote on the title? In your earlier efforts, you’ve got the comma inside, but it looks like you’ve gone British here.
Ah yes, the arcane magic of Word templates. It was at that point in my introductions to submitting that I truly started to lose eager writers to the nuances of their word processor. You're right though, that might be a better approach to a Word-based cover letter. Thank you for elaborating.
As long as we don't get into a war over it (ahem, Oxford commas)!
My urge is to not add options until they're painfully necessary, but I'll consider if automatically detecting the locale (e.g. en-US vs. en-GB) could be a better starting point than an additional decision for every cover letter writer to have to consider (or skip).
These days I pretty much just whip off the following:
Dear Editor(s) (and I often just leave that heading, especially if there are multiple editors)
Attached is my WORD COUNT GENRE/SUBGENRE story (where genre/subgenre relates to type of fiction), STORY TITLE, for your consideration.
(Any distinguishing characteristics of the story in one sentence)
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best,
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
SFWA member
Very few mags in the genre fiction space ask for a bio at initial submission, and I've moved beyond listing past submissions etc unless the guidelines specifically request it because the SFWA member (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) signoff *should* flag that I've sold enough work to be credible. In some cases they will ask for a separate 100 word bio to be attached, which I have ready to go and keep updated (you all ARE keeping that bio, right?).
Editors in speculative fiction also often state that they don't read the cover letter to begin with, especially if they're using the CWS or Moksha submission systems. It's just a basic transmittal letter.
Congrats on the SFWA membership! I'm still climbing that hill over piles of rejections :)
I do appreciate that CWS and Moksha seem to treat cover letters as less precious than Submittable.
On the flip side, email submissions almost imply the formality of a cover letter. I don't think I'd dash one off without some extra professionalism. What do you think?
(oh, and PS--I earned that SFWA membership from the self publication of what I call The Little Book That Could...what is now the second book of my Goddess's Honor series, but was the first book for years. That plus Kindle Vella sales/bonuses earned me the recognition. It's $1000 in lifetime earnings to qualify now.)
Honestly, from all I've seen and heard, this *is* a standard professional format, with any additions the guidelines might require. I've backed off on the bio/submission history piece unless specifically requested. Most editors I've talked to want to know the basics--length, genre/subgenre, and title, plus any personal information that might be relevant to the story. No more than that. Since I have a dubious credit--a semifinalist placement in Writers of the Future from years ago (2009)--I don't list that unless I know the market likes WotF. In any case, it's an older credit and not relevant for 2025.
And that closing "thank you" is absolutely necessary and professional. One thing to keep in mind (and this was what I was hearing even back in the days of paper submissions--I started in the '90s) is that the cover letter is, essentially, nothing more than a standard transmittal letter, not a sales document. I wrote plenty of those as a legal assistant, then as an administrative assistant, so for me it's pretty easy to do.
I have a Writers of the Future honorable mention I used to brag about (when my bio was sparse and my ego was younger)!
I like your tactic of omitting the bio until asked. If submission guidelines mention a cover letter, they tend to ask for a bio. But that may be my literary journal bias at play.
Yeah, I suspect that's a literary journal's bias. I've seen multiple genre editors say "no bio until we ask," so I don't mess with it.
I...also have two Honorable Mentions, plus a Finalist in another contest, plus being part of an IPPY Finalist anthology, plus a Self Published Fantasy BlogOff semifinalist, back before it was big (another thing the Little Book That Could did). None of them are particularly useful in citing in a cover letter *unless* the editor is known to be favorable (there are plenty for whom the WotF is not a good thing).
Thanks for sharing! I will take a closer look, though I'm much more familiar with fiction submissions. Combining multiple documents into one submission is an ongoing challenge in flash fiction as well, especially when the source and output is Word.
Interesting. It looks like it has some dependencies like Pandoc that would need to be installed. Anything else?
What about combining multiple Word .docx files instead of Markdown .md files? So convert each .docx file specified on command line to a temporary .md file, then combine them as now, then convert that to .docx and delete the temporary files.
I know some people really like to use Markdown, typically if they’ll be running their text into a blogging or CMS platform, but I would guess most people here do not use it for marking up their poems.
Aside from Pandoc, should just be standard tools: sed, xargs, and zip, at a glance. Pandoc can read .docx inputs directly; change “-f markdown+hard_line_breaks” to “-f docx”. But note that the titles need to have a header style for Pandoc to recognize them in a way that creates the proper page breaks.
Most people probably put one poem per doc, but in submitting normally have to create manually all these one-off docs containing more than one poem plus possibly cover info, page breaks, etc. Creates kind of a clutter, and these are docs that will probably never be looked at again except maybe to see what was submitted (but can get a copy from Submittable any time, right?).
I was always creating docs without putting the title in the doc, thinking that if wanted a different title all I had to do was change the doc file name — change in only one place, rather than two, right? Probably not really such a good idea, though, plus some characters like colon can’t be used in a file name, so there goes “Some Poem: An Epic.”
Is a CMS for poetry too wacky an idea? Right now, we generally use our file system and a bunch of poorly remembered steps for our workflow, as it were.
Frank, the file clutter you describe is what my submissions folders look like for flash fiction. But at least I have a copy I control of all those docs. In a pinch, I don't like relying on the whims of Submittable or email to download things.
Might you need those extra files again if you have to confirm what you're withdrawing (e.g. 2 poems accepted elsewhere out of a 5-poem submission, all in 1 file)?
Thanks for the tips. Very helpful. Maybe I missed it, but why do you put “FICTION EDITOR” and your “STORY TITLE” in all caps? And do you really need that line introducing your bio? I think a bio is immediately recognizable without any intro.
By "that line introducing your bio" do you mean "My third-person bio: " ? If so, the label establishes extra context on the left hand side, before I've written anything and may be answering multiple questions.
It's less important in the output on the right hand side—though I have seen some submission guidelines stress the third-person aspect of the bio. I kept it in, because I always felt odd re-reading a letter that switched from first-person to third-person.
Yes, that’s the line I’m referring to. Most lit mags expect the bio to be third person, so I don’t think you need to announce it as such. My two cents.
Good question Bruce. I haven't thought about that in a while. The ALL CAPS is a holdover from the Submittable and Word phases of my cover letter template. At a glance, it still reminds me there's something more to fill out (by yelling at me :)
Thank you for this! I am constantly sweating over the cover letters, which makes submitting them more of a chore. Simplifying the process is very helpful.
I do pay attention in the guidelines to what lit mags want in a cover letter. If they want a quick list of my work, I have a bio for the three most recent accpeted publications. If they want to know more about me in general, I have a bio for that. If no cover letter is required, great.
Sorry for starting another topic but has anyone been able to submit to HAD tonight? The call opens at 9PM. I clicked the link exactly at 9PM and it was full. Getting rejected is one thing, and not getting the chance to get rejected is another. Like they said, the journal "started as something of a joke". I don't want to waste my time on a joke. Unsubscribed.
cover letters are a waste of time. No one needs a summary or an answer to why you write. I think in today's world, they are superfluous. If it is a book- maybe a short summary helps- but not for poetry essays or short fiction!
I’ve never been asked why I write or answered that in a cover letter. I agree that would be superfluous. Letters are a formality required by some submission managers and guidelines. Why certain submissions and editors require them is a more interesting question.
As a lit mag editor I agree that no one should spend too much time on their cover letter. Our decision is made solely on the work. Tell us some basics so we know you’re a real person not a troll. If the story would be your debut, let us know so we nominate you for prizes correspondingly. That said, I do appreciate the author mentioning that Submittable has retired that cover letter template feature because I was wondering why my template couldn’t populate in the submission form!
Thanks for providing the editor's perspective Claire. Sometimes I do wonder if the formality and speed of my letters detract from the authenticity. Does that come into play at all for you as either editor or submitter?
As a submitter I do the minimum like many others have shared: who I am; where I have been published; story title and the word count; polite appreciation for editor’s time and that’s it! As an editor I do get annoyed by pretentious cover letters that try too hard and 10 out of 10 times the work is not great either. But this is just me! It also depends on the journal’s style. There are journals that straight out say don’t tell us where you have published. Tell us about your dog!
We don't even have a field in our submission system for cover letters. They're unnecessary and besides, I read all work anonymously. If I want to publish the piece, great. I'll fire up an email and we'll get some communication going. The criteria ought to be the work itself, not the contents of a cover letter.
That reminds me of editors who mention that they read the cover letter last, after the piece. But that makes me wonder why ask for a letter at all?
Regardless, if the field is there, and especially if a cover letter is mentioned in the guidelines, I add one.
So true. I hate every scenario where it needs a cover letter.
I don't worry much about cover letters anymore. If I have a relationship or invitation to send more there's a bit of personalization. Otherwise, it's a thanks for time/consideration and cut & paste my 3rd person bio. Life is so much easier this way!
Yep, I've been doing that for years. Since I write poetry, short fiction, novels, essays, and novels I have a bio for each. This is why I get so irritated with agents who don't respond to queries. I think that is SO rude. All they'd need to do is create a letter that stays on their desktop.
I don't worry about cover letters. Mine are brief and to the point. It would be so great if pubs omitted them altogether. Some do, and I say from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU!
Look at the work being submitted, not whether the author addressed the cover letter just right or didn't include a piece of info. If you want the work, that information can come later.
If you're responding to a previous communication, then a cover letter might be okay. But we still have email and it still gets messages from one person to another.
I agree. I miss the Submittable template. I keep a Word doc with a few variations on what I typically use.
Yes. I don't understand why Submittable stopped supporting that functionality!
Thanks for this. Really irked that Submittable got rid of that feature but this is a nice workaround
Thank you. I’m curious what other Submittable shortcomings will inspire :)
Ha! Indeed, yes! Keep those thoughts flowing Arthur!
My reaction to the request for a cover letter is, "Now I have to compose a cover letter/bio, too? What the heck should I tell 'em?" Thank you, Arthur, for your guidance through this mystery.
Happy to help & happy submitting!
Very nifty, Arthur.
It looks like you were using a normal Word .docx file as a template. If you create a proper Word template (.dotx file), you can then create a .docx based on that template in File + New from Template (everything in template will be copied to a new document), so you can’t accidentally edit the template. Similar approach with other word processors, eg, Pages.
Also, what about tucking that period inside the quote on the title? In your earlier efforts, you’ve got the comma inside, but it looks like you’ve gone British here.
Ah yes, the arcane magic of Word templates. It was at that point in my introductions to submitting that I truly started to lose eager writers to the nuances of their word processor. You're right though, that might be a better approach to a Word-based cover letter. Thank you for elaborating.
The period should be inside the quote. Sharp eye!
“Maybe an option for Punctuation: American/British. That would be hilarious to see that period jump back and forth.”
As long as we don't get into a war over it (ahem, Oxford commas)!
My urge is to not add options until they're painfully necessary, but I'll consider if automatically detecting the locale (e.g. en-US vs. en-GB) could be a better starting point than an additional decision for every cover letter writer to have to consider (or skip).
These days I pretty much just whip off the following:
Dear Editor(s) (and I often just leave that heading, especially if there are multiple editors)
Attached is my WORD COUNT GENRE/SUBGENRE story (where genre/subgenre relates to type of fiction), STORY TITLE, for your consideration.
(Any distinguishing characteristics of the story in one sentence)
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best,
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
SFWA member
Very few mags in the genre fiction space ask for a bio at initial submission, and I've moved beyond listing past submissions etc unless the guidelines specifically request it because the SFWA member (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) signoff *should* flag that I've sold enough work to be credible. In some cases they will ask for a separate 100 word bio to be attached, which I have ready to go and keep updated (you all ARE keeping that bio, right?).
Editors in speculative fiction also often state that they don't read the cover letter to begin with, especially if they're using the CWS or Moksha submission systems. It's just a basic transmittal letter.
Congrats on the SFWA membership! I'm still climbing that hill over piles of rejections :)
I do appreciate that CWS and Moksha seem to treat cover letters as less precious than Submittable.
On the flip side, email submissions almost imply the formality of a cover letter. I don't think I'd dash one off without some extra professionalism. What do you think?
(oh, and PS--I earned that SFWA membership from the self publication of what I call The Little Book That Could...what is now the second book of my Goddess's Honor series, but was the first book for years. That plus Kindle Vella sales/bonuses earned me the recognition. It's $1000 in lifetime earnings to qualify now.)
Honestly, from all I've seen and heard, this *is* a standard professional format, with any additions the guidelines might require. I've backed off on the bio/submission history piece unless specifically requested. Most editors I've talked to want to know the basics--length, genre/subgenre, and title, plus any personal information that might be relevant to the story. No more than that. Since I have a dubious credit--a semifinalist placement in Writers of the Future from years ago (2009)--I don't list that unless I know the market likes WotF. In any case, it's an older credit and not relevant for 2025.
And that closing "thank you" is absolutely necessary and professional. One thing to keep in mind (and this was what I was hearing even back in the days of paper submissions--I started in the '90s) is that the cover letter is, essentially, nothing more than a standard transmittal letter, not a sales document. I wrote plenty of those as a legal assistant, then as an administrative assistant, so for me it's pretty easy to do.
I have a Writers of the Future honorable mention I used to brag about (when my bio was sparse and my ego was younger)!
I like your tactic of omitting the bio until asked. If submission guidelines mention a cover letter, they tend to ask for a bio. But that may be my literary journal bias at play.
Yeah, I suspect that's a literary journal's bias. I've seen multiple genre editors say "no bio until we ask," so I don't mess with it.
I...also have two Honorable Mentions, plus a Finalist in another contest, plus being part of an IPPY Finalist anthology, plus a Self Published Fantasy BlogOff semifinalist, back before it was big (another thing the Little Book That Could did). None of them are particularly useful in citing in a cover letter *unless* the editor is known to be favorable (there are plenty for whom the WotF is not a good thing).
Thank you! I've always hated writing cover letters.
My pleasure! Would be great to know if the Cover Letter Writer makes a difference, and if not, how the tool can improve.
Nice. In a similar spirit, I made a command-line tool that formats poetry packets from Markdown files: https://github.com/eisenstatdavid/poetry-packager
Thanks for sharing! I will take a closer look, though I'm much more familiar with fiction submissions. Combining multiple documents into one submission is an ongoing challenge in flash fiction as well, especially when the source and output is Word.
Interesting. It looks like it has some dependencies like Pandoc that would need to be installed. Anything else?
What about combining multiple Word .docx files instead of Markdown .md files? So convert each .docx file specified on command line to a temporary .md file, then combine them as now, then convert that to .docx and delete the temporary files.
I know some people really like to use Markdown, typically if they’ll be running their text into a blogging or CMS platform, but I would guess most people here do not use it for marking up their poems.
Yeah, it’s an idiosyncratic design for sure.
Aside from Pandoc, should just be standard tools: sed, xargs, and zip, at a glance. Pandoc can read .docx inputs directly; change “-f markdown+hard_line_breaks” to “-f docx”. But note that the titles need to have a header style for Pandoc to recognize them in a way that creates the proper page breaks.
Most people probably put one poem per doc, but in submitting normally have to create manually all these one-off docs containing more than one poem plus possibly cover info, page breaks, etc. Creates kind of a clutter, and these are docs that will probably never be looked at again except maybe to see what was submitted (but can get a copy from Submittable any time, right?).
I was always creating docs without putting the title in the doc, thinking that if wanted a different title all I had to do was change the doc file name — change in only one place, rather than two, right? Probably not really such a good idea, though, plus some characters like colon can’t be used in a file name, so there goes “Some Poem: An Epic.”
Is a CMS for poetry too wacky an idea? Right now, we generally use our file system and a bunch of poorly remembered steps for our workflow, as it were.
Frank, the file clutter you describe is what my submissions folders look like for flash fiction. But at least I have a copy I control of all those docs. In a pinch, I don't like relying on the whims of Submittable or email to download things.
Might you need those extra files again if you have to confirm what you're withdrawing (e.g. 2 poems accepted elsewhere out of a 5-poem submission, all in 1 file)?
Not a wacky idea, no. I basically built one out of shell scripts and Git.
Thanks for the tips. Very helpful. Maybe I missed it, but why do you put “FICTION EDITOR” and your “STORY TITLE” in all caps? And do you really need that line introducing your bio? I think a bio is immediately recognizable without any intro.
By "that line introducing your bio" do you mean "My third-person bio: " ? If so, the label establishes extra context on the left hand side, before I've written anything and may be answering multiple questions.
It's less important in the output on the right hand side—though I have seen some submission guidelines stress the third-person aspect of the bio. I kept it in, because I always felt odd re-reading a letter that switched from first-person to third-person.
What do you think?
Yes, that’s the line I’m referring to. Most lit mags expect the bio to be third person, so I don’t think you need to announce it as such. My two cents.
Good question Bruce. I haven't thought about that in a while. The ALL CAPS is a holdover from the Submittable and Word phases of my cover letter template. At a glance, it still reminds me there's something more to fill out (by yelling at me :)
Thank you for this! I am constantly sweating over the cover letters, which makes submitting them more of a chore. Simplifying the process is very helpful.
Happy to help Tina. Please do reach out, especially if the Cover Letter Writer still leaves you sweating.
I do pay attention in the guidelines to what lit mags want in a cover letter. If they want a quick list of my work, I have a bio for the three most recent accpeted publications. If they want to know more about me in general, I have a bio for that. If no cover letter is required, great.
Nice to hear we've arrived at similar approaches!
Sorry for starting another topic but has anyone been able to submit to HAD tonight? The call opens at 9PM. I clicked the link exactly at 9PM and it was full. Getting rejected is one thing, and not getting the chance to get rejected is another. Like they said, the journal "started as something of a joke". I don't want to waste my time on a joke. Unsubscribed.
cover letters are a waste of time. No one needs a summary or an answer to why you write. I think in today's world, they are superfluous. If it is a book- maybe a short summary helps- but not for poetry essays or short fiction!
I’ve never been asked why I write or answered that in a cover letter. I agree that would be superfluous. Letters are a formality required by some submission managers and guidelines. Why certain submissions and editors require them is a more interesting question.