Wednesday, June 15: Tune It Or Die!
WRITER’S GUIDELINES
by Rob Lopresti
Thank you for considering submitting to our fine publication. Please follow all of the following guidelines. Any stories that do not follow them strictly will be sent to malware designers in Belarus.
- Your story must be submitted electronically. Be sure to include a stamped self-addressed envelope.
- Please submit the story in either WordStar, Valdocs, or WordPerfect format.
- Double space your lines. Do NOT use hard returns after paragraphs. Do NOT use hyphens in place of dashes. DO use dashes in place of hyphens. Indicate italics through the use of underlining. Indicate underlining through the use of bold. We consider how you indicate bold to be a personal matter and really none of our business..
- In your cover letter be certain to mention the awards you have received, any friends you have who review books, and how many relatives you have who buy books.
- In preparing your cover letter remember that the main reason we are asking for submissions is that we like the word “submission.” Feel free to grovel.
- After your story is submitted you will receive a tracking number. It will be 465. Everyone gets 465.
- We are paying for the publication, in part, with a method borrowed from Hollywood: product placement. Special consideration will be given to stories that give favorable mention to Rabson brand locks ™, Heron brand automobiles ™, and Ouchies brand aspirin ™.
- We want your most creative, innovative, from-the-heart ideas. Let your imagination loose! Do not include excessive violence, gratuitous sex, cursewords, political or relation opinions, or mentions of butter, caribou, or Paris Hilton.
- We are purchasing first publication rights, second publication rights, anthology rights, e-publication rights, film rights, video game rights, web-base rights, mineral rights, civil rights, miranda rights, and droit de seigneur.
- Payment is 50 cents per word. (Maximum payment of $7.) Payment will be within six months of publication, if you can find us.
- No simultaneous submissions. No reprints. No green M&Ms.
We look forward to reading your submissions. The deadline has already passed.
Dear author,
Thank you for submitting your story.
Unfortunately, it does not meet our needs at the present time. Actually, I can’t imagine it ever meeting the needs of any publisher at any time. After, all, we’re hardly The New Yorker: our rates are so low that we only publish stuff that can’t get into print anywhere else. In fact, your story was so bad that we considered shredding it instead of sending it back in your SASE so we could keep the stamp as payment for having had to look at it. Not that anybody here actually read it.
We look forward to hearing from you again. Good luck!
The Publisher
If the above seems unnecessarily harsh, well, I once got a rejection that was unbelievably brutal. The unpaid assistant editor who wrote it said my story was trite, clichéd, and slow, and that I demonstrated a complete lack of understanding as to how a story should be written. He claimed to hate the opening, the middle, and the ending with equal disdain, but failed to offer a single concrete point of criticism.
To and insult to injury, he then explained that he was doing me the favor of a personal critique instead of sending me the basic two-liner rejection form letter because he had lost the manuscript for several weeks and felt a little guilty that I had had to wait so long to get rejected. The worst part of it all was that he suggested that I try to emulate the very author I had attempted to emulate instead of imitating Robert E. Howard. All right, the story—a fantasy featuring a duel in the 17th century—wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t that bad, either. It was certainly not even remotely an imitation of Robert E. Howard.
I recently reread it, and although it’s something I wouldn’t write today, it was easily as accomplished as most of the stuff in the magazine back then, and it was markedly different from their usual derivative sword-bearing Barbarian vs. Monster fare. I really don’t think the assistant editor read it at all, at least, not past the first paragraph.
I never sent a story to that magazine again, and it has long since evaporated into the ether.
Rob, this was very funny stuff…sort of. I started to laugh after I finished crying. By the way, has anyone ever figured out how to write the winning query letter (and why it’s important in the first place)?
James, (barring your cited example which could only be resolved on the field of honor with dueling pistols) why is it that rejection slips, however banal, feel somehow personal–a quick rabbit punch to the kidneys? Do we ever become immune to these? After garnering more than a few along the way I’ve become much tougher, but still wince with their arrival just the same.
Like David I was laughing to keep from crying.
But it is a very funny article. And like all good satire it’s true.
That’s just great. Now what do I do with my story about Paris Hilton joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch a caribou jerky thief with a weakness for butter (and obviously a cholesterol problem).
Mineral rights…. I’m glad I didn’t have food or drink in my mouth.
Worse are publishers with black-hole transoms– the manuscript falls in, nothing comes out. Hmm… that would be a good name for a publisher: Black Hole Transom.
>…droit de seigneur.
You’re scaring me, Rob.
Dear Rob,
Please stop reading my mail.
Thank you.
Terrie
(laughing at Terrie)
(laughing)
This was hilarious, Rob!
Right on! I guess the only thing worse is “we are currently closed to submissions’ and ‘we only accept agented submissions”
Terrie, hilarious.
James, you should expand that letter into a Monday column.
Worst rejection letter I ever received was from an agent who had decided not to represent my diet book. I had sent her a mystery. Was she trying to tell me something?
I agree with all the above! It reminded me of a story about an author who mailed in a request for submission guidelines and got back a rejection!!