Xenagia: Third Person Perspective #5: I Am God, Plz Publish Me

Third Person Perspective #5: I Am God, Plz Publish Me

You would be amazed at the kind of submissions that are sent in to publishers every day. There's a very good reason behind the term "slush pile," and in this article I'd like to introduce you to the joys of being an editor for any kind of publishing house: reading the truly abominable cover letters that seem to arrive on your desk every day like clockwork. Then, examining their mistakes, we'll try and figure out how to write a truly effective submission that can give you a shot at publication.

For this article, a good friend and chief editor of a small publisher has dug deep into his archives and kindly donated some of his most memorable submissions of all time. Naturally, all personal information, titles and e-mail addresses have been removed to protect everyone involved.

Let me begin with the first, thankfully brief query that inspired me to write this article. This was a letter where, aside from the usual title, genre and word count, the body contained nothing but the following sentence:

"THIS IS A BOOK I WROTE INSTEAD OF COMMITING A MURDER! Enough said."

What we have here is someone who thinks he's being devastatingly clever, sidestepping all normal conventions and good practice in the knowledge that, surely, anyone who sees these words written down will not be able to resist the temptation to look further. It is the blinking "punch the monkey" banner ad of novel submissions.

Unfortunately for this gentleman, it's based on an utterly flawed concept. The trick isn't to get an editor to look at one particular submission above all others. Their job is to read each sub, which will be done as soon as possible in the order in which they were received, and no amount of slogan marketing is going to affect that process. In fact, by ignoring conventions and good practice, Murder Guy is not only creating an air of smug unprofessionalism around him, he's setting himself up for a fall by bigging up his book before it's read. The more you boast, the more you have to live up to; creating expectations is by and large self-destructive compared to just letting the editor form their own opinion about whether or not the book is any good.

And, of course, Murder Guy's epic catchphrase makes the whole thing really creepy.

His submission was rejected. When he sent an identical submission again two months later, it was rejected twice.

Next we have someone I like to call by the nickname "Mr. Confident." Have a look at his cover letter.

Mr. Confident starts digging right from the get-go, hits rock bottom within the first paragraph, and then continues chipping away with a kind of determination you can't help but admire. He is genuinely convinced his book is all that and a bag of crisps. He spends more than a hundred words praising his own writing, without actually telling us anything about the book, and then continues praising himself for a while longer. However, despite claims of being "highly qualified" and having studied "in many reputed universities," he makes basic spelling and punctuation errors in his cover letter—the first thing any editor is going to see and judge.

Nothing else matters by that point. He's disqualified himself from the game just by his cover letter. Never mind that he continues his self-aggrandizement even in the blisteringly awful synopsis. Never mind the unsubtle political/religious allegory or the fact that he's sending it to a mainly SFFH genre publisher. The decision has already been made, just by the fact that he couldn't even be bothered to run an electronic spell-check over his stuff before he submitted it.

He actually sent two follow-up e-mails two days and four days after his submission, asking if the editor had decided to publish his book yet. Rejection was never even an option in Mr. Confident's mind. He received his form letter a few days later.

Lastly, I present you with a submission that not only tries to market the book to the editor, but starts off favorably comparing the author to a legend of the genre with a list of published works longer than my arm.

This submission is particularly interesting because it reads a little bit like somebody doing a job interview. Now, thinking of your submission as a job interview is actually not a bad idea. The two are fairly close in spirit. You are basically auditioning for a kind of job with only your own wit and experience to back you up. However, it pays to remember you're competing against untold thousands of other applicants, some of whom have pretty impressive qualifications.

For Applicant #2,384,773, it doesn't matter that he's vastly overreached himself with the Turtledove comparisons, or that he smugly lays out his own market potential to someone whose job it is to know that market. What immediately jumps out to the editor is how Applicant has been creative with his CV.

No matter how many books you have on iUniverse, listing them as published credits to a professional editor is a mistake. It equates to a bald-faced bluff on your CV.

The old saw, "But everyone does it!" is not applicable to writing because your working past and character are not the main things being assessed. It's the manuscript, which is right in front of the editor alongside the cover letter. He can see what your work is like at a glance, like you're interviewing for an employer who at the same time is watching CCTV of everything you've been up to at all your old jobs. It's something you can't hide or gloss over. Attempting to do so just makes you look bad.

So how do you give your submission the maximum chance of success? Well, I hope these letters have given you some idea of what not to do. Writing the perfect submission is no easy task, but then it really doesn't have to be perfect. Even a completely unexceptional cover letter can make an editor sit up and pay attention after hours of digging through the ravages of the slush pile. Sometimes it can be a surprise to see a single well-organized, competently-written letter in a day. Combined with a solid story, your sub could be the one that'll soothe the editor's headache and and give them a manuscript they'll look forward to reading.

In the hope that this might also be useful to you, here is a brief checklist which I use on all my submissions before hitting that all-important Send button:

A) Is the cover letter simple and factual, neither self-aggrandizing nor self-deprecating?
B) Is it trying to turn your past experience into something it's not? If you have to be dishonest to make a point on your CV look good, it's better to either be up-front about it or not to mention it at all.
C) Is your synopsis simple, no matter how complex your story? Nobody wants to read a synopsis that has to be divided into chapters.
D) Remember that gimmick submissions impress no one, least of all in the spec-fic field.
E) Spell check everything before submitting, and check punctuation! Show the editor what you want him to see; a clean, polished manuscript backed by a cover letter and synopsis that are free of basic errors.
F) Do your manuscript and letter match your market's submission guidelines? Always tailor any sub to your market's stated preferences!
G) Are you using proper manuscript formatting? See this link for a good tutorial on widely accepted manuscript formatting guidelines.

In closing, be prepared to wait until the market's maximum response time before writing any follow-ups. Polish up your story a little more before each sub, if you can. Never ever stop submitting to different markets until you either get an acceptance or think it's time to seriously retool the story.

Now go out there and get yourself published.

Ryan A. Span is a UK-based SFF author, game designer and professional grump. Amongst other things he writes the STREET series of cyberpunk novels and treks out to exotic places across the world just to taste the wildlife.

If you have a question for Ryan or an idea for a TPP article, please e-mail them to cs -at- streetofeyes -dot- com, subject THIRD PERSON PERSPECTIVE