4. PREPARE YOUR SUBMISSIONS PACKETS

Get your supplies

You've got your story, you've got a list of magazines, and now you have to roll up your sleeves and make sure the former arrives at the latter. This is going to cost you a few bucks, but writers are usually dirt-poor anyway. Think of this as practice. Take a trip to an office supply store and get yourself the following items:

  • Page-size manilla envelopes (8.5 x 11 or bigger; one per magazine on your list)
  • Letter-size envelopes (one per magazine on your list)
  • A lot of stamps (at least three per magazine on your list)

You should also make many photocopies of your story. If you're seriously invested in getting published, your expenses for a single story should run between $15 and $50. Add to this figure if you're entering contests with significant entry fees.

Write a cover letter

The discussions of cover letters in our articles SYW publish a book? or SYW write a children's book? are great starts, but we have some more advice for you:

  • Remember that your cover letter is one of thousands written by people who want to get stories published just like you. So keep it short. Editors say that just a few sentences usually suffice.

  • If you have been published before at all, you definitely want to let the editor know, and you might get some sympathy points if you make it clear that you're a novice willing to take any kind of constructive criticism.

  • Throw in a line of sincere praise for the magazine that explains why you want to be published in its pages.

  • Do not try to explain or contextualize the story. Just give your brief description of it.

  • Don't write a lot of personal biographical information.

  • Definitely do not beg.

Long story short (what a pun!): make your cover letter quick and let the editor get to the story, which should speak for itself.

Send 'em out

  • Address your story to the editor who will be reading it, by name if possible (e.g., the fiction editor in the case of a large magazine) or To Whom It May Concern.

  • Definitely mention the name of the publication, but feel free to cut and paste in your word processor and send out ten or twenty nearly identical letters.

  • Next, make out a pile of Self Addressed, Stamped Envelopes (SASEs) for each one of your submission packets. You should include these so that the magazine can respond to you with an acceptance or rejection, and hopefully some editorial advice, without shelling out for a stamp.

  • Sit down and label all your manilla envelopes and collate all the copies of the story with all the cover letters and SASEs.

  • Before you dump all these into the mail, double-check to make sure you have an accurate list of exactly what magazines you submitted to, and when you sent out the envelopes.

  • Keep a detailed list of what you sent to whom and on what date. That way, you won't mistakenly deluge a single magazine with multiple submissions at the same time (which they find annoying) and you'll also be able to track which magazines have gotten back to you and which haven't.

  • Usually magazines will state their response times along with their writer's guidelines, and these will range from two weeks to six months.