Writing Submission Tips To Not Look Like A Damn Fool (From A Publisher)
Okay, this is going to be a rant post. But, after going through submissions for the publication, “After Dinner Conversation” for years now, and being the final decider of what gets published and what doesn’t get published, I feel I’ve earned the right to a single rant post about writer submissions.
Enter the submission email address into your address book. Nothing is more frustrating than finding a great story and being unable to get ahold of the author with a contract because your offer letter ended up in their SPAM folder.
Including a website “correction” for the place you are submitting along with your submission. Let’s be clear, we run the publication, you do the writing. We will stay out of your lane, if you stay out of ours. Yes, we will make the change correction you suggest. Yes, your submission now has a “this person is going to be a pain in the ass” strike against them.
Not including ANY identifying information on the attached story. Seriously, not even your name? Not the name of the story? Nothing? And while I’m at it, name your file the name of your story, or at least your name. Do you know how many stories are in our download folder called, “After Dinner Conversation Submission.pdf”?!?! How in the world are we going to know which one is yours quickly?
Doing silly formatting things like…oh, I don’t know, pressing the enter key five times instead of using the tab button at the start of each sentence. Or, (true story) hitting the enter key at the end of each line instead of letting the text wrap and only hitting the enter key at the end of each paragraph.
Submitting a revised copy of the story because you found a typo. Trust us on this one, if you “found” a typo and tell us about it, what you are really telling us is you are submitting a draft that’s not yet ready for submission. Better to just let it go and hope we don’t notice.
Responding to our rejection email to tell us why we are wrong about rejecting your story. Yeah…doing this gets your email address into our filter system so future emails automatically go to the delete folder. If you are super nice, it is acceptable to write a brief email thanking us for reading it and asking for suggestions on how to improve your writing, but this is a fine line…the key is to make it sound like you are asking because you want to improve your writing, not because you are telling us we are wrong. Then, if we do send you feedback, for God sake, don’t tell us our feedback is wrong!
Okay, these are less annoying, and understandable, so we will call them “best practices.”
Responding to the automated submission response. Maybe, just don’t respond. We get enough emails already, we don’t need yet another one to delete. If you do respond, it’s not the end of the world, it’s just really not necessary.
Failed to include the word count on the first page of the submission. Again, not a deal breaker, (and do whatever the submissions guidelines tell you to do) but for us, it’s nice to know how long we are going to be reading.
“Following up” on the status of the submission too soon. We list our turnaround times on our website; don’t email again until that turnaround time has come and gone.
Submitting something that is not the thing we publish. We say on the website what we publish. Do you think we are just going to randomly decide one day to publish a poem for the first time?
Okay, end rant…
*** Did you feel an overwhelming desire to email us or comment on social media that we have a typo in this post…yeah, you should always resist that impulse…
