Why Don’t Editors Buy
My Stories
Robert Allen Lupton
Okay, so you’ve written the best short story since “Gift of
the Magi” buy O. Henry and now you are ready to have it published, made into a
film, win countless awards, and have your picture on the cover of the Rolling
Stone. No doubt your story makes you deserving of those accolades, but you
won’t receive any of those if no one ever reads, let alone publishes your
amazing story.
It should go without saying, but if you want your story
published, you have to submit it to publishers. Un-submitted stories don’t get
printed and they don’t win awards. Submit it.
Okay, now you’ve decided to submit your story. What’s the
next step? As a prelude to answering that question, I’m an author with over 200
short stories published in anthologies and online magazines. I’ve edited two
anthologies, which doesn’t make me an expert, but it does mean that I have some
experience. Two hundred short story sales means somewhere around 2000
rejections. Some stories sell the first time they’re submitted and some take
the long road home. One thing I can promise you, if the editor doesn’t read
your story, there’s zero chance they’ll buy it.
Before you send your story in answer to a submission call,
read the call. This is important. For the sake of this article, I’m going to
assume that your story is about an android who falls in love with a human
woman. The android wants to be a real boy. Call the story, POKO.
Some submission calls are very specific, some are genre
specific, and some are vague. You want to send your story to a call where it
fits the subject. POKO is science fiction. Don’t send it to a fantasy call,
unless at the end you have the blue fairy come down and turn Pinocchio, I mean
POKO, into a real boy. Don’t send it to a call that specifies horror unless our
android goes crazy and dismembers people. If the editor wants stories about
weather, it doesn’t fit. If the editor wants stories about rural life during
the 1940s, it doesn’t fit. If the guidelines require stories that take place in
outer space or on another planet, a rewrite could make it fit those guidelines,
but be careful with that. If your story doesn’t fit the theme of the submission
call, it will be certainly rejected.
If you think your story fits, send it. Don’t self-reject,
but do be sure that there is some justification that your story fits the
submission call.
Now you’ve found the perfect market for your story. The
editor wants stories about the interaction between artifical intelligence and
humans. What happens now?
Keep reading the guidelines before you submit. Editors
include those guidelines to, duh, help you get your story accepted and to save
themselves unnecessary work. No editor want so receive a story where with some
assembly required.
This isn’t rocket science, although your story may be about
rocket science. Read the guidelines and follow them. You want your story to be read.
Think of your submission as a resume. The goal of a resume is to be
interviewed. The goal of a submission is to have the editor read your story.
The submission call almost always specifies story length.
Your story should be the right length. An editor who wants stories between 3000
and 5000 words, doesn’t want ‘War and Peace” or the best 100 word drabble in
the history of the world. Stories that don’t fit the length parameters are usually
rejected unread.
Okay, POKO is perfect for the theme and dead-on on the
specified length. That’s great, but don’t send it yet. Read the rest of the
guidelines. Pay attention to the part about formatting. The editor is serious
about formatting. Do what they ask for. Don’t make the editor work harder than
you are. Every minute an editor spends reformatting your story is time that
they could spend on someone else’s “Gift of the Magi.” The more work you make for
the editor, the less likely that your work is going to see print.
Before I talk about formatting, here’s an important hint.
You don’t have to like the editor’s formatting requirements. The editor doesn’t
care if you do or if you don’t, but they care if you don’t follow them. Don’t
send your submission with a cover letter telling the editor why their formatting
guidelines are wrong or even justifying why your story length should be
acceptable. All a cover letter explaining why you didn’t follow the guidelines
means is “Blah, blah, blah, reject me unread.
This list is complete or extensive. Someone somewhere is
submitting a story right this second and finding a new way to not follow
guidelines.
Put the information in the subject line of your email
requested by the editor. If you don’t your submission could get ignored or
shuttled off to SPAM hell and never read by a human.
Email the story as an attachment or place the story in the
body of the email. That’s not too hard to understand, so do it.
Follow standard format. Here’s a link. Learn to do this. https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/
If the editor says NO TABS, that means NO TABS. Use the
indent function in the dropdown menu on the paragraph function for indents.
Single space after periods. You can do that. If the editor wants an extra line
between paragraphs, do it. If the editor says no extra line, do it. If the
editor wants ten extra lines and a picture of Elvis between paragraphs, don’t
argue, just pick a good picture of the King.
Headers and/or footers – follow the submission guidelines.
Send a bio and publishing history if requested. Your cover
letter should be as brief as possible. Don’t summarize your story, it should
speak for itself. A greeting, an introduction, contact information, and word
count are enough unless the editor asks for me. “Dear Editor, attached is my
short story, POKO, 3288 words.
Earnest Hemingstein
1234 Oak Street
Nightmare, NJ 12345
Say thank you, attach
your story and push send - no wait, not just yet.
Before you push send, use the editor’s submission criteria
as a final check list for what to do and make sure you did it. You spent a lot
of time writing POKO, it deserves the time it takes you to format a proper
submission.
