From the article: Cover Letter Advice
One of the hardest things about starting to submit work for publication in literary journals is getting that first cover letter just right. If you've been sending work out, share some of the language you use in your cover letters. Do you try to get the editor's attention or do you keep it short and sweet so that they can get to your writing? What approach is working for you?
Cover Letters
- Keep it very brief. For credits, list only the 4-5 most relevant to this market, not the whole laundry list. Recyclable MSS: some markets won't allow this, want a full-sized postage-paid envelope for return. Dark ages or not, obey what they say.
- —terencekuch
Pie Offer
- In a desperate moment, after sending so many poems out and getting so many rejections, I actually offered to bake one editor a pie if he accepted my poems. I did get a nicer rejection letter, anyway, and it made me laugh to do it. Hopefully it brightened his day as well.
- —Guest Dee