Getting fiction published is hard enough. Don’t disqualify yourself before the editor even starts reading your story.
Novice authors often believe there is a conspiracy against them; that the literary establishment refuses to publish their work because they are unknown and editors are too busy publishing stories by established writers. In reality, if an editor rejects a story it is usually for a good reason.
Some rejections are beyond an author’s control. For instance:
1. The story just wasn’t to the editor’s taste.
You know how some readers like Ernest Hemingway and some don't? That same rule applies to your fiction. It might be a good story, but if it doesn’t move the editor, that’s the end of that.
2. The market was extremely competitive.
Most magazines and anthologies that pay pro or semi-pro rates receive at minimum 300 submissions per issue. Even if it’s a sizable publication and it contains 10 stories, that’s still just a 3% acceptance rate. If 10% of stories submitted were of publishable quality, that means the editor had to whittle 20 worthwhile stories from his short list and yours was one of them. Nothing you can do about that.
Freshly minted authors, however, are often rejected for things that could have been avoided. Such mistakes are usually due to a lack of knowledge, laziness, or both. When I first started submitting to magazines back in the dim, dark 1990s, I often got the impression the editor (or slush reader) hadn’t bothered to read my manuscript. In some cases I was probably right – and it was my own fault. Here are some common errors new writers make that can see their stories rejected out of hand.
1. You sent your story to the wrong market.
If you send an action piece to a sober-sided literary journal, or send a vampire story to a horror fiction anthology that specifies no vampire stories, it is simply a waste of everyone’s time. While many small presses encourage you to buy copies of their magazines to get a feel for what they publish, reading the submission guidelines and nosing around on the website is usually enough.
2. You wrote a callow cover letter.
A young writer I was mentoring for a while was shocked to learn my early accepted stories had been submitted with cover letters that were all variations on this:
Dear [editor], Please find attached for your consideration my short story 'What Happens On Tour', which runs to 3,200 words. Thank you very much for reading my work. I hope you can find a place for it in [market]. Kind regards,
Kris Ashton
How to write a cover letter was perhaps the best practical advice I received in three years of creative writing at university. One of my lecturers, the Australian poet Deb Westbury, gave the class a sample template not dissimilar to the one above and it has served me well ever since.
An editor never has enough time, you see, so even the kindest one doesn’t want to hear about how much you’ve always wanted to be a writer, and how long you agonised over this story and how good it is and why you think he should publish in his magazine. Such a cover letter is a warning sign: Inexperienced author ahead.
The purpose of a cover letter is to show that you can write in a succinct and professional manner and that you’ve bothered to familiarise yourself with the title such that you know the editor’s name. Once you’ve got a few credits under your belt you can add a short bio, but for the unpublished writer less is definitely more. Nothing you write in your cover letter will enhance your chances of publication… but it could cruel them.
3. You did not format your manuscript per the guidelines on the website.
Failing to follow formatting guidelines is perhaps the fastest way to have your story rejected. The bulk of fiction markets still like to see manuscripts that adhere to Shunn’s example, but others – especially those that publish online – often have their own requirements.
Reformatting a manuscript for an editor who wants no indents, and a line break between paragraphs, and Comic Sans font, and hashes instead of asterisks to denote a time jump, and underlining for italics, and spelling that conforms to American/UK/Australian English, can be tedious indeed. But that’s just the nature of the beast. The editor owes you nothing. It’s his pony show and you have to make sure your pony’s mane is plaited and its tail is brushed to his satisfaction.
“But it should be about the story, not the formatting!” some budding writers will wail. Well I’m here to say this: if you can’t be bothered ensuring your manuscript meets the guidelines set out on magazine’s website, your story isn’t of sufficient quality to be published anyway.
4. Your manuscript is full of spelling and grammatical errors.
I have nothing but contempt for any supposed author who can’t spell and doesn’t know the difference between their, there and they’re. So do most editors. Would you let a doctor who didn’t know a scalpel from a pair of forceps operate on you? Of course not. Well, words are a writer’s tools – so if you don’t know how to form or arrange them, an editor is not going to have any respect for you. Or bother to read your story. And a rejection letter will be coming your way post-haste.
