I have tended to avoid cover letters that boil down to "Hi, here's the manuscript, hope you like it," but am at a loss for what to substitute.
Dear [editor],
Herewith my story [title] for consideration in your anthology. I've enclosed only a letter-sized envelope for return; you may dispose of the manuscript itself.
Best wishes,
The purpose of this letter is to explain to the editor that you are submitting the story. And to provide the editor with a convenient piece of paper on which to make notes, and to file with the rejections should the story not be bought.
It's really easy. Save your powers of persuasion and dazzling prose for the story itself.
An alternate cover letter, for those that haven't sold to a particular market before but have received personal rejection notes from the editor:
Dear (name of editor):
Thank you for your encouraging remarks on my last submission, "Your Title Here."
Enclosed is my story "New Title." Thank you very much for your consideration.
Sincerely,
It goes without saying that you should use this letter only if your editor did say something which could be fairly construed as encouraging, such as "Send me your next." Or, "I liked the character, but not quite right for us." The benefit of this letter is that it may wake up the editor (or first reader) that they thought enough of your work to take the time to scribble or type a brief note and that perhaps it merits just a little more attention than the rest of the slush, and might get read at a more leisurely speed.
All you need to do then is either write to or call the editor and ask if you can check on the status of your manuscript. No editor should be offended by that.
A first novel usually gets an advance something in the area of five thousand dollars. The actual range is $1000-$1,000,000. Royalties depend on whether the book is hardback or paperback. Royalties for paperbacks are four to six percent of the cover price. Royalties for hardback are around ten percent of the cover price.
Advances are paid according to the negotiated contract, normally in two or three parts, at various landmarks that may include any or all of: signing, delivery of a complete outline, delivery of half of a first draft, delivery of a first draft, acceptance of a first draft, delivery and/or acceptance of revisions, publication, and a defined time =after= any of those. Royalties are paid twice a year (when earned), according to each publisher's schedule.
A beginning writer doesn't need an agent to submit a book to most SF/F editors. But most SF/F editors will recommend that said beginning writer should get an agent to negotiate the boilerplate contract once the manuscript is accepted for publication.
First, flip through a number of pages to get a sense of the length of an average complete line. Use a line of prose, not a line of dialog. Next, count the total number of characters (not words) in that line, including punctuation and spaces.
Now flip through a bunch of pages again, counting the average number of lines on each page. (If you've used standard formatting, this number should be fairly consistent).
Next, multiply the average number of characters per line by the average number of lines per page. (For example, 66 characters/line x 26 lines/page = 1716 characters/page.
Then multiply that number by the number of pages in the manuscript. Here you may want to introduce some "fudge factors." If all of your pages have a lot of dialogue, or lots of line breaks, multiply the final number by .85 or .9.
You will now have a humongous number which represents the approxiate number of =characters= in the manuscript. Divide this number by 5.5 or 6, the publishing industry's length for a standard "word."
Round this number to the nearest 100 for short stories. (Go ahead and round up; everyone does!) Round to the nearest 1000 words for novels.
The editor will use exactly the same formula to determine her word count. Except that she will round =down=.
Don't become obsessed with word count, though. Since editors count for themselves, what you figure for the word count is not crucial. It's more like a ballpark figure and is treated that way.
You're much more likely to sell a 20,000 word novella, though the market will always be tighter for them than for shorter works.
In children's books, though, a 30,000 to 40,000 word work can be a whole book by itself.
To sell a novel under 60,000 words to a genre publisher requires a novel that is extraordinary.
If you can =continue= the story, on the other hand, you may end up with a strong 80,000-word novel in two parts or two books (not physical books, but 2 sections of the novel). Or take that 40,000-word story and carefully analyze it to see whether you might have rushed through a part, or whether there might be a subplot that could be developed with more leisure or detail. Don't pad it, because an editor will spot the treading-water part, and probably yawn and put the thing back in the SASE. But it's possible you missed a place where you could legitimately add 20,000 or so words.
It's not only difficult to sell a novel under 60,000 words, it's difficult for the publisher to push it once it's bought. You wind up with an $18.95 hardcover that's half the physical size of a $20.95 one.
If, however, this story can be told as a YA novel, you've got no problems with its length. YA and middle-grades novels are often 40,000-60,000 words. In fact, middle-grades novels can be shorter.
What kind of count is going to make you think, "Gee, that's kind of short for a novel." And what kind of count is going to set off no red flags, and simply look typical and normal? Is 60,000 words the break point? For that matter, how big can the numbers get before you start thinking, "Wow, pretty long for one book there"?
Word count in magazine publication may make a difference in whether a story is purchased (because of space available), and it will certainly affect the payment from most periodical markets. So there is a difference here that you need to be aware of.
Established writers could get away with longer lengths, and something aimed at younger readers could be shorter. The guidelines vary from one publisher to the other. Once you get much over 125,000 words, it is likely that you'd be pushing the envelope at most houses, unless you've got a sales record that justifies a large print run and a higher price. The problem with longer books is that because of production costs, they have to be priced higher, and unless there's some obvious reason to believe that lots of readers are going to be willing to pay the higher price, most publishers are going to be very cautious about really long books.
That lower limit has been going up, incidentally. In the Seventies they published novels as short as 45,000 words. And the current limit isn't absolute. At 60,000 editors will raise an eyebrow, but not necessarily reject out of hand.
Some editors never look at the word count on a novel manuscript. Instead, they heft it, look at the typeface. If it seems really long they will be skeptical and waiting to be convinced. If it seems really short, the editor had better be grabbed strongly in the first few sentences.
Market forces make a very short book difficult. The public won't be too happy at paying $4.99 for a 198 page book. They'll feel ripped off. And the retailers won't be too happy at stocking five books at $2.99 when they could just as well stock five books at $4.99 and make a lot more money on the pocket turnover. In fact, a lot of places won't stock low price-point titles at all.
So you're better off writing a novel between 60,000 and 90,000 words.
Please don't think that this length business is some kind of formula for making a sale. It isn't. It's just something to keep in mind when weighing the commerciality of your work.
The Literary Market Place and The Writer's Market tell you which markets these are. Other markets do not want simultaneous submissions. Why? Because too many of them have been burned by authors who, on being told that their story was accepted and had been put to press, informed the editors that, "Oh, I sent that to another magazine and it paid more money so I let them publish it first." More than one magazine has found itself in the position of having to redo its entire layout, at considerable expense, because of such a situation.
Let's assume that you've gone through the usual forty-three screens of logical reasons why the chances of your being accepted by two markets at once is near nil. Just accept the fact that editors don't want it to happen even once, because it causes major trouble, and editors don't want that kind of trouble--or authors who cause it.
IF you submit simultaneously, MAKE SURE YOU TELL THE EDITORS THAT YOU HAVE DONE SO. They will then know to check back with you before they set your story in type, or else simply to reject your manuscript because they don't accept simultaneous submissions.
Certain of the online editors can give chapter and verse on simultaneous submissions. Within the past month, one of those editors has had exactly the problem cited above--and had a merry hell of a time getting out of it. That editor will not be accepting or publishing any more stories by that author.
Incomplete synopses: The synopsis that accompanies the FIRST THREE CHAPTERS of your novel should be a complete one, including the ending. The sample chapters should be the first three, not a random selection of chapters from throughout the book. The idea is that those first three should be so compelling that the editor reading them wants to call you up and demand the rest of the book instantly.
Cover letters that tell the editor how wonderful, glorious, breathtaking, sensational, well-written, unusual, etc., etc., the enclosed stories are. The stories should speak for themselves. The more the letter says, the less an editor expects from the story.
What are the magic words to get past the brain-damaged first readers to the real editors.
Write the best story you can, and hope it's good enough.
"The other story is the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, of a certain size, a certain subject, a certain …
"In buying a bad story by a good, or established, author, the editor hopes the author will later send better.
"Your story is rejected because it's similar to another bad story previously published.
"The author of the published bad story is sleeping with the editor or is the son in-law of the publisher.
"The editor is a nitwit--or has blanked out.
"The merits of your work are not established up front when the editor is scanning.
"Your bad story is worse than you think."
Besides, any editor who publishes any stories under the editor's own name in the editor's own magazine is in for the most unbelievable scrutiny and criticism.
But realistically, it's almost always the author's responsibility, and it's almost always in the final draft where the author decides that nobody would care if they just quoted two measly lines from a Beatles song, and it gets missed until the copyeditor points it out four months before publication. Trouble Ensues.
It is the author's responsibility to secure permissions. And pay for them.
Are a certain number of lines of poetry quoted considered fair-use? Or do you have to get permission for all of it?
You either have to pay more for the permission than you'll get for the story, or you have to go without permission and risk the consequences if you get caught.
Song writers may ask as little as $25, and as much as $500. A publisher was once asked for $3000 to quote a line of Copyright poetry, but decided that the epigraph just wasn't necessary.
Do as others do: write your own songs and poetry to use in your fiction.
Do a revision now, getting rid of the lyric. Then when the editor phones up to buy the story, you say you don't have permission, so you'll send a revised version.
Or, if it's rejected, then send out the revised version to the next market.
If it only seems traditional, like, say "Happy Birthday To You," or "This Land Is Your Land," then you can end up in trouble. If you know for a fact that a song is "traditional," then don't worry. But check a recording label or something, just to be certain.
The commonest reason people write under pseudonyms these days is to get a foothold in a second or third genre, or to get past a sales disaster under a previous byline.
One author has chosen to use a different byline for each of the different publishers who publish that author's work.
Copyright © 1994 by GEnie Information Service. All rights reserved.