How to write a literary magazine cover letter
It should be simple, and it mostly is, but there are a few things you want to get right
People rarely talk about the cover letters to literary magazine submissions. Query letters to agents? Whole reams have been written. Pitch letters? Sure, they’re an art. But a cover letter is relatively simple, and so it’s often underestimated.
The reality, however, is that your literary magazine cover letter does need to do a few essential things:
communicate your interest in the venue where you are submitting.
present you as a reasonable, thoughtful writer whom editors would be able to work with easily.
give the basic facts about your piece: genre, word count, and special circumstances surrounding the writing such as a previous positive rejection, a themed issue, or your relationship with one of the editors.
honestly represent who you are through your bio.
display gratitude to the editors for reading your work.
This doesn’t sound like a tall order, but it means you have to find a balance between overdoing it and underdoing it, between saying too much and not saying enough. A successful cover letter walks that thin line. Instead of convincing editors to accept a piece, it allows them to consider your writing on their own terms. While it describes your accomplishments, it does not brag or seem over the top. Being professional in a cover letter means offering what you have clearly and concisely, then stepping back to let the editors do their work.
FYI, this advice is drawn from my book How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses. The book gives lots of additional details, support, and resources for writers and submitters. It comes out next month, and you can pre-order now!
The Parts of a Cover Letter
1. Salutation
In the first line of your cover letter, you already have a chance to show you’ve done your research on the publication you are submitting to. Find the names of the editors and include them in your salutation. For a more formal submission, you can use the editor’s full name, which helps you avoid applying inaccurate honorifics:
Dear Firstname Lastname,
For a more casual tone, including when you have a preexisting relationship with the literary magazine or press where you are submitting, you can simply use the editor’s first name:
Dear Firstname,
A personalized salutation lets editors know you’ve taken the time to find out who they are; it also bridges the impersonal gap created by submission managers.
Address the editors of the genre you’re submitting to. Find the fiction editor(s) if you are submitting fiction, nonfiction editor(s) if you are submitting nonfiction, poetry editor(s) if you are submitting poetry, and so on. If there are no specific genre editors, address the person (or people) at the top of the masthead. If you can’t find their names, it is fine to write, “Dear nonfiction editors,” “Dear fiction editors,” or “Dear poetry editors.”
2. Introduction and Essential Info
I recommend maintaining a cover letter template you can copy and paste into each submission. The introductory paragraph of your cover letter, however, is one paragraph you can’t standardize. It will change based on what you are submitting, where you are submitting, and your relationship with the publication.
The introductory paragraph of the cover letter should include the following information, in roughly this order. You do not have to include all this information. If a line doesn’t apply to you, leave it out.
Positive rejection? Inform the editors if you have received a positive rejection from them in the recent past. This should be the first line of your cover letter, after the salutation. You want to make sure the editors see it.
Example: “Thank you very much for your encouraging words about the last submission I sent.”
Example: “Thank you for your kind comments on my last two submissions and your invitation to submit again.”
Connection? Inform the editors if you have a personal relationship to the publication or an explicit invitation to submit from one of the editors.
Example: “I appreciated getting to meet you this spring and am grateful for your invitation to submit.”
Example: “I am a former contributor from issue ____, and I thought this new essay might also be right for your pages.”
The logistics. Give the basic details of the piece. This information should be in every cover letter.
Title: Put the title in quotation marks.
Genre: Say whether you are submitting a short story, essay, or poems. You can be more specific, using subcategories such as flash fiction and lyric essay, but this is usually not necessary. If you are sending multiple shorter pieces, such as poems or flash fiction, let them know how many you are sending.
Word Count: Round to the next 100 words.
Example: “Thank you very much for considering ‘Title,’ a 2,800-word short story.”
Example: “I am writing to submit three poems, ‘Title 1,’ Title 2,’ and ‘Title 3.’”
Your (or your writing’s) relationship to the publication. The first paragraph is also an opportunity to mention the qualities of the publication that motivated you to submit. You only need to include this if you have something unique and substantive to say. Generalized praise for a publication is not necessary. You can also mention upcoming themed issues that are relevant to your piece.
Example: “I am submitting this to you in particular because of your magazine’s focus on ____. This essay is particularly interested in ____.”
Example: “As a longtime subscriber, I thought this might be a good fit for your consistent mix of ____ and ____.”
Example: “I thought these poems might be a fit for your ____ issue, since they revolve around ____.”
Background. Give context for the piece of writing you are submitting. This can be helpful when you want editors to understand your depth of engagement with the subject matter or personal relationship to the material.
Example: “This short story is part of my collection in progress, ____, which tells the story of ____.”
Example: “These poems grow out of my time in ____, where I lived recently on a ____ fellowship.”
Less is more when it comes to cover letters, and the introductory paragraph is no exception. The main job of this paragraph is to introduce your submission to the editors who will be reading it and remark on any special circumstances. You’re aiming for connection, not comprehensiveness. Two to three sentences is plenty.
3. Bio
The author biography, which comes after the introductory paragraph of the cover letter, is also a balancing act. On the one hand, you want to convey your seriousness about writing and accomplishments. On the other, you don’t want to exhaust your reader with a laundry list of publications and achievements. Include the highlights of your writing life and not much more.
This means that if you’ve published in fifteen lit mags, truncate the list to the four or five most impressive ones. If you have an MFA, include it, but leave out your undergraduate degree. You can also include publications you help edit, literary organizations you contribute to, reading series you organize, and other forms of literary involvement. Information like how long you have been writing is not necessary. The primary goal of the author bio is to place you in literary context and to help editors understand where you are in your writing career.
Here are a several templates you can use when constructing your bio. You will likely add to, subtract from, and otherwise alter these templates.
If you have no publications:
I live in ____, where I work as a ____. This would be my first published ____.
If you have a few publications:
My fiction/nonfiction/poetry has appeared in ____ and ____. I live in ____, where I work as a ____.
If you have several publications and a couple of fellowships or residencies, along with additional involvement in the literary community:
My fiction/nonfiction/poetry has appeared in ____, ____, ____, and ____, among others, and has been supported by ____ and ____. I live in ____, where I run the reading series ____.
If you have a book, several publications, an MFA, and editorial positions or other forms of literary involvement:
I am the author of ____. My fiction/nonfiction/poetry has also appeared in ____, ____, ____, and ____, among others. I am an editor for ____, and I run a local writing organization, ____. I received my MFA from ____ and live in ____.
These templates are written in the first person because I flows better in a cover letter, but you can use third-person for a more formal approach. Some submission guidelines ask explicitly for third-person. If you are using a third-person bio in your cover letter, I would precede the bio with, “Here is a short biography.”
As you write and publish, your bio will inevitably change. Keep updating it in your cover letter template by adding new publications while revising for concision. Reading other author’s bios is a great way to fine-tune your bio-writing sensibility.
4. Sign-Off
The sign-off paragraph isn’t strictly necessary, but I include it to make the cover letter more generous and less curt. For me, this paragraph is an opportunity to express my gratitude to the editors for reading what I’ve submitted.
A few examples:
Thank you for considering ____.
Thank you again for considering ____. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you for your consideration, and I hope you’re doing well.
I use the last example only if I personally know the editors. Additionally, you can use this paragraph to inform editors you are sending a simultaneous submission, which some publications ask for in their submission guidelines.
5. Valediction
Keep it simple. “Sincerely” or “All best” will do the job. Sign off with your full name, since you’ve likely addressed the editors with theirs, unless you know them personally.
Tailor these templates to your own style, but don’t worry about making them exciting, interesting, or funny. As with formatting, a cover letter should be largely unremarkable, which makes room for the submission itself to shine. Remind editors that you are grateful for their work, that you know the rules of submissions, and that you are a real person who would be nice to work with. Then press Submit!