Submissions Editor

What is the magazine called?

They didn't give you the name because they don't want you to know the name. If you start giving your name out people start ringing the switchboard and asking for you and you end up in a lot of pointless and awkward conversations about why you rejected things. It's also irritating if you're not the Submissions editor and people keep sending you unsolicited manuscripts because you're the only named person they can track down. Calling people by name really makes no difference; just follow their instructions.

Actually, sometimes it does make a difference to have a name. reeny, can you post the magazine, or PM me the name of it, so I can see if it would help?

I suppose it does make a difference, in that if you send things to "submission editor" they will be filed under 'this month's submissions for consideration'; whereas if you send things to Joe Blow the Senior Editor, aka the guy whose name you know but whose job you don't know the details of, working in the company of whose day-to-day running you are almost entirely ignorant - if you send them to Joe Blow they get filed under 'miscellaneous irritating mail items that Joe Blow has to deal with, either by ignoring them completely or by handing them off to the submissions editor several weeks later.'

I apologise if I am doing you a disservice; if you know an editor well enough that there are regular emails, contacts and cheques going back and forth, the personal touch might get you or your friend's book looked at more promptly or critiqued more sensitively than if it had wound up on the slushpile.

But there does seem to be this fetish for names. Running the slushpile, you find yourself collecting MSs from weird remote areas of the building. I regularly had to fetch stuff from the company MD, who had nothing to do with the actual publishing of books; he just kept the accounts. I suppose he was just the one of the great mass of people Google would spit out as a company officer, none of whom gave a toss about unsolicited manuscripts. Much of that search-upchuck, in fact, related to employees who were either in employment elsewhere or doing their time in the big slushpile in the sky, but who still got more post every week than I got on my birthday (yesterday, by the way. I got a lovely sweater.)

If you are in a situation where the submission guidelines say write to 'submissions editor', IMHO, FWIW, you should only even consider writing to a named employee if you know them personally or professionally; or at the very least, if you can scrape acquaintance with them; maybe you chatted to them at a cocktail party or a tractor pull or wherever it is the bright young literati are hanging out these days. It's just good manners, and otherwise you find yourself in the position of the guy shouting "Do you know who I am?" at the bouncer.

Actually, I do agree with you Torgo, in part. I'm not recommending contacting random people at publications, just to send it to a name. But often, with some focused market research, you can find the correct person to address. And it's not ignorant to do your homework on a publication - it's what you should always do before you submit.

Yes, but if they ask you to send your MS to a particular address, that is by definition the correct person to address. Often the submissions editor is a role on a rota - the publisher just wants all the stuff in one place so that the person whose turn it is this week knows where to find it.

Forgive me if I sound persnickety about this but when people publish their submission guidelines they really would rather you followed them. From my point of view, as the person reading the slush, I don't care about cover letters unless they are either really bad or really crazy, just like I don't care about the typeface you set it in unless it's illegible or I specifically asked you to set it in Black Ye Olde Gothick. You know my name - so? Telemarketers know my name. And while I appreciate the imagination and effort that goes into efforts to gain an edge over the rest of the unsoliciteds, it's not helping anybody. Deliberately sending stuff to the wrong mailbox ... you wouldn't do it with your income tax form, would you, however much homework you'd done....