Used to bug me that I had to send expensive International Reply Coupons to US mags. Those only bought 'surface mail' replies, inevitably a tick-card with a dozen refusal reasons, none helpful.
Sadly, making a cheap photocopy of each tale to send and discard was less expensive than the additional cost of its return...
What really, really annoyed me was the insistence on single submissions, then a six-~~nine month turn-around. When smaller mags replied at all...
Towards the end, I'd enclose a $5 note instead of IRCs. That was *cheaper* than IRCs, but earned me a grumble-slip in addition to any tick-card...
Finally, I stopped submitting tales to US mags.
The few UK mags were not taking my style of 'Hard SciFi', lighter Fantasy or on-off 'Urban Horror'. Sadly, you had to have been published to get published. By chance, I spotted a 'request for submissions' by a UK small-press start-up unhappy with the main-stream. Threads took several of my tales and published them ( to modest acclaim ;-) before folding after a dozen lively issues...
Since then, I have not submitted anything to mags, only posted tales to forums.
Those with pretty pictures are removed from the envelope, set aside and used later by said agents to mail sporadic postcards to great-aunts they never phone or visit.
All other stamps are banished to the Dimension of the Undesirable Pre-Licked. Here they will spend eternity slowly wilting. The self-sticking ones will crack as their adhesive hardens. But, through their suffering, those plucky little stamps hold on to the hope that, one day, a broke writer will summon them to validate a S.A.S.E. again. _________________ Harker: ...I sometimes write stories.
Coroner: I sometimes read them.
Harker: Thank you.
Coroner: Stories in general--not yours.
-from "The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce
Those that do get used come back with a form rejection, and that's fine. That's why I sent the SASE. But what bugs me is that paper queries are more expensive and time-consuming to put together, and when the agent responds by email when I went to the trouble and expense to send one, along with an SASE, it bugs me. Why can't they just ask for an email query in the first place? _________________ Violet "Violanthe" Kane
[email protected] ARWZ.com: A Magazine of Alternative Reality Fiction
E-mail is very in-your-face, what with all those blinking windows, animations, and cutesy tones letting you know that "You've got mail". Snail mail can be set aside?
Just a theory... _________________ Harker: ...I sometimes write stories.
Coroner: I sometimes read them.
Harker: Thank you.
Coroner: Stories in general--not yours.
-from "The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce
Some agents prefer email, some prefer postal mail. I'm cool with that. But if you're going to request a postal mail query with SASE, use the SASE! When you're sending to a large list of agents, those extra stamps really add up. _________________ Violet "Violanthe" Kane
[email protected] ARWZ.com: A Magazine of Alternative Reality Fiction
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