When Jason Sizemore first invited me to guest edit the April 2009 issue of Apex Magazine, he asked me if I was sure I’d be ready for the job. I told him that I had dealt with unsolicited manuscripts before and that I was fully prepared for the onslaught of fiction that would head my way.

After an opening like that, most readers would probably expect me to follow up with a line like “Little did I know,” perhaps followed by the three dots of an ellipsis. But the truth is that I did know what to expect, and I was fully prepared to deal with submissions.

I had read unsolicited manuscripts before, for other science fiction magazines and even for a book publisher. So I knew that I would receive a lot of stories, and that it would take me quite a while to sift through them. But I also discovered a few things about editing an issue of a science fiction magazine that I wasn’t expecting, and with Jason’s permission I thought I would share them.

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The first discovery I made was how little attention I paid to the cover letters that accompanied the submissions. I’d always been told to include some sort of cover letter with my submissions, noting a few of my credits so the editor would have a better idea of who I was and where I was coming from. When I began going through the submissions for the special issue, I expected to read each cover letter first before I turned to the story.

Instead, almost from the start I found myself ignoring the cover letter and going right to the story. And I very quickly realized why. As the editor, I wasn’t accepting or rejecting cover letters; I had to choose the best possible stories for the issue, and in a way, that meant that reading the cover letters would be a waste of my time.

However, my case was special.

I had no assistant editor sifting through the manuscripts first. Indeed, I was the first reader for every submission to the special issue. A cover letter’s purpose is mostly to let the assistant editor know that the writer is some sort of professional and to encourage that assistant editor to pass the submission along to the editor who can make the final decision on the story.

Because of this, I always advise writers to include a brief paragraph explaining who they are in case there is a gatekeeper vetting submissions. But since I was pretty much the first editor to look at these submissions, I felt that there was no reason for me to start by reading each writer’s list of credits. After all, in the end, the story has to stand on its own merits.

On reflection, the fact that I essentially ignored the cover letters put all the writers on equal ground. A neophyte had the same chance with me as a multiple award winner. All I cared about was the story.

Is there a moral to this discovery? Not really. I still advise all writers to include cover letters with their submissions. But keep in mind that a cover letter, no matter how brilliant, isn’t going to sell the story for you.

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The second discovery I made concerned the quality of the work that was submitted to Apex Magazine for the special issue. Having read unsolicited manuscripts before, I expected to find that the vast majority of stories would be unpublishable for one reason or another, leaving me with a tiny handful of good stories from which to make my final selections.

This is where I say, little did I know…

Now it’s true that there are always submissions that clearly can be rejected fairly quickly, and the submissions I received for the special issue of Apex did include some of those. But by far, the biggest problem I had came not from having too many bad submissions to consider but rather from having too many good submissions to consider.

I found myself gnashing my teeth at the limitations I faced. Quite a lot of excellent submissions came my way, but I could only accept two stories and two poems for the magazine. There were many more stories and poems that had caught my attention, and I suspect that I could have easily filled five (or more) special issues of Apex with stories and poems of high quality.

In the end, though, I had to winnow all the submissions down to the few I was finally able to accept. And so I did.

(By the way, if you are a writer trying to get your stories published, take this one piece of advice above all others: make sure that the opening of your story will make the reader want to keep reading. Enough said.)

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The third discovery I made was that if you send the same rejection letter to writer after writer using a Gmail account, eventually Gmail decides that you’re a spammer and requires you to prove that you’re not.

More importantly, I once again confirmed the sad truth of this business, which is that personal rejection notes are a luxury that most editors just can’t afford.

I had briefly considered trying to send a personal message to each writer, explaining why I couldn’t use his or her story, but frankly I didn’t have the time. There were far too many rejections that had to go out to make each one personal in the short period of time available. I’m also not sure if my feedback would have been at all helpful or useful. In some cases, there were stories for which I could have recommended some tweaking, but in most cases, it was simply a matter of saying that the story just didn’t fit exactly what I was looking for.

Writers often look for the secret meaning behind the rejection letters they receive. What did the editor mean by the various sentences he placed in the note? Were the stories chosen better than the other stories in the submission pile? Honestly, it really boils down to the simple common phrase, “Your submission did not meet our needs at this time.”

In other words, if I didn’t accept your submission for the special issue of Apex, all it means is that I didn’t accept your submission for the special issue of Apex.

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In the midst of all this rejecting of stories fell the question of how to reject stories by writers whom I knew personally. On the one hand, I didn’t want to send them a form rejection note, because they might take it as more of a brush-off than the other writers. On the other hand, I didn’t want to play favorites by going into more detail for them.

One thing I did not worry about was the simple fact that I would have to reject stories by writers I knew. Most of my work has been published in Analog, but that doesn’t stop Stanley Schmidt from rejecting a new story of mine if he feels it doesn’t fit the magazine. Although we all do get to know each other after spending a few years in this business, the fact is that we’re professionals, and rejection is part of the game. If you can’t accept a story rejection from a friend, or you can’t bear the thought of rejecting a story by a friend, you’re in the wrong business.

In the end, I sent those writers I knew the same rejection note, but with a personal postscript to thank them again for submitting to Apex. I figured it was the best balance between business and friendship. Most of them seemed to think so too, as they emailed me back to thank me for considering their stories.

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My final discovery was how much more work an acquiring fiction editor has to do besides simply selecting the stories for the magazine. After I had chosen the stories and the poems, I had to arrange for the authors to provide biographies to the publisher, plus I had to do a bit of actual editing of the stories. (An editor editing? Who would have thought it?) Furthermore, I had to find an artist to provide a cover and explain to him what I wanted. And I had to keep everything on schedule, so that Jason Sizemore could actually publish the April issue of Apex in April.

The process taught me one final lesson that I’d like to share with all aspiring writers. Years ago, I read an informal guidebook by an editor at DC Comics who made an important point to all the writers working with him. He noted that the editor’s job is to get the books out the door month after month, and that when it came to the writers, all he cared about was one thing: could they help him get the books out on schedule?

As a writer myself, I tend to feel emotionally connected to my work, and I want the editor to bow to that feeling and respect the effort I’ve put into creating my stories. But respect is a two-way street. As an editor, I was most well-disposed toward those writers who came off as professional. This included, but was not limited to: writers who followed the submission guidelines precisely; who did not take informal liberties with their cover letters (such as calling me “Mike” when not even my wife calls me that); who submitted manuscripts that were in a standard easy-to-read format; and writers who responded promptly to my own queries. This is not to say that a writer who doesn’t follow these behaviors won’t get work accepted. But submitting a story to a market unprofessionally is like showing up at a job interview in a T-shirt and jeans. You’re already going up against more people than you can possibly imagine; why make it even easier for the editor to reject your story?

Editing an issue of Apex reinforced all that I had learned about being a successful writer. If you want to have a writing career, then write good stories; submit them with brief, to-the-point cover letters; and respond promptly and professionally to all queries from the editor and publisher.

Michael A. Burstein won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and three Nebulas. He and wife Nomi live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees, and attended Clarion. See http://www.mabfan.com.

In November, 2008, Apex Publications released Michael’s first collection of stories titled I Rememeber the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein.

Photo credit: Nomi S. Burstein