don't annoy the editors

The deadline for the marvelous May 2021 issue of Electric Spec is a little over a week away. Get those stories in! Thank you for submitting! :)

Today, I thought I'd pass along some tips regarding not annoying your editors.

• Don't ask for an update on your story. Unfortunately, we just don't have the resources for this.
• Don't ask for exceptions to various submission rules. Please do attach your story as an rtf file. Please do use standard formatting.
• Don't send your submission to the wrong email address. It likely will get lost even if you send it to editors at you-know-where. Again, we just get too much email to deal with this.
• Don't submit a story outside the word count limits. We won't bend the rules for your story.
• Don't critique instructions on the submisisons page or elsewhere on the website.
• Don't tell us the wrong things in your cover letter. I don't want to know you've never published a story before. I don't want to know your political or religious or other very subjective opinions. If you've published dozens of stories before I don't want to know the names of all the markets; pick the top few. Don't summarize your story.
• Do tell us your name (and pen name, if relevant), your story name, your story genre, your story word count. Do tell us a short writing-related bio.
• Don't open your story with a lot of racism, misogyny, brutal murder-of-editors (!), or other offensive stuff.

Good luck!