Your cover letter should be short and to the point. Editors might well bin manuscripts that deviate wildly from the formula, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to get things right. It makes life easier for an overworked editor, and makes you look professional. It may seem like a lot of work getting your manuscript looking like the examples provided by Shunn, but it’s worth the effort. William Shunn is the definitive source on manuscript preparation, and on his site you’ll find easy-to-follow instructions on how to format your work: Rather than providing a long description of standard manuscript format, I’ll instead refer you to the expert. If, however, the guidelines provided by the magazine have nothing to say about how you should format your work, you can use standard manuscript format. If they want a particular font or type size, then use that font or type size, even if you think it looks rubbish. If they ask for attachments, send an attachment. If the magazine would prefer work to be pasted into the body of an email, do that. In general, when formatting your work, you should do what the guidelines say. So, for example, a publisher that asks for “ first North American serial rights, electronic rights and audio rights” wants to be the first magazine in North America to print the work, and also be allowed to publish it online and in audio format as well. The same for film rights, although most literary magazines don’t have the budget for movie adaptations! A publisher might ask for this right in addition to others if they are considering publishing a “best-of” collection at the end of the year.Īudio rights grant the publisher the right to publish an audio recording of the work. This is the right to print the piece in an anthology or collection. If a publisher specifies that they take non-exclusive rights, then they are happy for the piece to appear elsewhere as well. If a publisher wants exclusive online rights, that means they want to be the only ones to publish that piece online. This means that even when the issue of the magazine in which your work appears is no longer current, it will still be readily available in their archives.Įxclusive rights are just that – exclusive. This is the right to store the work and make it available in the magazine archives. If the publisher wants to reprint the piece in a “best of” collection they would have to seek your permission again. This indicates that the right will only be exercised once. If a publisher takes North American rights, they may only publish the piece in North America – they cannot then pass it to the British arm of their organisation and publish it there too. The inclusion of a territory indicates the area in which the piece will be published. This is the right to publish the piece of writing on a website, or in an eBook. This is the right to publish the piece of writing in printed form in a magazine. This is the right to be the first publisher to publish the piece of writing in question.
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