I honestly never thought that this would be advice that I would give, but after slush letter #5 that made this mistake, I feel that I ought to bring it to your attention.
Writers. When you include your SASEs in your query letters, do us both a favor.
Address it to yourself.
Not to us.
I don’t need to get the rejection letter than I sent you.
You people think I’m kidding. I’m not kidding. This is the fifth SASE I’ve gotten addressed to the publishing house, listing the person’s own address as the return address.
Don’t do it.
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3 comments:
Oh, my. What part of "self addressed" do these poor folks not understand? Though I guess it could be chalked up to nerves ... it can be terrifying to send your ms out into the world!
Taking you up on the "I'm happy to answer questions" portion of your profile: What is the process for reviewing agented submissions at your house?
Presumably they are sent to a specific editor. Do assistants read them first? If so, do they have final say if it's a "no" or do they pass them all on to the editor with recommendations? If the original editor likes the submission but thinks it might be better for someone else at the house, does he/she pass it along? Etc.
Any insights you can give would be much appreciated!
And thanks for the blog!
I've gotten those from time to time, too. I have actually gotten so mad at one, thinking it was the author sending me back my rejection letter, that I wrote a blog post ranting about how unprofessional that behavior was. Then I saw the postmark, and realized it was something I'd rejected several days before. I felt chagrinned enough at my earlier ranting that I put his rejection in a new envelope with a note saying he might want to watch that, but most days I wouldn't have.
I'll admit, I caught myself doing the same thing a time or two. I - believe - I caught all of them before putting them in the mail, but I might be wrong.
In my case anyway, it was simple absentmindedness. I was querying four different MSs at the time, and I'd sometimes forget if I was making out the outside envelope or the SASE. Of course, that's the rub of using almost identical envelopes for both.
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