By Itto Outini
How would you feel if someone were to send you a gift that doesn’t work for you at all: a piece of clothing that doesn’t fit, for instance, or a cookbook containing only meals that violate your dietary restrictions, or a piece of memorabilia that’s wildly out of step with your home décor?
You might appreciate the gesture, but at the same time, you would probably feel a little miffed. You would probably wonder just how well this person knows you—and, if they don’t know you, why they’re trying to give you a gift in the first place.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all too often, this is how readers and editors at magazines and presses feel about the work that is submitted to them.
This thought first occurred to me in early 2025. Hot on its heels came the natural follow-up question: if we don’t take the time to learn about the people to whom we’re submitting, to get to know as much as we can about their tastes, their interests, their aesthetic preferences, and their worldviews, then how can we expect them to respond positively to our creative contributions?
Over the past year, prompted by these questions, I’ve developed a strategy that has enabled me to publish in over 50 literary magazines around the world.
Before I go any further, let me clarify one thing: when I say “get to know the readers and editors,” I don’t just mean “read previous issues of their magazines.” This is never a bad idea, but it can only ever yield an indirect sense of why the work that you’re encountering was chosen. It also fails to account for staff turnover, which is common at literary magazines, especially those affiliated with colleges and universities. By “get to know the readers and editors,” I mean, look up the people listed on the masthead, read their work, check out their websites, and peruse their social media profiles. In short, familiarize yourself with their creative outputs and the statements they’ve made about those outputs. This, after all, is how most creative people prefer to be known.
Familiarizing yourself with the readers’ and editors’ work in this way will help you make wise decisions about which work to send. If an editor has publicly endorsed a certain worldview, for instance, then it may not be wise to send a story, essay, or poem that overtly challenges or lampoons that worldview. If an editor’s work returns again and again to certain preoccupations—missing parents, dysfunctional romantic relationships, evil clowns, etc.—then work exploring similar terrain may resonate with them.
There are also instances—rare, but they happen—when you’re able to send work that articulates something an editor wishes they could say, but are unable to for some reason. Self-censorship comes in many forms and is, by definition, difficult to discern, but sometimes, when you really immerse yourself in a body of published work, you start to get a sense of what should be there, but is missing. Even when you do pick up on such a signal, there’s no guarantee that your own work will fill in the gaps, so this is a when-the-stars-align sort of situation, but it’s worth looking out for and bearing in mind.
Depending on the magazine, you may also use your cover letter to establish a personal connection with an editor. Some magazines do take cover letters, and others explicitly ask for formulaic ones, but where appropriate, you might mention in your cover letter that you admire a certain publication—either one that the editor authored, or one for which they, too, have publicly expressed admiration—and note that they might enjoy your piece for the same reason. You might also allude to a shared interest, a shared background, a shared perspective on the arts or the world.
The risk here, of course, is that you might come across sounding awkward or obsequious, so whatever you do, don’t force it. If you feel no real affinity for the editor, then just submit a standard cover letter—or maybe don’t submit to that market at all.
Of course, it takes a lot of time and energy to do research and find the editors with whom your work is most likely to resonate, but the pay-off is proportionate to the investment. You’re not just trying to publish one story, essay, or poem, after all. You’re trying to build a career. And careers are always built on relationships. You never know where those readers and editors will end up next. So, build those relationships now, while you still can.
Bio: Itto Outini is an author and co-host of a podcast about literature and the arts, Let’s Have a Renaissance. Her essays and fiction have been published in literary magazine around the world. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, researching, and community-building.
