Here’s a little unsolicited advice from a beleaguered editor for all the writers and PR flacks out there: you are not the only writer or PR flack in the world.
I say this because once again today, I have received a submission in Microsoft Word attachment form whose file name is “Earth Island Journal.doc”.
As a writer myself, I understand the justifiable feeling that the world revolves around the needs of the writer. It’s convenient to name your files in such a way that it’s easy to keep track of to whom you’ve sent the submissions.
But you have to keep track of how many submissions a week? Two? Ten, if you’re a little more ambitious than I am? Whereas the editor to whom you’re sending them may have ten times that many to keep track of, or more. It makes complete sense from your perspective to give your treatise on Animal Rights And Space Exploration the file name “Earth Island Journal,” because you may have cleverly looked up the correct spelling of my name and customized the cover introductory paragraph accordingly.
You are not, in fact, the only writer or PR flack in the world. In all likelihood, I don’t even know you. If I know you, it’s possible that I’ll remember your name and that you sent a submission in in a certain month, which will allow me to find your anonymously filenamed document. But if our relationship consists of my having answered your email once to send along contributor’s guidelines, you’ll be lucky if I can remember whether your name is Matt or Mark or Mary. Most likely what I’ll remember is that you were going to send a piece on Extreme Cave Biking. I will thus search on “cave” or “biking” or “speleoutrageous,” which means if you’ve named your document “Earth Island Journal” I will not find it.
Stop for a moment and consider just how many documents I might have on my various disks that might be entitled “Earth Island Journal.” Submissions from other writers I don’t know, funding proposals incoming and outgoing, business plans, archives, letters to the editor, you get the picture.
Of course, the question of fairness comes up here. Who am I to insist that every single writer or PR flack in the world change their file naming conventions to accomodate my Attention Deficit Disorder? Why can’t I just assiduously rename each attached document as it arrives, or save them to a folder named “submissions/March issue” or some such? Two reasons. First off, about nine tenths of the email I get is spam. Spam subject lines are getting more and more sophisticated, as witness one I got today whose subject was “Senator’s condition upgraded after brain surgery.” A lot of known spam has attachments that seem to be Word documents, and a lot of those are named something like “Earth Island.” We’re a Mac shop, so the chances of coming down with a virus if I open each such document are slim. But I do like to be able to do something other than check email.
But here’s the more important thing: the consequences of your not keeping my needs in mind when assigning file names are far greater for you than they are for me. If you send me an anonymous submission, you run the risk of not having it printed. I only run the risk of not printing it, and I always have other good writing at hand to fill that hole.
This logic also applies to email subject lines, incidentally. “Pitch” or “query” are pretty risky now. “Press release” is completely useless: I don’t know any editor who doesn’t assume those are penny stock spam. It may be that within 2 months, spam titles will be so perniciously accurate that even “Query: re environmental effects of genetically engineered squirrels in Provo County parks” won’t help. But we’re not there yet. Be specific up front.
Keeping all the above in mind, here are a few other things you should never name your document: “Pitch,” “Submission,” “Press release,” “Article,” “re: your moronic recent editorial,” “Boost your circulation naturally,” “Press kit,” “Utne Reader Submission.”
Thank you and good night.
Consider teaching a class of 30 students and receiving 29 attachments entitled Essay1.doc, and this despite the fact that the course syllabus provided a template for file naming. Oh well.
When you give away my trade secrets, you substantially decrease the chances of my story getting coverage.
Chris, I’m right with you on this one. I’ve edited 6 magazines (7? it’s too early in the morning to remember) and faced stuff like this from Day One.
The worst experience, though, was living in a small town (Flagstaff), which forces you to be nice to everybody (for which reason I’m betting you’re writing on this subject here when you’d really like to put it in your EIJ editor’s column), and having a retired English professor coming in about once every three weeks to go through the entire weekly magazine and discuss the various grammatical and spelling mistakes ... slowly and carefully. In his mind, he was being helpful. In mine ... whew.
On another front, I’m hoping this new congress will see the need to pass the Spam Death Penalty Law (also called the Most Excellent Greetings from Nigeria!! Bill) I’ve submitted to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Hope you feel better soon, and get some good rest meanwhile.