Our Submission Guidelines
Write Open Letters for our Publication
An Open Letter to Writers,
As of 1/20/23 Open Letters is modifying its guidelines. In this article you will find:
- The updated guidelines.
- How to become a writer.
- What you can expect when submitting.
When we launched, we aimed for 75% humor. Somewhere along the way the Humor-to-Serious ratio became closer to 1:3. I don’t believe there’s an Open Letter to Math (yet) but maybe one day you can read it realize we published about 25% humor.
In this soft relaunch, we are making this a 100% humor/satire publication.
As one of my editors, Courtney Burry wrote in the original guidelines:
You’ve had an experience that has made a big impact on your life and you just can’t keep it to yourself.
You need to tell the world.
You need to rant, laugh, and help others understand just what you are talking about.
We still want you to tell the world, tell your boss, tell your cat. Cry out to them, scold them, praise them, or maybe even tickle them. Make people laugh while you do it.
You can still inspire. Just make sure you amuse as well.
With that in mind, here are the specific guidelines.
- Your story must be in the form of a letter. Take a look at past letters if you need a guide. At a minimum, this means a salutation/greeting (ie: Dear so and so, An Open Letter to…., etc), a signature (ie: Sincerely, Love, From Your Zombie Goldfish, etc) and the story must read like a letter. (Don’t just throw a salutation and signature onto an article.)
- Your story must be well written. I recommend using Grammarly or some other editing software. However, that is just a starting point. Submit only polished writing. Our editors will no longer perform massive editing work.
- Your story should be well formatted. Short paragraphs look more pleasing to the eye in online writing. Keep your readers’ eyes moving and flowing.
- All letters must be original to you and previously unpublished on Medium. Don’t plagiarize.
- Your article must meet Medium’s Distribution Guidelines with one exception. We will allow articles about Medium if they adhere to the other guidelines stated here.
- Of course, Medium’s Rules must be followed at all times.
- All articles must contain a Title, a Subtitle, and a relevant Image. The image must be properly attributed. Refer to the Medium Rules regarding this.
- No defamation, hate, misogyny, or racism allowed.
- Tag your stories with Open Letter and up to four others. Humor or Satire would be great choices as well.
- I don’t have a 10th guideline.
How to become a writer.
Reply to the comments of this article letting us you want to be a writer. If you are currently a writer, there is no need to reapply.
Note: if you previously requested to be a writer but we missed you, please resubmit by commenting on this article. I didn’t receive notifications from the previous article, so there’s a good chance I may have missed it.
What to expect from us.
If your article is accepted and scheduled you will receive a private note letting you know. Most articles are scheduled but if there is no backlog they may be published immediately.
I anticipate reviewing both stories and writer requests every other day. However, the commitment is that I will respond no more than one week after receiving the request. This includes requests to be made a writer, and submitted stories.
If you have submitted a story, or requested to be a writer, and haven’t heard back within 1 week, send an email to [email protected]. The email subject should be Open Letters Request. DO NOT EMAIL SOONER THAN 1 WEEK.
And remember, you likely will have an answer within 1–2 days.
If your letter does not meet the guidelines it will be rejected. Depending on the reasons, we may invite you to fix the issues and resubmit.
We reserve the right to make minor edits/fixes to the letter but do not count on it. If we make these changes we’ll let you know in a private note. Medium keeps a change log so there will be no question about what was edited.
Once published, we promise to archive your work for at least 6 months. We ask that you keep your story with us for at least that long as well.
Sincerely,
Scott Hughey — Owner of Open Letters TO
P.S. See some examples of funny letters below.
Scott Hughey just realized how many of his humorous letters involve sex. He hopes this doesn’t mean the way he does it is funny.