Corresponding Authors (Letter 1 of 9)
Dear Amy,
The same day that we agreed to conduct this interview via traditional, snail-mailed letters, I sent you a friend request on Facebook. I almost immediately regretted it: It seemed strange to have a constantly updating feed of information from you at hand while I was drafting a letter that is going to take two weeks to arrive in your mailbox.
But if social media makes letter-writing so retrograde, how come it seems to matter so much more?
That’s a horribly worded question, but I don’t want to go get the white-out. What I really mean to ask is why do letters seem to risk so much more than the way we talk to each other on computers?
Did you picture the letters in DEAR EDITOR as physical letters or as text in some field, like on Submittable?
Do you think that difference in form affects the way writers talk to publishers in their cover letters?
YRS,
Anthony