In the slush pile, I recently stumbled across a submission from a vanity press author who I’d seen self-promoting himself on various message boards.

The author managed to break just about every rule of submission etiquette.

Here’s a partial list of his crimes against me:

(1) a large ms. arrived folded into thirds inside a #10 envelope

(2) single spaced

(3) extra small font (looked like 10 or 8 point Times New Roman)

(4) submitted two stories at the same time

(5) failed to include an SASE

(6) the mss. were stapled

Oh yeah, and the story itself was pretty bad. Well, dreadful really. And I could go on, but why prolong the agony?