Clueless

We got maybe the queen of all submission the other day. Our submission guidelines are clear. I can't even begin to say how many times we have revised the guidelines for the sole purpose of making them confusion-free. One submission per writer per period. That submission may be a flash piece, a fiction piece, a CNF piece or up to three poems.

One writer has sent us a fiction piece (which I didn't glance at), a "flash" submission (which I'll get to in a moment), and four poems. I didn't look at the poems themselves but I looked at the obnoxious and poorly written cover letter. The credits she points to are at forums, except for the "national news magazine" she doesn't name. The "flash" piece is not flash length, is very badly written (complete w/ a misused "it's") and is loosely porn-ish. Something about nipples popping like a jelly doughnut. I didn't read that closely. So it's not even subject matter we can or would publish.

How hard is it to follow guidelines? I mean, if writers only knew how following the submission guidelines already puts them ahead of 10-25% of the people they're competing against, maybe more people would bit the bullet and submit for publication.