Are you supposed to do anything with personal rejections---like are you supposed to thank them or something? Also if they say they want you to send them more work, do you mention that in a cover letter? Is there an expiration date for such an offer? (Me = new to this trying to get published thing). It was Pleiades---anyone familiar with that market?
We had this discussion once a while back and I think opinion was fairly split.
I do not respond to personal rejections--my thinking is the editors are busy enough, it's more an annoyance, and it's not their purpose--they want to encourage you to send more work.
I do remind them in cover letters that they'd commented on a previous story and requested more work. Everything you can do to get a foot in the door.
I'd say there's no expiration, but editors change frequently and you're likely to be referring to someone no longer there, but it still can't hurt (and definitely might help).
Pleiades is a very good magazine. I've never submitted there, they'd kind of fallen off my radar, but I intend to. And congratulations--personalized rejections from tough markets are pretty heartbreaking but pretty encouraging as well. They fall in the best bad news/worst good news category, but you're doing something right. Now send them something else.
If they ask for more work, send them more work.
If they just flat out reject your work, don't be a schmuck and thank them for rejecting you.
Unless you can be funny about it. Always be funny about shit when you can.
I never respond unless a response is asked for. They way I see it, they can only read so many emails a day. I don't want people clogging up their inboxes with thank yous when I am trying to submit to them, so I don't want to get in the way of other people submitting either. Really, as many submissions as an editor gets, how likely is it that they are going to remember that you did or didn't send a thank you? In reality, it's an empty email. They are going to think, at best, "Well, that is nice." *delete* It doesn't really accomplish anything, in my opinion.
Yeah, I never respond to rejections. I'm not going to thank them for rejecting me nor am I going to thank them for taking the time to read my work (that's their fucking job). In the event that they specifically ask to see something else--then and only then do I respond.
Here is a link to the old discussion. Not too many responses but, it's here.