Clowns Against Submission Fees [by Timothy Green]

After publishing my first book of poems, I stopped writing. I couldn’t stomach self-promotion, but felt a duty to my publisher to self-promote. It was like eating my own vomit every day, and for a few years, whenever I sat down to write, I could see the future of the potential poem before me blooming and wilting in a time-lapsed montage of death:  If I actually liked whatever I was about to write, I’d have to submit it to a magazine, then put it in a book, then give readings and beg for blurbs and reviews and post about it on my stupid blog and my stupid Facebook page and my stupid Twitter feed to 1,000 other poets trapped in the same nauseating self-promotional pie-eating contest.

The only way I could get back to the part that I loved—getting lost in an image and shuffling words around a page—was to promise myself that I wouldn’t publish anything. And then actually not publish anything.

I didn’t publish or submit any of my own poetry for about five years, even when solicited for projects that sounded exciting. Only recently I’ve gotten over this childishness—it really is childish—and have started dipping my toes back into the ice-cold—

Wait ... submission fees are acceptable now?!

I can't believe this has normalized. I know I’m going to upset a lot of publishers when I say this, but so be it: Reading fees are unethical, and the practice should be shamed out of existence.

If an agent charged audition fees only to turn down 99% of those potential clients, we would call him a con-artist. In other fields, just the process of submitting completed materials for consideration, or "working on spec," is considered unethical—even without submission fees! We're already skating on thin ice by paying so little (if anything at all) for the work that we publish, for tying up that work for 3 months to a year and then having the gall to say NO SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS, and for making it seem like the "exposure" of appearing in a magazine reward enough. But now we also want submitters to pay for the privilege of being rejected? 

What is the purpose of a literary magazine? Don’t forget that we’re all non-profits in one way or another. Don’t forget that the average circulation of a print journal is 500 copies, that the average Alexa ranking of an online journal is about 5 million, and that most of the people reading them are also submitting to them. So what is the purpose of a literary magazine? Who do we serve and why should we exist?

If you think literary magazines exist to bolster the prestige of the editors and the institutions that produce them, then submission fees make a lot of sense: They raise some money, and they cut down on that nasty “slush pile” we all have to wade through to get to our desks in the morning. Submission fees generate a few thousand dollars, while cutting submissions by 50% or more—and who wants to read all that junk, right?

But to me, and I think to the rest of the community, literary magazines exist in the service of literature—they bring new writing to a wider audience, foster artistic dialogue, jumpstart careers, and provide a historical chronicle of literary development. I often wonder how many Emily Dickinsons there have been throughout history, who weren’t lucky enough to have a Lavinia, whose siblings found a trunk full of poems and left them in the attic. Literary magazines exist to keep that work alive, and to encourage the continuing participation and development of the art.

Submission fees are anathema to that purpose—they’re exploitative and exclusionary and stifling. Having read submissions for a decade, I know: the majority of submissions have no chance at ever finding publication, even on a fair playing field. Editors sift for diamonds in the rough, and it’s mostly rough, and we all know it. Charging money for nothing more than the 30-second skim it takes to see the obvious, when that small effort is simply the social good that you’re supposed to be providing anyway, is egregious.

And that’s not even considering the practice of solicitation—a large percentage of the work that’s published in most magazines doesn’t come with a fee, because the editors asked for it directly. There’s a reason why unsolicited submissions are derided as “slush.” When you take this into account, the experience starts to feel less like a literary service, and more like a rigged game at a carnival. We’ll pretend you have a genuine chance as long as you keep laying your dollar down.

I know you know that it’s true; you feel that it’s true in your gut every time you think about it. I also know the arguments used to justify the practice, but none of them stand up to scrutiny.

Magazines need the money.

Literary magazines are very expensive. The established magazines, with circulations of a few thousand, cost between $150,000 and $500,000 annually to produce (non-profit tax returns are public record, by law, so you can check for yourself). 15% - 50% of that is made back through sales and subscriptions and advertising, but all of the rest is red—to be filled in with ever-dwindling grants and donations. It’s a truly precarious financial situation, and anything that provides a small degree of stability is a blessing.

But this is such a small degree. As far as I know, Rattle receives more submissions than any other literary magazine, besides Poetry. In 2014, it was 22,000 packets of up to four poems each. If we charged a reading fee of $3 per submission, that seems like a lot of money—$66,000! But we wouldn’t get all that money, though.

Submittable takes a cut for service fees, and the banks take an even larger cut for credit card processing, and with that, we’re down to about $40,000. But if we added the pay wall, submissions would be cut in half, at least—$20,000, which is enough to print and ship an issue or two. That’s the extremely optimistic number, though, because few literary magazines have ever received as many submissions as we do. Realistically, for the more established journals, we’re talking about maybe $5,000 of income on average. This, against and deficit of $100,000 or more—it’s a drop in a leaky bucket, not a step toward sustainability. And it’s an ethically expensive drop, too, that is paid for by the silencing of voices who can't afford the fees, or can't live with the embarrassment of paying for their own rejection. 

But what about small magazines that don’t have any funding?

For newer, smaller magazines, submission fees generate even less revenue, because they receive far fewer submissions. Moreover, an established magazine has the prestige to survive a submission fee and still receive submissions, but how is a small magazine ever going to become established if it’s insulting both its potential authors and its potential audience? The growth of a magazine comes through building a community of support around it, and that community won’t grow if it isn’t respected. For a small magazine, the potential rewards are greater by percentage, but so are the negative consequences.

Poets used to have to pay for paper and envelopes and stamps; a $3 reading fee is less than it would cost then, now we’re getting the money instead of the USPS.

And people used to pay to have blocks of salt carved out of desert basins and hauled hundreds of miles on the backs of camels, so they could preserve food and not starve to death. Isn’t technology great? Next.

Submittable costs money to use, so we have to charge for submissions to pay for Submittable.

Submittable is a wonderful service run by hard-working people who make our lives as editors much easier, saving time, which is money, which completely justifies the cost of using Submittable. Rattle needs the highest package that they offer, and it's worth ever penny to us.

And if it doesn’t save enough time to justify the cost, then don’t use it. For nine out of ten years, I handled a larger volume of submissions than most, with nothing more than a free Gmail account. New submissions went in a folder called “To Read.” Once read, they were moved to other folders called, “Yes,” “No,” and “Maybe.” After that, it’s easy to harvest addresses and mail-merge replies, or just paste in boilerplates by hand. It’s really not that hard.

But some magazines use the submission fees to pay their authors, and isn't paying authors a good thing? 

Of course, paying authors is wonderful, but not at the expense of all the other poets who never had a chance and never even knew it, sorry. 

So, if submission fees are unethical, how else am I supposed to raise funds to keep the magazine afloat? Isn’t existing with reading fees better than going under?

There are plenty of ways to generate revenue without taking advantage of those you should be supporting—ways to generate revenue that actually build a sense of community, rather than destroy it. Buy-in contests work great—enter by ordering an issue or subscribing, so you’re actually receiving something in return, even if you don’t win. Sell merchandise, sell ads, sell real feedback or fast-tracks on submissions. Kickstart each issue, and only publish it once you’ve reached the fundraising goal—use that to remind your community that they really care about reading the magazine. If that doesn't work, trim the fat.

And if none of that works, yes, consider going under. If I had to steal from my customers to keep my hot dog stand in business, I’d find another business. Strong words, I know, but I feel strongly about this. 

If you disagree, though, let’s debate it in the comments. I’m out of space here, but I have plenty more to say and welcome further discussion. 

 

__________
[Photo by Ryan Summers, CC BY-SA 2.0, link]

Comments

[Keith]

I'm not rich enough or desperate enough to pay people to read my work.

[Sarah Grace Liu]

Aw, man, I was getting all excited about the you dipping your feet back into the poetry publishing waters bit, and then you pulled the rug out from under us.

[Timothy Green]

I made my first couple submissions about a month ago so nothing to report, still "in-progress"!

[John Johnson]

This is exactly right. Point for point. Even paying an entry fee for contests gives me the creeps, because I assume most of them are rigged, too, as Jorie Graham's example shows. (Although I'm okay with Buy-a-Subscription contests.) I’m not sure, but I think part of what drives this fee-business is poetry’s shift from having a readership to being an academic exercise, where the main purpose of getting published is to create a line in a curricula vitae.

[Claire]

And that's just looking at it from an ethical perspective. When you look at it from an economic transaction standpoint, it makes even less sense. Newspapers (including online ones), streaming services, and everything else charges readers - for the content they gain access to - and advertisers - for the exposure. In every other business model, there is a specific gain rendered for the fee paid. When writers submit work for review, they gain nothing in return. For literary magazines to expect submitters - 99% of whom gain literally NOTHING from submitting - to pay is laughable.

[Howard Richard Debs]

No punches pulled here; well said in terms of the main bout; but there is also a contender in the wings as well: "The growth of a magazine comes through building a community of support around it, and that community won’t grow if it isn’t respected." This could be the start of a great "How to Try to Make a Litmag of Merit" -- I admire the spirit of the startups for whom the attempt is a labor of love; and the digital age can level the playing field in a way; look at how Rattle started out, humble beginnings I believe; the more the merrier for other reasons too involved to explicate in a comment. Suffice it to say the proliferation of online litmags particularly, most of which indeed fall by the wayside sooner rather than later act as a stimulus to submission and thereby are a catalyst for more poetry, granted bad, good, and indifferent, nonetheless this type of emerging "infrastructure" expands the possibility of 1).finding a hidden gem for the consumer (reader/listener et al.), 2). finding a home for the work of the content producer (the poet) and 3). finding another piece of the puzzle for the curator (editor/publisher). It all somehow works itself out in a literary universe not governed by greed and pecuniary interest.

[Robbi Nester]

I totally agree. I've had to accept getting paid nothing for poems, but damned if I want to pay someone for reading my work.
The only fees I'll pay, and those only occasionally, are two or three a year for attractive open readings of manuscripts or once in a great while a contest that pays and that I think I have some chance of winning or placing in.

[Amy Minton]

Hi. My friend works with the Poetry Has Value project, which interviews editors of paying journals to get a big picture look at the various funding methodologies. It's a great resource. http://poetryhasvalue.com/

Cheers!

[Adkarabinus]

I have to say that, in my experience, your calculations here are skewed. This is something we discussed a lot at a university-based magazine I worked for (will not mention, though the info can be easily found) and ultimately had to discard because of bureaucracy and red tape. We'd lost significant funding from the department and were struggling to keep afloat and continue paying writers; sub fees would have filled the gap that nothing else did, even if we'd seen a reduction. The alternative, for some established outlets, is to give it up, and though I don't work for them anymore, I'd hate to see an established, paying market disappear. There's enough of that going around.

I can understand why sub fees feel unattractive, even unethical. But they made me, personally, more careful. I'd think, is this piece really ready? Am I ready to stake a couple dollars on that? In a few cases, it saved me time and trouble and preserved my chances. But I also only sub to magazines I like and read and want to support anyway. I'd rather that money go to, say, Hayden's Ferry than Starbucks, and in that vein, I also donated to Duotrope before they went to a pay model. I support the things I care about in a way that matters. In return, I like to be supported, which is why I'm also a fan of the Poetry Has Value project mentioned above -- even though I'm not a poet, I think there are messages there that all writers need to be thinking about.

[Jess Burnquist]

@Amy Minton and AAKarabinus-- this is such an important discussion. I have really enjoyed the thoughtful posts and wide sampling of opinions at the Poetry Has Value project as well. Thanks for this article, Timothy!

[Timothy Green]

Thanks for having the courage to speak up with disagreement. What part of the calculations do you think are wrong? I can only project from information that's publicly available, so if I'm wrong about something I'd like to know. You can give details about the numbers you're thinking without revealing the journal, right? There's no doubt submissions would drop, though -- that 50% reduction has been repeated again and again, and makes intuitive sense.

As for the other point, of course I fully support supporting journals, I just think there are other ways to support that are positive for the community. For magazines that need more money, the first question to ask, I think, is why sales and subscriptions are so low.

[Timothy Green]

I have an interview with her that will go up at some point, saying much of the same things, from the opposite end. I think it's great to pay poets (of course), but still more important not to charge submitters.

[Timothy Green]

And when you pay just to submit, there's no way to even know that your poems were READ at all.

Literary magazines are different from other publications, because it's a highly interactive niche art -- almost all readers are writers; it will never be self-sustaining unless we find an audience outside of poets, but that's hard, because reading poetry makes you want to write it. If it were a regular business, it just wouldn't exist, couldn't exist. That's why these are social benefit organizations, and as such, we have to hold to a higher ethical standard, I think.

[diane]

Tim--
Nobody likes paying submission fees but if it's that or the print journal goes out of business I'll pay the very minimal $3 fee that some journals charge via Submittable. I've also seen a "Tip Jar" option occasionally. Online journals proliferate while print journals struggle and too often fail to stay alive.

I believe that Rattle has a wealthy benefactor. Most editors/journals do not have one. They need money to survive.

I don't think it's really fair to say that this practice is unethical, a charge which implies that editors are unsavory characters. I just don't buy that. Nobody's getting rich on my $3.

[Megan M. Garr]

Hi Timothy, just out of curiosity, what percentage of Rattle's budget is covered by donations and grants, and what percentage by copy sales? Would you be willing to share this?

The reason I ask is that the submission fee debate, like the literary economy debates in general, too often puts all lit mags in the same big bucket, which is economically inaccurate when we're talking about the ethics of various revenue streams like the sub fee. A journal that gets funding from e.g. its university is very different from a journal that is going it on sales alone. This difference is rarely discussed or addressed. And I think it's an important one to keep in mind.

I do not see the sub fee as always or inherently a capitalist choice (just to give it a name here, one that is implied in your piece and others against the sub fee), though I know from a recent encounter with a major journal's editors that it is seen that way, and in opposition to their own "Communism" (their word choice, not mine). I'm also not saying that I'm "for" the sub fee. But I do think that we can improve this debate by seeing the submission fee in at least two positions: either as a capitalist action from a well-funded journal ("we have money and we want more") or a socialist action from a self-funded journal ("we all chip in for the good of all"). And I believe there are other positions within this range.

Thus my question about Rattle's own funding streams. It's not meant as an accusation, so I hope you don't read it as such. I simply believe it's important that we are more precise in our discussions about the submission fee, and that can start, at least in part, with breaking down the literary journal "classes" (if we can...)

[Timothy Green]

Hi Diane--

Thanks for continuing the discussion, I think it's an important one, so important to continue.

It might have been obscured by other statements in this post, but one of my main arguments against submission fees is that it is not an effective business strategy. I want literary magazines to thrive, not go under, and the money that these fees generate is not enough to justify the long-term structural costs -- let alone enough to fully fund a magazine. The money generated isn't enough enough to cover the paper a journal is printed on. Submission fees disincentivize subscriptions, and damage the kind of community spirit that's necessary for a journal to prosper in the 21st century.

The fact that Rattle has a single benefactor is irrelevant -- every journal our size has benefactors, whether that's one, or many, or most often an institution's support. We're all subject to the same budgetary constraints, and economic conditions, and Rattle actually has the smallest operational budget of any journal our size by a good margin, and the smallest budget deficit that I'm aware of, because of the business practices that I use, which are all geared toward the support of a vibrant community.

I did not say that editors were unsavory characters, nor did I say that anyone was getting rich from this system. Those are straw man arguments. Good people make poor ethical choices all the time, and we all have the capacity to learn from our mistakes. And, as I made quite clear in the post, all literary magazines are some form of non-profit, operating not to get rich, but for the public good.

[Timothy Green]

I forgot to add that, if there was any evidence that submission fees were the answer to solvency, I would have no problem with them under a few conditions:

1) That solicited submissions don't have a free back door.

2) That either something of real value was provided for the fee, or there was a way to submit at certain times or certain ways without a fee.

Mainly, though, I just think it's a self-defeating practice in the long-run.

[Sarah]

So what is a poet to do? As more and more venues, both new and well-established, institute a reading fee, are poets to feel ashamed because they pay it? If a poet doesn't have an MFA or well-connected literary or academic friends, they need to build poet-cred in order to make it past the slush pile (because yes the quality of the poem matters but for many journals, your CV matters just as much) so they often turn to small, new, online ventures that yes, charge a 3.00 fee. Or perhaps they should start their own "press" so they can at least publish their own work, and build poet-cred by the title of "editor of..." Of course we'd need the time and some other form of income to sustain it. Will we reach the point where we are all charging each other to publish each other's work, while the rest of the world world goes merrily on its way? What strange times these are for poets. And I am also curious about how Rattle sustains itself- a wealthy benefactor, is that true? I suppose we could all crowd-source each other's chapbooks. Sigh.

[Adkarabinus]

Even with a 50% drop in submissions, adding the standard $3 fee (seems standard) would have covered much of printing costs (and when I edited an indie mag, it would have more than covered our costs, too). At the university mag, we were relying mainly on funding from contests once the department pulled money -- thanks to one really good year -- but there's such a glut of contests that I don't think it's a very dependable line. It's a great way to push subscriptions and I'll enter contests sometimes just for kicks because I want a subscription. But there are so many magazines and so many choices and so many contests and no one can support them all.

We need to find new ways to get people to support magazines, and have magazines support writers, I agree there. But I don't take much issue with the sub fee, for reasons above, and for the old saw about postage and all. I'd rather pay a few bucks, knowing it's going to a good cause, than mail anything, ever, or track submissions in Gmail.

[Timothy Green]

Hi Megan--

It is murky territory, because a hesitancy to talk about money is culturally ingrained for some reason. I have spreadsheets of data on this for dozens of the larger journals, but I, too, feel uncomfortable detailing too much of other peoples' business, even if they are public record. The ranges that I provided are accurate, though -- any print journal with a circulation over, say, 1,000 to 6,000, costs at least $150,000 per year to produce (up to $500,000 or so), and earns somewhere between $10,000 and $85,000. The losses range from 60% to 85% across the board, and almost all of it is covered by wealthy benefactors in some form, whether it's other charitable foundations, a university's board of trustees, the CEO of Pepsi, or the founders themselves. It's just the reality of our capitalist system. There are some government grants that go to literary magazines, but they're a very small percentage of the funding.

As for Rattle, we're a 501(c)3, so we have to make our tax returns publicly available. For 2014, Rattle cost $185,000 to produce, and earned $80,000 from sales and subscriptions. Frankly, that's the low end on expenses, and the high end on income for a journal our size. Printing alone is $40,000 per year. We pay poets about $20,000 per year. I work very hard specifically at building a community that wants to subscribe to the magazine, and also at saving on production costs. I work from home so we don't have to rent office space, and do all graphic design, web design, and grunt-work myself. It's not easy keeping the expenses as low as they are for us -- which is why I say the revenue generated from these fees is insignificant.

Small magazines and online magazines are in an entirely different situation. I actually started a different web journal myself, so I know how that works, too. That's cheap and you pay out of pocket because you love it, and donate your time reading submissions and adding them to the website. I think people who do that should be able to find a way to be compensated for their time, too, and as I said in this post, in those situations I think it's mostly just a self-defeating system, charging fees.

[Timothy Green]

Hi Sarah--

See the other comments below for more detail, because I'm starting to repeat myself, but all of the larger literary magazines have benefactors -- that's just how it has to work. For some it's universities giving teaching deferments and office space and equipment. For others it's wealthy patrons making regular donations or contributing to endowments in their wills. Small magazines don't cost much, but are all volunteer and difficult to sustain. No matter what the case, I think submission fees are self-defeating choices in the long run, which is the main reason I thought it was worthwhile to speak out against them.

As for what's a writer to do -- just keep writing and publishing in the best ways you can find! There are plenty of journals that don't charge submission fees, and hopefully it will stay that way. I'm strongly in favor of self-publishing books. Print-on-Demand is often a much better deal for authors than a typical small press book contract. The goal of making money publishing poetry is a fantasy, so the real game is having your voice reach as large an audience as possible -- readers are the true currency -- and there are plenty of ways to reach them.

[Timothy Green]

Thanks for the input. It's been so long since I did the university mag thing (15 years) that it's hard for me to remember budgetary details. Even if that's the case (and I'm not saying it isn't), I'd still argue that blanket submission fees are a detriment to growth and other revenue streams in the long run. It's hard enough to sell magazines when 99% of your readers are jealous -- let alone jealous and cynical. That's what it really comes down to.

[Timothy Green]

I think the currency of poetry in the 21st century is really audience—how many readers can I speak to by publishing through a given venue or modality? That's why fostering participation and interaction are so important.

[Megan M. Garr]

Thanks for the additional information. I've also run a lot of data here, roughly breaking it down between journals under 2000 print runs and journals over. In most cases, the "larger" journals in my own studies were externally funded. Sounds like Rattle is too. I think that if we're going to condemn certain journals for their financial choices, we should be willing to be transparent about our own. And it's fairly easy to deduce, at least, whether a journal is externally funded or not. Actual figures are harder to come by (and that's actually something I'm working to change).

The submission fee debate is actually a kind of red herring, and that the real problem is the broken economy in which we're operating. Submission fees, for most larger journals, likely only cover a small percentage of costs, and are by no means the bread&butter of revenues (that comes from outside sources). However, for smaller independents, fees could indeed be a valuable stream of revenue. You didn't really respond to this issue of a kind of classicist mentality in the sub fee debate, though...

Rather than setting up sides between who charges and who doesn't (and these posts like yours come around every month, and they all basically say the same thing), we should start talking about how to build our community infrastructures in better ways to help us all sell the magazines we make (our "core business", if you will). I'd simply like to see this debate progress, rather than the same arguments repeated. For example, the solutions you put forward are nothing new, and journals aren't ignoring those options, but these options clearly aren't working either, or we wouldn't be having this debate. (I also happen to ethically disagree with a journal that runs a new Kickstarter for each issue...so there's that.)

[Dini Karasik]

Dear Tim,

So, I'll chime in here. We are a brand new literary journal (www.originsjournal.com) with just one issue out and a second one due out in the next few days. We just made the decision to charge submission fees beginning May 1. The submission fees are earmarked to pay writers. We will not use any of that money for any other administrative purpose. Period. We want to pay writers, even if the amount is symbolic in the beginning.

I'm also a writer and have paid submission fees to magazines in the past. I've never had any qualms about this. As I see it, it's an opportunity to make a tiny financial contribution to a journal I care about and, in return, an expert will take the time to read and assess my work, possibly even publish it. It's one incredibly inexpensive way that I can support the lit mag machinery. (Buying subscriptions, etc. is also key, of course.)

If editors were pocketing my money and not reading my work and then rejecting it as a matter of course, well, THAT would be unethical. But there's nothing unethical about charging submission fees per se when the money is being used responsibly and transparently. And I say this with all due respect, truly: to paint editors in the lit mag world as unethical--even if indirectly--is counterproductive. So is calling for the practice to be shamed out of existence. I can't imagine a single editor doing this work out of self interest or because he/she wants to take advantage of writers.

As with anything else, I do think we have to be conscientious about the amount of the fee, providing writers opportunities to submit free of charge some months out of the year, etc. I also like the idea of providing more tangible consideration in return for the fees (e.g. feedback on work, expedited responses,).

I've been following this debate over the last few weeks and see excellent points on both sides. Of course we're all doing this for the love of literature, but running a journal takes A LOT of time and money. Origins is working hard to institute several revenue streams (donations, personal funds invested, subscriptions, etc) to cover operating costs. Would I like to make a profit someday? Yes! But my immediate goal is to create a journal that is sustainable. We don't have seed money. We don't have a wealthy benefactor. The team of editors and our art director--we're all volunteers. Right now, the only way I can pay contributors is by instituting the fee. If an angel investor comes along one day with $150k, I will happily open up the submission process so that it is free of charge. No need to shame it out of existence.

--Dini Karasik, Editor