The creative ways that literary journal editors try to take advantage of writers can sometimes be…astounding. A new literary journal recently approached Authors Publish, asking to be featured.
They seemed particularly proud of their “fee free” submissions.
The catch? You had to “win their lottery” in order for them to even read your submission. Otherwise, your submission goes straight into their trash.
Of course, if you were willing to pay, they’ll guarantee your submission will get read. The fee, according to their website, let them “Respect writers’ time by guaranteeing their story is seen.”
The message was clear: If you didn’t pay, then they’re not really respecting your time, are they?
After a few back-and-forth emails to them, they finally got the message, and got rid of their “lottery” and implemented free submissions, with a cap of one hundred submissions per week.
But, this begs the question: why did they think their lottery was a good idea in the first place?
Based on our interactions with them, it seems they believed that submission fees to literary journals are normal, and that their lottery was better than just charging a submission fee.
To be clear: Many, many literary journals and related organizations have worked very hard to make it seem normal to charge writers money for the privilege of having their work considered for publication. The creators of this new journal saw the normalization of submission fees, and genuinely thought they were doing the right thing by creating their unusual “lottery.”
In case you’re curious about how much money some literary journals make from submission fees, the numbers can be surprising. It’s not uncommon for an established journal to have an acceptance rate of one percent, while charging a $5 submission fee. That means they’re making $500 per poem they publish, many times not even paying authors a cent.
The situation is even more stark with contests, which often have much higher fees and much lower acceptance rates. For example, a recent contest charged over $15 and had over 1,000 entries. Do the math on that one!
More and more people have started to see literary journals as a way to extract money from authors, while actively blinding themselves to the idea that they’re trying to extract money from authors. This leads to very backwards situations, such as the one described above.
Fortunately, there are many opportunities to submit your writing without paying any submission fees at all — and without a bizarre lottery either.
Authors Publish is the only major newsletter that doesn’t include opportunities that require submission fees. We’re happy to keep providing you those opportunities in our newsletter, free of charge.
One more detail: Submittable, which got its start focused on helping literary journals manage their submissions, earned over $60 million in revenue in 2024, up 35% from the year before. The COO of Submittable has previously bragged about the tens of thousands of paid submissions his literary journals recieved each year. He sold them in a “private deal” in 2019.
Modest reading fees, say $3, to cover costs in a nonprofit journal seem OK, especially if its a paying market. When the fees become a revenue source, then it’s a big problem. A businesses like a literary journal should be making its money from customers (readers), not suppliers (writers).
I’ve been a voiceover talent for many years and agents/companies that represent talent have done this for years. If you pay the ‘modest fee’ of $200, you’ll get to be on the CD of approved talent that is pushed upon clients first. If you don’t pay, you don’t pay, unless the client happens to stumble upon your demo, which is just one of hundreds to wade through, essentially making it almost impossible to be heard by a client. Who’s got the time for that, right? So, this is a $$ making gimmick that sadly, has now shown up on the literary field. Quick bucks for no work on their part.