THE EDITOR’S DESK: The Price of Rejection
Narrative is charging $20 to submit to their online magazine. That’s for “unsolicited manuscripts.” In other words, if you’re already famous, they won’t charge you. Because really, Michael Chabon is not paying $20 to submit to a literary magazine. But seriously, there is something wrong here.
The upside is that Narrative pays writers. $150 for a Story of the Week, with $500 each for the annual Top Five Stories of the Week. $150-350 for 500-2,000 word manuscripts. $350-$1,000 for 2,000-10,000 word manuscripts. The downside is, that’s not real money. Or it is, but it’s not quit your job money. Take a step back. $1,000 for 10,000 words? That’s a dime a word. If that’s serious fiction or creative non-fiction that almost certainly took two months to write. If you sell it, and there’s a reasonable chance for a beginning author that you won’t, it’s still not enough to live off.
In the current issue of Narrative you have Ann Beatie reading a story and an excerpt of T.C. Boyle’s new novel. You can be certain neither Ann nor T.C. paid a $20 submission fee. Same for bestselling author Andrew Gross and literary legend Robert Stone. Is it fair that these authors are taking space away from writers who are paying for the opportunity?
The people publishing the best new fiction from unknown writers are not charging a fee. Places that take their slush piles seriously include The Sun Magazine, The Missouri Review, The Alaska Quarterly, McSweeney’s,and others. Some of these magazines are non-profit foundations, others are supported by universities, and others have Dave Eggers.
It’s hard breaking in as a writer. I say that as someone who didn’t do an MFA, published my first books by sending them to a new publisher that was accepting blind submissions. All of my earliest published work was picked up through the slushpile. Like this article on poker, which I sent blindly to Salon and an editor at GQ read and liked and then offered to publish something else of mine. I’ve always believed in the slushpile, but you shouldn’t have to pay for it. Times are hard. Money is always an issue. Then there are some very good magazines that don’t take their slush piles seriously, so don’t take it personally when a magazine you really like doesn’t respond. It can take a long time to get through the pile, to get an editor or agent’s attention from earlier published work. But in any case keep your money in your pocket.
Narrative’s winter issue editor’s note. (via the good people at HTMLGIANT which has quite a comments thread going)
Update: In the comments thread, Blake Butler who originally posted this on HTMLGIANT responds, “I guess here is the question: is it right to charge through the teeth to would be contributors for a chance at a spot to become published in a magazine that seems to have clearly solicited more than 50% of its work? Actually ‘right’ isn’t the right word, because in the end it is the submitter’s choice to pay the fee, but there just seems something doublefaced and weird about the whole process if you ask me. It leaves a bad taste, and is something usually I would just laugh at, though when it is passed around under the moniker ‘the gold standard of online publications,’ it seems even more out of whack.”
February 24th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Interesting point. But… submission fees support the work of the magazine. I assume that those who submit respect the publication and want it to exist, regardless of whether their work is accepted. Do you disagree with all submission fees, always? How about for festivals like SXSW? The thousands of musicians who submit their music make the festival possible. I’m curious to hear your input.
And thank you Stephen for putting together such a wonderful, populist publication.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Hi Amanda. I don’t know anything about festivals, or music. So I’ll just keep my opinions to literary journals. There are a few things I don’t like about Narrative charging. One is all the big name talent that fills the magazine that clearly doesn’t have to pay to submit. The second is $20 is a lot to charge to read a short story, most of which can be rejected rather quickly, to be honest. I understand that they pay their writers something. But I guess the answer is no, I don’t think people should be charged to submit creative writing to a literary magazine. There are a lot of great literary magazines that exist without resorting to that. I named four, but there’s many, many more. There are hundreds of literary magazines. Five Chapters is a great fiction website that doesn’t charge for submissions. In fact it’s very rare to charge for submissions. To me, charging to read fiction seems exploitative.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:46 am
yea, i too am willing & happy to support nonprofit litmags, but agree with your point about ones that feature such huge names.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I’m sorry I compared Narrative to Music Festivals, maybe it was a bad analogy. I made the comparison because the same thing happens at festivals. Big name talent fills festival slots and clearly doesn’t have to pay to submit. A festival like SXSW charges $35 per submission. Like short stories, music submissions can be rejected fairly quickly. I was curious to hear your opinion because I work for a much smaller festival and I could relate to what you were saying. Thanks again for the response.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I am really happy to see you picked this up and thought about it out loud, Stephen. It seems just insane to me, and something that should not be allowed to go on uncommented in the background.
As for the SXSW comparison, I don’t think it is apt, as what we’re dealing with here is an online magazine, whose cost is only dictated by what they make it. They could just as easily pay a token or even medium sized amount of $$ to their writers (who, it should be said again, seem almost entirely solicited: while SXSW every year is more and more packed with new, and the costs of which are likely much higher than, oh, running a website?).
The submissions process for writers, especially lesser or not-at-all known ones, is frustrating enough. To make it into a bleeder event where you are essentially dumping your $20 in the name of the event that you might slip through into the pocket of a friend of the journal.
It’s even more strange to me, in that I know that when the journal first came out it was $5 for a reading. Even then that seemed strange to me, but a 4x jump? It’s almost like shouting: “We are tired of reading all you scraggly paupers’s ‘notions’ of ‘Narrative.’”
Sigh.
The Rumpus rules.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:21 am
No, HTMLGIANT rules!
February 25th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I agree charging for the opportunity to be read is bullshit. And I get skeeved out by literary journal contests that involve a fee as well, and refuse to submit to any. Writers who submit $20 to have their work read by Narrative would be far better served by pooling their money and starting their own journal.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I used to work in scientific publishing, where the reading process does work a bit differently and is more time-consuming. There was always a big-picture debate going on, of whether to read/peer-review for free and charge subscribers, or, in the interest of accessibility, charge the submitting authors and therefore make the publication free to readers. I’m surprised that we don’t look at literary journals in the same way, since submitting authors are often encouraged to subscribe in the interest of supporting the publications that provide them with outlets. I.e., why is it bullshit to spend $20 to submit to a magazine we can read for free, but not bullshit that we can submit for free to a magazine that wants us (and strongly encourages submitting authors) to subscribe for $20? Submitters and readers of literary mags are often the same group/target market and these mags have to survive somehow.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
ZYZZYVA also takes the slush pile seriously (see the righthand column @ http://zyzzyva.org/zy-subs.htm)
February 25th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I’m very glad Stephen called Narrative out on this, especially because it’s more typical for writers to mute such criticisms once they’ve got an established reputation. Then they join the “It’s all good!” chorus, taking a break now and then to enjoin struggling writers, “Gosh, yes, it’s tough – just keep plugging away!” When the blog-level writers make such criticisms it’s easier for the gatekeepers to dismiss them as merely the sour grapes of someone who has been, say, rejected by Narrative.
PS. I have been rejected by Narrative.
PPS. Apologies to Stephen for accusing him of having an “established reputation.”
February 25th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
That’s true. Zyzzyva built their reputation on taking the slushpile seriously. They’ve published lots of great stuff over the years.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Having been a reader for some story and manuscript contests with cash prizes, I feel it’s justified to charge an entry fee, since a contest is likely to generate far more submissions, and thus far more clerical work, than open submission periods. Plus, contests often have “celebrity judges” (present company not included), which usually means the judges have to be paid. Plus, there’s the prize itself, which can amount to five or ten times what a journal normally pays for a story or poem.
But I think charging for open submissions is indefensible, except in the case of negligible fees to support an on-line submission system, like the Missouri Review’s. I don’t mind paying $3 for a chance to be published in the Missouri Review. But when a magazine that publishes mostly famous writers asks me for $20 just to read my work, the first word that comes to mind is “scam.”
February 27th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I am absolutely not famous and this bothers me too. 20$ is a lot of money for me to spend on something that’s not edible or otherwise necessary. I was pretty sad to take Narrative off of my list of places I’d like to send work.