pay reading fee to magazine for short story

No. It's not.

I've noticed this more in the past couple of years. Some of these are small, artsy, literary magazines that are "for the love." You might compare them to community theatres where the admission cost only covers necessary purchases to put on the play, and nobody gets paid, from the director to the actors and so on. Or maybe they could compare to a poetry reading at a local coffee shop, where they have to pay to rent the place out for a couple of hours. In those cases, paying as a potential participant might be considered supporting the arts.

I've also seen it where you can pay a few bucks for a critique if you don't get accepted, which seems a little off to me, but I guess fair enough if it's voluntary. Or if the money was for a charity associated with the magazine in some way, I might not mind. I have paid a few bucks to submit when it included a subscription that I wanted anyway, and also when a magazine was run by teenagers.

Otherwise, no. If they are making a profit themselves, that's taking advantage even more than not paying for accepted stories is imo.

Okay, yeah---if the fee includes a subscription, it's a way to learn what the editor likes so it might be worth a few bucks. But overall, I don't consider it acceptable or the norm for paying markets. They pay you. That's how it's supposed to work.

I agree, Cathy. There are exceptions but overall it is BS and not the norm.

I think this depends on what the genre the market caters to is. I've I haven't seen a SFF, Horror, Romance, Myster etc. market which asks for a viewing fee, but I have seen really well known and well respected Lit/General markets like The Boston Review or Glimmertrain have them. The fee goes towards making sure that accepted authors are paid fairly, and to defray production costs a bit.

This topic has come up a few times. I don't think anyone is in favor of reading fees. It's great when the places offer a subscription with the reading fee or make it still free to submit for subscribers. If it's a place you really want to publish, you should be reading them anyway. That being said, there are still tons of places that don't charge reading fees.

Lillith1991 said:

I think this depends on what the genre the market caters to is. I've I haven't seen a SFF, Horror, Romance, Myster etc. market which asks for a viewing fee, but I have seen really well known and well respected Lit/General markets like The Boston Review or Glimmertrain have them. The fee goes towards making sure that accepted authors are paid fairly, and to defray production costs a bit.

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You're right, reading fees are definitely common for "lit" magazines and journals. As much as I dislike the practice, I will on occasion pay to submit to one of them, with the rationalization that since I'm in Canada, it would cost me significantly more than the $3 dollar fee to mail my manuscript.

What bothers me the most about the reading fees is how big a chunk goes to Submittable. They get $1 plus 10% of each submission. That's a huge bite out of a $3 fee. When I see places that have a $2 charge through Submittable, I think "Why bother?"

jaus tail said:

Thanks. I had trouble finding this thread. lol. Then realized it had been moved.

The websites said the fee would help cover the administrative costs of the magazine. I think it could be genuine. I've paid at 1 magazine. Let's see.

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The issue isn't that most markets asking for fees aren't genuine. I've not seen a lot of people pretending to be magazines in the hopes of raking in reading fees. It's more that if you're paying to submit, you're not earning money. It's not unrealistic to think markets should be funding themselves in a way that doesn't involve charging the writers they reject. Or to want to earn more money than you pay out. If you target places with reading fees, those fees will add up.

The only time I ever pay a magazine if it's for a contest with a big cash prize. But money's so tight for my household right now that if it's over $10 or so, I just don't enter.

There is a small literary journal I know of that asks for a donation, and it's legit. But it's also optional and has no bearing on acceptance. The real problem is that they publish sporadically as the owner finds money, so it's not really a good opportunity for most writers anyway.

I know of one webzine that has a reading fee ($3, last I checked) to "defray web hosting expenses." But they have about a zillion ads on the site and the quality of the content ranges from truly crap all the way up to seriously mediocre and it's obvious they spare all expenses in editing and layout. This one is a money scheme for the owner and that's it.

Jeff

I do see it from time to time as well (almost always lit mags, and most of them badly done websites that are difficult to read on a monitor and darned near impossible on a mobile phone). My opinion on it is pretty unfriendly, though.

If they expect me to pay after I've done the work of creating content, then I expect to be published. If Joe Average wants to be entertained for free then (s)he should write their own stuff. Or listen to a political debate.

Taylor Harbin said:

The only time I ever pay a magazine if it's for a contest with a big cash prize. But money's so tight for my household right now that if it's over $10 or so, I just don't enter.

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The great majority of contests that charge reading fees are as bad, or worse, than magazines charging reading fees. You aren't going to win the contest. It isn't that such contests are scams, it's simply that most are a closed society.

Just submit to regular magazines. Each one is a contest with no entry fee, and has several winners every month. With the time, energy, and money some writers put into contests that mean nothing, even if you win, they could be published by top magazines, and never have to pay an entry fee.

jaus tail said:

Thanks. I had trouble finding this thread. lol. Then realized it had been moved.

The websites said the fee would help cover the administrative costs of the magazine. I think it could be genuine. I've paid at 1 magazine. Let's see.

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Of course it's genuine. Genuine has nothing to do with it. It's still a horrible, horrible idea, and no writer should pay a reading fee. It simply should not work this way, and writers who pay just encourage more magazines to charge writers for something that should always be the magazine's responsibility.

If a magazine can't pay it's own administrative fees, and all other fees, then the magazine is a lousy one, and has no reason to exist. It needs to fold, and leave writers alone.

Yep, I'm seeing this more and more and my basic rule is no, don't pay reading fees.
Same for contests.....

I am primarily a short fiction writer. My stories have been published in some of the best literary journals in North America. However, the reading fees are killing me. I can't afford them. I have been trying to target journals that don't charge, but they are becoming fewer in number.

Since when did writing short fiction become a rich person's game? We discourage writers from submitting to agents who charge. How and why are these journals getting away with this?