Do Literary Magazines Pay?
Quick answer: Do literary magazines pay? Some do: token sums of $10 to $50 are common, professional genre rates run 8 cents a word, and many pay only in copies and credit.
Some literary magazines pay and many do not. The broad tiers: a large group pays nothing beyond contributor copies and the credit; a middle group pays token honorariums of roughly $10 to $50 per story; well-funded literary magazines pay $100 to $500 or more; and professional genre markets, following the standard set by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, pay from 8 cents a word, which makes a 5,000-word story a $400 sale. A few famous outliers, The New Yorker among them, pay in the thousands.
Knowing the pay structure matters less for the money, which will not cover rent at any tier, and more for setting strategy: writers who understand what each tier buys, cash, credit, or audience, stop feeling cheated by the wrong markets and start sequencing their submissions deliberately.
The Tiers in Detail
At the base sit the copies-and-credit magazines, most of the field by count. They pay in contributor copies, a permanent credit and often prize nominations; their budgets are volunteer labour and hope. The token tier, $10 to $50, marks magazines that have scraped together a payment fund on principle, and the gesture is meaningful even when the sum is not.
The semi-professional band runs from around $100 per story to a few hundred, populated by established literary quarterlies and well-granted independents. Professional genre magazines, in science fiction, fantasy and horror especially, publish rate cards from 8 cents a word upward, and those rates define eligibility for professional writers' organisations. The commercial summit, glossies and The New Yorker tier, pays four figures but buys from a vanishingly small pool, much of it agented.
Why the Money Is So Thin
Literary magazines lose money almost by definition. Subscriber bases are tiny, single issues sell modestly, and the audience for short fiction overlaps heavily with the people writing it. Budgets are patched from university funds, arts grants, donations and submission fees; when a magazine pays contributors, it is usually redistributing grant money, not revenue.
The genre markets pay better for structural reasons: larger readerships, digital-first economics and a decades-old professional rate culture enforced by writer organisations. Nobody in either ecosystem is getting rich; the choice magazines face is honest poverty or closure, which is worth remembering before resenting a $25 honorarium sent by an editor who was paid nothing at all.
What Non-Cash Payment Is Actually Worth
Judge unpaid and low-paid markets by what else they deliver:
How to Read a Payment Listing
Rate listings hide meaningful differences behind similar numbers. Per-word rates favour long stories; flat fees favour flash. Payment on acceptance means money when the contract is signed; payment on publication can mean waiting a year, and if the magazine folds first, the payment usually folds with it. Check which rights the money buys too: a modest fee for first serial rights is standard, while the same fee for exclusive rights lasting years is a poor trade.
Two more lines worth decoding: contributor copies are not payment, whatever the listing implies, and kill fees, partial payment when an accepted piece is ultimately not run, are rare in short fiction but worth welcoming where offered. None of this takes ten minutes to verify, and the ten minutes occasionally saves a story from a bad home.
Playing the Tiers Wisely
A sane sequence for a strong story: start at paying markets whose taste matches yours, work downward through semi-pro and token tiers, and treat copies-and-credit magazines you admire as honourable homes rather than defeats. Never pay to be published, reading fees for normal submissions are one thing, but vanity operations charging acceptance fees are predators, and never sign away more than first serial rights for a token payment.
Watch the rate cultures too. If you write fantasy or horror, submitting first to 8-cent professional markets is simply correct order of operations. If you write quiet literary realism, the paying markets are fewer, so the credit-and-prizes calculus dominates. Either way, track your numbers: the year's earnings may be $180 and two contributor copies, but the credits compound into the career.
What poets can take from this
- Submit in descending order of pay within magazines that genuinely fit your work.
- Treat 8 cents a word as the professional floor for genre fiction.
- Weigh prize nominations and editing as real compensation; they compound.
- Never pay an acceptance fee; money flows toward the writer, or nowhere.
- Reread any contract that asks for more than first serial rights.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a character receives their first payment for something they make, and the sum is insultingly small, and the moment is somehow still one of the best of their life. Keep the amount on the page and the meaning underneath it.
Questions
Can you make a living writing short stories?
Almost nobody does directly; even selling steadily at professional rates yields a few thousand a year. Short fiction functions as craft training, reputation building and a route to books, teaching and grants, which is where the living usually comes from.
Which literary magazines pay the most?
The New Yorker and a few commercial glossies top the scale at four figures per story. Below them, flagship quarterlies and professional genre magazines pay in the hundreds. Databases like Duotrope and The Submission Grinder list current rates.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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