Why Do Literary Magazines Charge Submission Fees?
Quick answer: Why do literary magazines charge submission fees? Portal costs, tiny budgets and huge submission volumes. What the $3 covers, the ethics, and how to avoid fees.
Literary magazines charge submission fees, typically around $3, because the infrastructure of reading costs real money and almost nothing else funds it. Submission portals such as Submittable charge magazines monthly and per-entry fees; printing, hosting and prize funds cost more; and volumes have exploded, with known magazines receiving hundreds of manuscripts a month. The fee shifts a sliver of those costs onto submitters and, editors admit, gently discourages the least serious mass-submitters.
The question stays live because the fees are genuinely contested. Writers point out that fees tax the aspiring to fund the institution, and that $3 multiplied across a proper submission strategy becomes real money. Magazines reply that the alternative is closure. Both sides are broadly right, which is why the practical skill is knowing how the system works and how to move through it cheaply.
Where the Three Dollars Goes
Follow the money and the mystery mostly dissolves. Submittable and similar portals charge magazines subscription tiers that run to thousands a year, plus costs that scale with volume; for a magazine with no salaried staff, the reading system alone can be its largest bill. Add web hosting, design, printing for the titles that still print, and contributor payments at the magazines that manage them, against income from a few hundred subscribers at best.
Fees also perform quiet crowd control. When submitting costs nothing, some writers submit everywhere simultaneously without reading a single issue; the burden lands on volunteer readers. A small fee measurably filters the shotgun approach while barely denting deliberate submitters. Whether that filter is fair is the debate, but its function is not in doubt, and editors who dislike fees still describe the volume problem as unmanageable without some brake.
There is also a version of the fee that funds something visible: magazines that pay contributors from pooled reading fees are effectively running a redistribution scheme from many submitters to a few writers, and say so openly. Whether you find that fair depends on which end of it you expect to occupy, but it is at least honest arithmetic, and guidelines that explain their fee openly are usually a good sign about everything else.
The Ethics Argument, Honestly Stated
The case against fees is serious. They aggregate into a regressive tax: the writer with the least money faces the highest barrier, and emerging writers from poorer backgrounds are exactly whom magazines claim to seek. A submitter running a proper strategy, a dozen markets per story, several stories a year, can spend more on fees than most magazines will ever pay them. And fees flow from the unpaid to the unpaid, since neither the reader nor the writer sees the money.
The defence is equally concrete: without fees, many magazines fold, and the market that remains is smaller for everyone. Most magazines soften the edge with free submission windows, fee waivers on request, and free postal submissions, an old norm that quietly persists. The community's rough consensus: a $3 reading fee at a magazine that pays contributors is defensible; a high fee at a magazine paying nothing deserves scrutiny.
Contest Fees Are a Different Animal
Contest entry fees, often $10 to $30 at magazine-run competitions, work on different economics: the pool funds the prize, the judge's honorarium and often the magazine's year. That model is legitimate when the maths is visible, a $20 fee, a $1,000 prize, a named judge, and publication for winners.
Evaluate contests by what every entrant receives, not just the winner. Many charge $20 and return silence to 99 percent of the field. The better designs return something universal: Writory's monthly Short Story Contest, for instance, publishes its judging rubric and sends every single entrant a five-part score out of 100 plus a certificate, so the entry buys feedback rather than a lottery ticket alone. Wherever you enter, that is the standard worth demanding: transparency about criteria, and value that does not depend on winning.
Submitting Well Without Bleeding Fees
Practical fee hygiene:
What poets can take from this
- Budget submission fees monthly and let the limit sharpen your targeting.
- Hunt free windows and waivers; they are more common than guidelines suggest.
- Judge a fee by what every submitter receives, not what the winner does.
- Favour fee-charging magazines that pay contributors; the money should circulate.
- Walk away from acceptance fees instantly; legitimate publishing never charges for a yes.
Try it yourself
Write a scene in a struggling magazine's editorial meeting where the editors debate introducing a $3 fee, and every argument on both sides is spoken by someone who is not being paid. End on the vote, without telling the reader how you think it should have gone.
Questions
How much are typical literary magazine submission fees?
The standard reading fee is $2 to $4, with $3 most common. Contest entries run higher, usually $10 to $30, because they fund prizes. Anything above those bands, or any fee charged upon acceptance, deserves close inspection.
Are submission fees a scam?
Small reading fees at real magazines are not; they trace directly to portal and production costs. The scams look different: acceptance fees, pay-to-publish anthologies, and contests with large fees, no named judges and no visible winners.
Should new writers pay submission fees at all?
Sparingly. Enough excellent magazines charge nothing that a new writer can build a full submission strategy fee-free, adding paid markets once acceptances start arriving. A small monthly budget keeps the habit deliberate rather than hopeful.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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