Reading Fee
Quick answer: A reading fee is a small charge some magazines and presses ask before considering your work. Learn when reading fees are normal and when they are a red flag.
A reading fee is a small payment, typically two to five dollars or pounds for magazines and ten to thirty for book manuscripts, charged by some venues to consider your submission. The fee does not buy publication or feedback; it simply funds the labour and platform costs of reading. Reading fees remain one of the most argued-about practices in literary publishing, defended as survival economics and criticised as a tax on hopeful writers.
You will meet reading fees mostly at North American magazines using submission platforms, at book presses with open reading periods, and in the entry fees of contests, which are a related but distinct thing since contest fees fund prize money. Knowing which fees are standard and which are predatory is a basic piece of poet street-smarts.
Why Venues Charge Them
Most literary magazines lose money. Submission platforms charge venues per submission received, printing costs rise, and almost no journal sells enough copies to cover its own postage. A two or three dollar fee, the argument runs, keeps the magazine alive and slightly discourages carpet-bombing submitters who send everywhere without reading anything.
The counter-argument is equally simple: fees fall hardest on poets with the least money, and a venue that reads two thousand paid submissions to accept twenty has quietly made submitting writers its main funding source. Both things can be true of different venues, which is why judgement matters more than a blanket rule.
Normal Fee or Red Flag?
Reasonable signs: the fee is small, the venue also offers free submission routes such as postal entries or fee-free windows, payment to published contributors exists, and the magazine has a visible history. Contest entry fees are normal when the prize pool, judge and past results are public; a monthly contest with modest entry tiers, named winners and published scoring criteria is behaving transparently.
Warning signs: large fees for ordinary magazine consideration, guaranteed publication for payment, anthologies that accept everyone and then sell contributors the book, and any venue whose income is plainly the fee rather than the readership. Paying to be read is sometimes fair; paying to be published never is.
Budgeting as a Submitting Poet
Decide on a monthly submissions budget, even a tiny one, and spend it deliberately: mostly free venues, a few paid ones you genuinely love, and contests where the potential return, in money, publication or scored feedback, justifies the entry. Track spending alongside results. Ten pounds a month, aimed well, goes a long way; the same amount scattered guiltily goes nowhere.
What poets can take from this
- Prefer venues with free routes, and treat small fees as acceptable only where you truly want to appear.
- Never pay a fee that guarantees publication; that is vanity publishing wearing a costume.
- Check that contest fees correspond to real, named prizes and published past winners.
- Set a monthly submissions budget and log every fee against every outcome.
- Watch for fee-free windows, which many fee-charging magazines open for a few days each cycle.
Try it yourself
Write a wry poem about the economics of hope, using the image of coins fed into some machine, a fountain, a jukebox, a toll gate, without ever mentioning publishing.
Questions
Are reading fees normal for poetry submissions?
Small fees of a few dollars are common at North American magazines and at presses reading book manuscripts, though many excellent venues charge nothing. Large fees for ordinary consideration are not normal.
What is the difference between a reading fee and a contest entry fee?
A reading fee funds the cost of considering regular submissions, while a contest entry fee funds prize money and judging. Entry fees are usually higher and are standard practice for competitions.
Should I ever pay to have a poem published?
No. Paying for consideration is debatable but sometimes fair; paying for publication itself is vanity publishing. Legitimate venues never make acceptance conditional on money.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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