Can I legitimately ask prospective anthology contributors for money?

March 27, 2007 8:27 AM

I want to publish a fiction anthology, and pay contributors for accepted submissions. Is it unutterably shady and horrible to ask prospective contributors to send a token fee (perhaps $1) with their submissions to defray costs?

I know that a lot of scam "poetry contests" ask contributors to pay for consideration. My anthology concept is not a scam (naturally!); I just need money to defray costs and afford to pay people whose stories I accept. Is a request for money just a huge red flag that would get me blacklisted from every writer's mental Rolodex, or do legitimate publishers ever do this?

posted by Faint of Butt to work & money (16 comments total)

do legitimate publishers ever do this?

No. Find a more creative way to raise the money, but don't ask the contributors. A "legitimate" publisher in fact pays the contributor!
posted by mattbucher at 8:29 AM on March 27, 2007

I used to edit fiction anthologies at a publishing house. We would never ask contributors for anything except their work - so not done.
posted by meerkatty at 8:36 AM on March 27, 2007

Why won't the publication be bringing in money?
posted by DU at 8:40 AM on March 27, 2007

I know that a lot of scam "poetry contests" ask contributors to pay for consideration.

Actually, the non-scam ones do this too. Most of the major first book competitions (Fence Modern Poets, Yale Younger Poets, Colorado Prize, etc.) charge entry fees of 20-50 dollars.

This is unfortunate, but largely considered a necessary evil. It serves two purposes: to offset the costs of the competition and to lower the number of entries from non-serious hobbyists.

As a poet, I'm willing to pay an entry fee only if:
1. It's an actual poetry publisher with some reputation. Books published by it get reviewed in literary journals.
2. I know the name of the judge and have, at the very least, googled the judge to see who he/she is.

But that's for book publication. I don't think that I would ever pay a fee with a submission to an anthology. Though I would consider paying ten dollars for a subscription or something.
posted by roll truck roll at 8:41 AM on March 27, 2007

A lot of non-professional writers (generally hobbyists) contribute to anthologies for free. If you do a really good job of it (or at least look like you will upfront) then you can probably get away with promising payments based on sales.
posted by wackybrit at 8:42 AM on March 27, 2007

Nope. One of the things experienced writers tell new writers over and over is "you don't pay them. They pay you." There is a very bad reputation attached to 'vanity press', i.e. pay-to-publish.

Besides, if they pay you, then you have an obligation to provide a service. Like publishing their story, for instance. Even if it isn't quite good enough. As a reader, I want to know that you included stories because they were so good you were willing to pay for 'em. I do NOT want to read stories written by people that could afford to pay you to publish them.

Get a loan from Mom & Dad, break open the Piggy bank, turn in all your pop bottles or even sell 'shares' to friends, but don't ask authors to pay for the privilege of being published.
posted by davereed at 8:46 AM on March 27, 2007

Also, charging a fee can sometimes help ensure that more of your potential contributors will also read and conform to your submission guidelines.
posted by kalessin at 8:52 AM on March 27, 2007

A couple things to consider. What happens if you get 50,000 submissions in for something that only sells 500 copies. You're essentially going to make 40,000 dollars profit, give or take, easily. How could you control this? Will you stop cashing checks at a certain point? How will the potential authors know about this? What kind of authors would submit to a person knowing they are more or less in a scam?

If you just need a quick 1,000 dollars then its probably best to just get a loan and pay it off when the anthology sells.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:56 AM on March 27, 2007

Don't do it. You can make other adjustments by not paying the contributors and/or charging more for the final product.

You could also allow buyers to pre-order the anthology even before it exists, thus giving you some capital to work with.
posted by bingo at 8:59 AM on March 27, 2007

I'm not sure about the anthology angle, but I do know that small publishers sometimes request an entry fee for chapbook contests. I worked for one, and we published the first extended work by someone who had gone on to have a reasonably distinguished career. (His last book was published in 2007 by Shoemaker and Hoard.) The money we received in entry fees is what allowed us to publish the book at all.

But I would also think that if you're publishing for a niche market (like say horror), and you are publishing unknowns, you could simply have a frank conversation about what's what with potential contributors, along the lines of: this can't happen without a little bit of help from entrants, which does not guarantee publication. As long as you aren't cleaning up on the backend, it seems like a legit DIY way to go.
posted by OmieWise at 9:01 AM on March 27, 2007

Writing contests may legitimately request an entrance fee. Writers Market, for example, routinely runs contests with nominal entrance fees, and I would call these essentially legitimate. On the other side, this sort of event is offering substantial prizes and also exposure in a well-known and well-publicized venue. I also think that it is not appropriate for an anthology and would scare off a lot of good writers.

I think pairing calls for submissions with a pre-order campaign would be a better way to go to raise the stake (with assurances that pre-ordering is not required for submission and will not be considered in judging submissions). I'd think an absolute worst case scenario would be facing a couple hundred bucks processing fees for refunding pre-orders if it didn't come off. If you're no willing to risk that for your project you probably aren't all that committed to it, and if you can't raise a printing bill soliciting pre-orders you probably can't effectively market it however it gets funded. Good fodder for a projects post.
posted by nanojath at 9:24 AM on March 27, 2007

Yeah, this is all pretty much what I thought. I guess I was hoping to be wrong. It was probably nothing but a pipe dream anyway. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:43 AM on March 27, 2007

You could pre-sell the printed anthologies to submitters at a discount rate.

Say it costs $4 for you to have them printed (per unit). You could sell these for $5 to people who submit something, even though you would ordinarily sell them for, say, $12. This makes it a lot more ethical.
posted by wackybrit at 10:27 AM on March 27, 2007

I edited three anthologies that were published last year. In my case, I wrote the book proposals (and included a handful of sample essays by willing writers, whom I knew personally and whom I promised to pay upon securing a publishing contract; plus a list of the writers I planned/hoped to include in the eventual collections); my agent sent them out; I got a publishing contract; I got an advance; I used more than half of the advance to pay my contributors (three books = over 100 contributors total).

I've been asked to contribute to several anthologies. Payment has ranged from $50 to $1000. I would never consider submitting something to an anthology for an entry fee. It was embarrassing enough to have approach the big name writers for my anthologies only able to promise them a paltry honorarium -- I can't imagine asking them to pay me for the privilege!

If you're interested in putting together a book proposal, literary agent Jenny Bent has some good advice on what that should look like.
posted by mothershock at 10:32 AM on March 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

as a visual artist, i don't flinch at being asked a fifty dollar application fee for an exhibition or juried publication. i might be a bit bewildered, actually, if i was asked for a fee of just $1, but i would pay it. also, entry fees are not at all the same as vanity publishing fees.
posted by wreckingball at 2:50 PM on March 27, 2007

Film festivals charge submission fees. Mostly this is legitimate, but there are apparently scam film festivals out there which exist just to make money off of aspiring filmmakers.

So the moral is that it's ok, just don't be a scam artist.
posted by alms at 7:28 PM on March 27, 2007