Starting a literary magazine. How much should I pay contributors?
April 29, 2019 4:01 PM Subscribe
Hi. I want to start a small literary magazine online. I have enough funds to start a magazine and to pay for contributors down the line. I am not certain how much I should pay contributors for publication?
Is paying a contributor $20 reasonable to start with? I would eventually like to make the issues in physical print formant as well down the line. Also, what is a reasonable monetary compensation/honorarium for an editor to join as a staff editor? Is a managing editor the same title as an editor-in-chief? What should my title be as the founder of the literary magazine? I have done one internship with a literary magazine and I am also on an editorial board with a prestegious magazine as well. I have two years' worth of editorial experience as a poetry editor for a literary magazine as well. I have taken English Literature courses in poetry and Canadian literature as well -- I know a lot about literary devices as well. I am also a creative writer and aiming to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future.
Is paying a contributor $20 reasonable to start with? I would eventually like to make the issues in physical print formant as well down the line. Also, what is a reasonable monetary compensation/honorarium for an editor to join as a staff editor? Is a managing editor the same title as an editor-in-chief? What should my title be as the founder of the literary magazine? I have done one internship with a literary magazine and I am also on an editorial board with a prestegious magazine as well. I have two years' worth of editorial experience as a poetry editor for a literary magazine as well. I have taken English Literature courses in poetry and Canadian literature as well -- I know a lot about literary devices as well. I am also a creative writer and aiming to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future.
I submit to literary magazines and have been published in a few. I have been paid $50 for poems and was really shocked to get anything at all. From my experience, fair market is payment in copies. Paying $20 is symbolic, but it’s the kind of symbol I appreciate, especially since I know that staff often work for free. So I think $20 is fine, though $50 is better if you can swing it. Unless you’re starting with an endowment and a lot of famous friends, you aren’t going to attract people doing it for the money.
Thank you for doing this. It’s a difficult and often unappreciated job.
posted by FencingGal at 4:33 PM on April 29, 2019 [4 favorites]
Thank you for doing this. It’s a difficult and often unappreciated job.
posted by FencingGal at 4:33 PM on April 29, 2019 [4 favorites]
I am a well-published poet and fiction writer. It's still rare that I get anything for publishing in lit mags, so I appreciate it all. Publishing things like poems and short stories doesn't lend itself to payment by the word, and they don't being in enough of an audience to pay per click. $20/piece would be awesome, with some flexibility for length if you wanted. So cool that you're committing to pay contributors!
posted by mermaidcafe at 4:34 PM on April 29, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by mermaidcafe at 4:34 PM on April 29, 2019 [4 favorites]
Managing Editor is not the same as Editor-in-Chief. A Managing Editor typically manages all the office-type work with the journal: making sure acceptance and rejection letters are sent out, making sure contributors have submitted the proper paperwork (ie. signed contrasts or tax forms, if they're getting paid), organizing mailing lists, managing subscriptions, sometimes dealing with printers, making sure banners are made in time for conferences, etc.
If this is your one-man-show that you founded out of your own home, you'll likely be both Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor, as well as founder, possibly fiction and poetry editor. You don't really need an official title.
One thing to consider, if you're to become a paying market, is your tax situation. If you're asking submitters to pay in order to cover payments to future contributors (which is probably the only feasible long-term model for a paying market unless you're endowed or independently wealthy), you'll need to either be a non-profit or file taxes as a small business owner. This will also mean that your contributors will be considered "independent contractors" for tax purposes, and you'll have to have them sign the appropriate forms and then issue the appropriate forms come tax season.
posted by Miss T.Horn at 5:57 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
If this is your one-man-show that you founded out of your own home, you'll likely be both Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor, as well as founder, possibly fiction and poetry editor. You don't really need an official title.
One thing to consider, if you're to become a paying market, is your tax situation. If you're asking submitters to pay in order to cover payments to future contributors (which is probably the only feasible long-term model for a paying market unless you're endowed or independently wealthy), you'll need to either be a non-profit or file taxes as a small business owner. This will also mean that your contributors will be considered "independent contractors" for tax purposes, and you'll have to have them sign the appropriate forms and then issue the appropriate forms come tax season.
posted by Miss T.Horn at 5:57 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
Looks like you got some excellent answers on related topics in an earlier ask: http://ask.metafilter.com/310828/How-does-one-become-a-literary-magazine-editor
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:36 PM on April 29, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:36 PM on April 29, 2019 [1 favorite]
And your question here touches on this as well. http://ask.metafilter.com/307365/Can-I-make-some-side-money-spearheading-an-online-literary-magazine
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:38 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:38 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: @mermaidcafe - my previous posts do not touch on contributors' monetary payment or editorial titles, but thank-you -- I have already read the replies.
posted by RearWindow at 8:20 PM on April 29, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by RearWindow at 8:20 PM on April 29, 2019 [3 favorites]
This is actually something you can do market research on really easily by looking through Who Pays Writers, reading the submission guidelines for literary magazines you already read regularly, or emailing the editors of magazines that don't list their pay rates. What do magazines similar to yours pay their writers?
Followup question: how do magazines similar to yours pay their writers? Magazines that aren't funded via institutional affiliation tend not to pay much or anything, or to pay by charging submitters fees. Do you want to open up that can of tax-related worms, especially when you can accept submissions by email for free, or use Submittable's free tier?
posted by tapir-whorf at 8:47 PM on April 29, 2019 [3 favorites]
Followup question: how do magazines similar to yours pay their writers? Magazines that aren't funded via institutional affiliation tend not to pay much or anything, or to pay by charging submitters fees. Do you want to open up that can of tax-related worms, especially when you can accept submissions by email for free, or use Submittable's free tier?
posted by tapir-whorf at 8:47 PM on April 29, 2019 [3 favorites]
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America considers 8 cents/word to be the minimum qualifying payment for a professional publication. Obviously your magazine isn't SF, but this is one more data point for what's considered a fair rate for short fiction.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:48 AM on April 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:48 AM on April 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Magazines that aren't funded via institutional affiliation tend not to pay much or anything, or to pay by charging submitters fees.
FWIW, I've been advised never to apply to any place that does this - you will turn away some good contributors if you do.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:52 AM on April 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
FWIW, I've been advised never to apply to any place that does this - you will turn away some good contributors if you do.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:52 AM on April 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
Some literary magazines have annual contests with cash prizes, with submission fees for those only, to fund their work. I have submitted through these contests, but I agree with showbiz_liz regarding fees for regular submissions.
posted by FencingGal at 8:11 AM on April 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by FencingGal at 8:11 AM on April 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Your title would be Publisher. And that might be a good way to start thinking about this endeavour. Publishers are concerned with:
- editorial and presentation/art/website quality at a birdseye level, yes, through their editor-in-chief - who might well also be you too, so this might be really easy
- the business end of things - where will revenue come from, how will people be paid, taxes, business/non-profit status, grants, donors, donor relationships - in consumer magazines this is often advertising. In Canada I'm not sure where the cutoffs lie but you will need to know whether you need to pay and charge HST and keep the appropriate records. If you want to apply for grants you may need to form a non-profit.
- the audience development side of things - a quality product is important, but you also will want people to read it, especially if prestige is one of the things you are trying to build. For whom is this publication intended? What's the viewpoint and who will want to read it? In consumer magazines this is where marketing comes into play. (Bluntly, if this is a vanity project where you are going to "publish" people and pay them 20 dollars so that you get to be nominally in charge of a literary publication that just those authors and their friends and yours read, that's fair, I mean people get paid $20 for worse and lots of magazines start off that way, but you probably want to be clear about it in your mind.)
- for a website: ensuring that you meet basic standards around privacy and spam legislation, particularly if you are going to host a newsletter/email - there are great tools for this, lots of them free
posted by warriorqueen at 9:40 AM on April 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
- editorial and presentation/art/website quality at a birdseye level, yes, through their editor-in-chief - who might well also be you too, so this might be really easy
- the business end of things - where will revenue come from, how will people be paid, taxes, business/non-profit status, grants, donors, donor relationships - in consumer magazines this is often advertising. In Canada I'm not sure where the cutoffs lie but you will need to know whether you need to pay and charge HST and keep the appropriate records. If you want to apply for grants you may need to form a non-profit.
- the audience development side of things - a quality product is important, but you also will want people to read it, especially if prestige is one of the things you are trying to build. For whom is this publication intended? What's the viewpoint and who will want to read it? In consumer magazines this is where marketing comes into play. (Bluntly, if this is a vanity project where you are going to "publish" people and pay them 20 dollars so that you get to be nominally in charge of a literary publication that just those authors and their friends and yours read, that's fair, I mean people get paid $20 for worse and lots of magazines start off that way, but you probably want to be clear about it in your mind.)
- for a website: ensuring that you meet basic standards around privacy and spam legislation, particularly if you are going to host a newsletter/email - there are great tools for this, lots of them free
posted by warriorqueen at 9:40 AM on April 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
FWIW, I've been advised never to apply to any place that does this - you will turn away some good contributors if you do.
Charging submissions fees is a fairly common practice for smaller literary magazines, and many well-reputed ones do it, including Ploughshares, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and APR. (Many lousy magazines do it, too.) In plenty of cases it's to cover the monthly subscription cost of Submittable, which greatly simplifies reading, sorting, and tagging submissions; I think their free tier tops out after a few hundred submissions per month, which isn't all that much for a well-regarded small journal.
I have no doubt that submissions fees dissuades some people from submitting their work out of principle (and others for personal economic reasons), and I have absolutely no bones to pick with anyone who finds it ethically murky; I feel the same way about pay-to-play residencies (if an organization can't support itself except on the backs of the very people it claims to serve, why bother existing?). But in and of itself a submissions fee shouldn't be taken as a red flag.
posted by tapir-whorf at 9:42 PM on April 30, 2019
Charging submissions fees is a fairly common practice for smaller literary magazines, and many well-reputed ones do it, including Ploughshares, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and APR. (Many lousy magazines do it, too.) In plenty of cases it's to cover the monthly subscription cost of Submittable, which greatly simplifies reading, sorting, and tagging submissions; I think their free tier tops out after a few hundred submissions per month, which isn't all that much for a well-regarded small journal.
I have no doubt that submissions fees dissuades some people from submitting their work out of principle (and others for personal economic reasons), and I have absolutely no bones to pick with anyone who finds it ethically murky; I feel the same way about pay-to-play residencies (if an organization can't support itself except on the backs of the very people it claims to serve, why bother existing?). But in and of itself a submissions fee shouldn't be taken as a red flag.
posted by tapir-whorf at 9:42 PM on April 30, 2019
Also and for what it's worth, and I mean this kindly, the questions you're asking in this post and in previous ones should already be somewhat intuitive to you; if they're not, why not spend another year learning more ? Of course you don't have to; there are lots of small, scrappy literary magazines out there that fly under the radar, but if their editors aren't thoughtful and well-read, tapped into interesting and timely facets of the literary scene, they typically don't attract compelling submissions. Which in turn prevents them from attracting more compelling submissions, since who wants to send their best work to a magazine that doesn't publish particularly interesting stuff?
So what sort of research do I mean? Read more literary magazines, for one, and consciously map out the Canadian and/or North American literary publishing landscape at journal-level. What thematic and aesthetic trends do you notice within the work they're publishing, and how does this differ when you look at them more granularly? What trends do you notice about design, mission statement (sub-question: how often does the mission statement accurately describe the work they're printing?), distribution, etc? Do a bit more casual research on affiliations: how are journals supported, both financially and otherwise? What forms of intangible support seem to offer the most benefit, both to the journal and to their writers? Pay attention to what online journals are able to do that print journals are not, and vice versa. Etc. These are a handful of random questions off the top of my head -- I'm sure you can come up with better ones after a day spent in a good library or reading room full of journals.
posted by tapir-whorf at 10:03 PM on April 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
So what sort of research do I mean? Read more literary magazines, for one, and consciously map out the Canadian and/or North American literary publishing landscape at journal-level. What thematic and aesthetic trends do you notice within the work they're publishing, and how does this differ when you look at them more granularly? What trends do you notice about design, mission statement (sub-question: how often does the mission statement accurately describe the work they're printing?), distribution, etc? Do a bit more casual research on affiliations: how are journals supported, both financially and otherwise? What forms of intangible support seem to offer the most benefit, both to the journal and to their writers? Pay attention to what online journals are able to do that print journals are not, and vice versa. Etc. These are a handful of random questions off the top of my head -- I'm sure you can come up with better ones after a day spent in a good library or reading room full of journals.
posted by tapir-whorf at 10:03 PM on April 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
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