The Rise of the Submission Industrial Complex

In 2015, Joy Lanzendorfer wrote an article for The Atlantic on submission fees where she warned, “If all publications did this, there’d be no professional writers, only people with other jobs who write on the side.” Welcome to 2025. Let me catch you up.

A pandemic happened. Left inside with nothing but their hobbies, writers founded lit mags at an unprecedented pace. Between 2000 and 2015, an average of 40 new magazines launched each year. In 2020 alone? 200. The next two years hit 201 and 194. That’s a fivefold jump. Outside the lit world, progress took one step forward and fell ass-backward into the darkest timeline. Universities are bleeding funding. Government support is now a political football. And the magazines trying to keep literary writing alive are left with more competition and fewer options: run a contest, sell workshops, or charge submission fees to all of us folks with jobs who write on the side.

I love a good bit of hyperbole, but I prefer data. And the data we see at Chill Subs, our platform that tracks thousands of literary magazines and submission calls,  paints a pretty clear picture: submission fees aren’t the exception anymore, they’re the rule at the top. Across all the literary magazines we track, about 13% charge fees. Zoom in on Brecht De Poortere’s top 1000, and that number jumps to 24%. Narrow it further to just the top 100 most popular magazines, and it spikes to 56%. That’s not a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. The higher the prestige, the more likely it is that writers are paying just to be considered. So while submission fees might seem like a small nuisance, they’re actually acting as a filter. Not for quality, but for who can afford to participate.

These barriers came up slow at first. Submittable launched in 2010, creating the option, not to mention the need (a $3 fee nets lit mags $1.86, not to mention platform fees). By 2015, several of the top names in the industry, including Ploughshares and American Short Fiction, had begun charging fees. And it snowballed from there. You can see the appeal. Multiply that $1.86 by thousands of submissions per month and it becomes one of the only consistent revenue streams a lit mag can rely on. Grants and university funding can be pulled without warning. Ad revenue is scarce, even for those with an audience to justify it. And subscriptions barely keep the lights on.

David Mahaffey from The Sun, one of those top 100 magazines, explains how this happened to them, and how (whatever the side effects) a fee is a filter for quality:

The Sun’s $2.50 submission fee helps offset our substantial Submittable costs—currently $18,000 annually plus transaction fees—while allowing us to maintain fee-free options for our Readers Write section and exemptions for writers with financial need. When we started charging, we were getting around 36,000 submissions a year, including thousands that felt entirely inappropriate for a magazine focused on personal writing—from one particularly memorable chemistry paper to a bunch of newsy, impersonal accounts of political unrest at home and abroad. The submission fee reduces that kind of submission—we’re down to about 24,000 paid submissions annually—while supporting our editorial operations.

At Chill Subs, we can also see submission patterns. Writers are nearly twice as likely to submit to a fee-based magazine than a free one. Not because they want to, but because that’s where the attention is. Considering the average piece takes 20 or so submissions to land somewhere, the cost to publish just one story adds up fast.

Globally, this hits even harder. India is one of the fastest-growing countries on our platform. In a place where $3 might be the equivalent of a meal or a day’s wages, submission fees can completely cut off access. Karan Kapoor, a writer from India, explains:

When I first started sending out work about six years ago, it was brutal. A $3 submission fee (slowly becoming $5) might seem like pocket change in the U.S., but thanks to conversion rates and a little thing called late-stage capitalism, in India it can buy you a full meal, a rickshaw ride to and back from the restaurant, and a lecture from your mom about saving money. If you’re submitting to 100 magazines a year—which, let’s be honest, is what it takes to get two or three acceptances if you’re lucky (and I do mean lucky, not talented)—that’s $300. That’s more than a month’s salary for many young professionals here. And that’s just to “maybe” get published. If you’re a writer in India, Pakistan, or Nigeria, where writing communities are large and vibrant but the currency isn’t, you’re priced out of the game before you even get to play.

That reality is exactly why he founded ONLY POEMS:

I knew we’d always keep free submission windows. Not just as a gesture, but as a principle. If I had to scrape together money every time I wanted to share a poem, there’s no way I was going to turn around and make someone else do the same. Especially not someone sweating through a power cut. We keep our regular reading windows free because we remember what it felt like to need them. And because we believe poets should be paid, not asked to pay. The services we offer, like optional fast responses and editorial feedbacks enable us to pay everyone we publish, whether that’s a poet or someone reviewing a poetry book.

When a lot of American lit mags say, “just do x, y, or z and we’ll waive the fee,” it can sound generous but often ends up feeling like a performative gesture. These so-called free options are frequently buried in submission guidelines or require writers to jump through hoops, like snail mailing their work or disclosing personal information. It’s not that editors are trying to be cruel. It’s just that many of us were raised in a culture that assumes honor systems will be exploited.

But here’s the thing: they mostly aren’t. At Chill Subs, we offer scholarships for our paid memberships—no hoops or explanations. About 10% of our members use them. That’s it. If magazines offered clearly labeled, no-questions-asked free windows, a lot of folks would use them gratefully—and then go on to become their biggest supporters and advocates.

When asked about these problems and solutions, The Sun points out:

What seems like a modest fee to us definitely represents different economic realities around the world. In the old days a lot of off-the-mark submissions came from websites listing us as a place where writers could “get paid $1,500,” which, because we pay pro rates based on length, has only ever been true for about half a dozen published submissions a year. While the fee helps filter for serious submissions, we still want to avoid creating barriers for talented writers, particularly marginalized ones. We maintain a no-questions-asked exemption policy for everyone who requests a fee waiver. We don’t do a lot of soliciting, but we do make an effort to reach out to writers from communities that are underrepresented in the magazine.

The deeper problem isn’t just about fees. It’s about the identity of the literary world. Most magazines are stuck in an exhausting dance: wanting to be a labor of love full of diverse voices—art for art’s sake—and a sustainable business at the same time. That’s hard enough in a functioning economy, let alone one where art funding is slashed and attention is fragmented. But there are other ways forward.

Magazines can charge for services instead of access. Offer editorial feedback. Sell workshops. Partner with small businesses to “adopt a lit mag.” Solicit patrons. Accept donations. We’ve seen the best of this in action: a while back, we compiled a list of African magazines. Not a single one charged submission fees. Many of them were built from scratch by volunteers and writers who simply wanted to see their communities represented. And 87% of the magazines on our site still don’t charge anything to submit. That’s worth celebrating and supporting.

There is no silver bullet here. At Chill Subs, I’ve watched the debate flare up here and there between editors and writers, slowly normalizing into a tired argument that more closely resembles an unresolvable lover’s quarrel. Everyone has an opinion that everybody knows. But there’s a path forward that doesn’t punish emerging writers just for trying. And one where strategically implemented fees can supplement other revenue sources. Lit mags can’t fix capitalism. But they can choose not to replicate its worst instincts. And that’s a start.

Because as it stands, we’re lucky if we even have a job that can afford us the luxury of submitting to lit mags.