Cost/Benefit Analysis
September 6, 2019

I don't submit to literary markets that charge a submission fee. I've read the
various justifications -- it keeps down the number of inappropriate submissions;
it costs money to run a literary magazine/website; the fee is roughly equal to
what a writer would pay for a postal submission anyway. If you're interested,
there's a great discussion of the issue of submission fees here[1].

The reason I don't submit to markets that charge fees (and my thoughts echo some
of the discussion that I linked to) is that I feel it changes the relationship
between writer, editor and the work. Coming from the fiction-writing world, I'm
used to Yog's Law[2],which says that money should flow toward the author. I 
shouldn't be paying the editor--however indirectly--to consider my submission.
Postage, on the other hand, is merely a cost of doing business borne by the 
author: I pay the postal system for getting my submission to an editor. The 
difference between the two payments may be subtle, but to me it's an important 
one.

However, I recently violated my own principles and sent an essay to a literary
market that charges a fee. I'd written the piece specifically for that market, a
market that wouldn't open again for several months. I finished the essay and it
was only after the market opened back up that I discovered they charge a
submission fee. I had a choice: take the piece elsewhere and hope I could find a
fit for it or send it to the originally intended market. I chose--just this
once--to pay the fee. I also convinced myself that I wanted to see how the
process worked. Perhaps I was being too critical of something I didn't
understand, and experience would help. (If that's not a justification
after-the-fact, I don't know what is....)

As of today, I'm still waiting for a reply so I can't say if my current opinion
on submission fees will change. I'm guessing it won't. But I can tell you,
though, that paying a fee has created the expectation in me that if I'm
rejected, I'll get something slightly better, something slightly more personal
than the standard "Dear author, thank you for your submission..." email. (After
all, I did send them money, right?) This is an example, to a small degree, of
the sort of change in the relationship between author and editor that I think
comes from charging a submission fee.

I'll post more about this topic once I've heard back from the market.

[1] http://brevity.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/should-brevity-charge
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Macdonald#Educational_work

(c) 2019 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com