Lighting a fire in the ice-shagged dystopia once called Earth, Home Planet News 23 is hot off the steampunk press with poetry by Christopher Barnes, Cleo Griffith, Vidya Hariharan, Tracey Knapp, MK Kuol, Charlene Langfur, Bob McAfee, Stephen C. Middleton, R. H. Nicholson, Andrea Maxine Recto, Andy Roberts, & Watt Worris; fiction by John Holman, Marcelo Medone, & Charles Roberts; nonfiction by Natalie Sforza & Diane Webster; & artwork by Audrey Holmes. Many thanks to all!
I’ll probably sound like an old man yelling at the clouds to say this--which isn't fair, because I’m not that freaking old, & in all honesty, I’m more of an indoorsy sort of guy—but to the point, a rather disturbing trend among literary magazines these days is to charge a fee--$3 seems to be the going rate—to submit. The rationale behind this fee, alleged as necessary to cover operation costs, goes something along the lines of “Before the internet, writers had to pay the post office to mail their manuscripts, so this is basically the same thing, tee-hee.”
Uh, no. It isn’t. First off, as a writer who hails from the 20th century (OK, so maybe I am that old), I can tell you it rarely took more than a dollar to send a handful of poems off, but whatever the cost, it went entirely to pay postage. None of the cost trickled in any fashion to the addressee, outside of the occasional unscrupulous editor who’d steal stamps from SASEs—you know who you are! The same standard postal fees applied whether you mailed a letter to dear old mumsy, a few photos (say no more, he said knowingly) to a faraway friend, or the products of your literary labors to some mostly unknown magazine with a circulation of about 17. All such communications are ones most people take care of electronically nowadays, yet I don’t know anyone who requires friends & family to remit payment with emails or texts in order to allay the cost of purchasing & operating a computer/phone as well as recurring provider charges.
It may shock some to learn that it was substantially more expensive to publish an ink & paper magazine than it is to post stuff online. Before digital printing, POD publications (outside of the odd journal dedicated to hissing, finger-wagging, body-snatching Donald Sutherland-esque alien invaders) were nonexistent. Type was set by hand, a lengthy process that, along with the cost of ink & paper, drove the price up. Most presses required bulk purchases, often with payment due in advance. Nevertheless, it was almost unheard of for magazines to ask writers to cough up cash to make submissions. Once upon a time, believe it or not, writers were advised to steer well the hell clear of editors who asked for money because such publications were probably scams or vanity press adjacent. Reputable magazines sold ads & subscriptions, applied for grants, & solicited donations to keep the boat afloat—all channels still open to today’s online publications.
To charge writers a submission fee exploits the very people who make the magazine possible in the first place, for there would be no literary journal, das Ding an sich, if not for the poems, stories, artwork, etc. contributed via submissions. What seems particularly egregious—given that acceptance rates hover, at best, at around 5% &, in many cases, drastically less—is that pay-to-submit magazines raise revenue primarily--nay, overwhelmingly--from the likes of those whose work, deservedly or undeservedly, doesn’t appear among its virtual pages. While many of these magazines offer no payment to their contributors, ironically, the paying markets have further incentive to reject submissions wholesale in order to amass a yet greater cash stash, a business model not unlike the one that insurance companies, by routinely denying coverage, are notorious for employing.
I think it was God who said, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” & while I don’t agree with the Almighty about much, here we absolutely agree. The good news is Home Planet News is--shout it from every mountaintop--free! We don’t require fees for submissions, we don't have paywalls, we don't sell subscriptions or ads, & we haven't thus far sought donations. Likewise, our sibling site, Half Inch Press, founded upon the goal of flipping the paradigm in favor of the writer, doesn’t sponsor book contests with pricey entry fees or otherwise require payment to read a manuscript. Moreover, we pay our authors a literary lion's share of royalties. Our recent releases are Ken Pobo's latest poetry collection, It's Me, Dulcet Tones, as well as a text-only edition of Walking in Chicago with a Suitcase in My Hand, my out-of-print, prize-winning poetry collection published by Knut House a decade ago. Also, a facsimile edition of the original book is planned for release later in the year (as are many other new books), so keep checking back at our bookstore.
OK, I'm an old man with withered dugs. I get it—the past has passed, Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, & the world's little more than a second-hand shop's straw hat for the proverbial Minnie Pearl, a large hand-scrawled price tag ever dangling as a tawdry reminder, but remember, too, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Enjoy Issue 23 &, as always, many thanks to our readers & contributors.
Matt
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