Over at Jason Sanford's blog I stumbled across a new to me spec-fiction zine called Zahir. They've just switched from a print magazine to online with all the stories being published in a yearly anthology. Guidelines here http://www.zahirtales.com/submissions.html
Checking out the submission guidelines I discovered that they charge a $2.50 fee to submit your story via their online form. But, you can submit via snail mail for free. The fee is used to help pay the authors. The pay here being $10 per story plus a copy of the yearly anthology your story appears in.
At first I was taken aback by the thoughts of paying a fee to submit. You know, the money flows to the author deal. But when you think about it, by the time you pay for the paper and ink to print your story, postage, the envelope to mail it plus your SASE, you're going to be paying close to that $2.50 fee just to submit for free.
So, I was wondering what you all think? Does it sound like a cost effective alternative or does paying that fee to submit on line rankle just a bit? I'm curious because I can't make up my mind if this is a good idea or not.
4 comments:
This is just my opinion, Sandra, but my thought is that if you're published you're $7.50 up and you get a book with your story in print. It's the old story...you've got to be in it to win it!
I'll be looking into this, thanks.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with David. I consider this as a slippery slope. I think it's okay, even encouraged, for writers to support the magazines they submit to by buying the magazine, but fees of any kind--where does it end and when does it become vanity publishing?
Having said that, every so once in a while I will pay a fee to enter a conference contest. If I think the possible rewards are worth it and I want to support the conference.
This has been going on for years. I used to subscribe to writers news/writing magazine years ago and they had a fee to submit to writing competitions. There are probably still a lot of sites that ask a nominal fee to enter a comp or submit a story. On the reverse of that there are sites that offer a nominal payment for your story but then ask you to donate it back.
One thing, David, its not a contest. This is just a regular submission process which means that everyone who's rejected is paying for those who get published.
And it is a slippery slope, Conda. On the one hand, I can see this working to help the zines become a paying market, but then its still the writers who are paying.
What I was wondering, is the fee compatible with the cost of submitting a paper submission for free. Which one would be more cost effective for the writer.
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