Getting Paid for Literary Fiction

Anyone who knows me knows I rail against the practice of literary journals not paying their writers. They surely pay the printer, the electric company, the web hosting company and so on, but they seldom pay their writers. And without those writers, there would be no journal. That never made sense to me.

The lack of pay was one reason I have been reluctant to send stories out. It simply irked me that I would be providing content without as much as a penny a word of pay. Too many of my fellow writers are so desperate for publication credits that they feel they have no choice but to give their stories away. So when I began this experiment, I concentrated on markets that pay something other than copies. And my first publication will be in a paying market. In fact, that publication, KYSO Flash, has already paid me for two stories that will appear in their June 2015 issue.

If you are looking for a paying market, check them out. The editor is great to work with, quick to respond and a genuinely nice person. And if you are feeling generous and would like to support a paying market, consider making a donation via their Paypal link. We need more paying markets, but we have to support those markets too - by reading the publications, spreading the word and making a donation when we can.

On Literary Journals

I've now submitted my second story in the challenge to 20 literary journals. There are thousands of possibilities, it seems. And all have the most unlikely of names. It's almost as if the founding editors used a random word generator to choose their journal's name. I've combined a few. How about Hark the Jersey Devil. Or Guernica Declared Halfway Down the Stairs? As I browsed through the listings, I couldn't help but think that this process is the equivalent of the academic "publish or perish" approach to getting tenure. Writers submit and hope an editor at one of the thousands of journals out there will put their work in print or online so they can add it to their writing resume so that someday someone will buy the collection or their novel. I wouldn't be surprised if soon lit journals will charge writers a substantial fee for publication. Quite a few already charge for contests (at least there is the possibility of a prize) and for regular submissions. Editors argue that otherwise they would be overwhelmed with submissions and the $3-$5 charge isn't much more than writers would pay to snail mail the same story in the old days. But still -

Anyway, my post-war story, Hjemmelandet, has been submitted to the following lit journals (none of which charged a fee though at least one offered expedited rejection if I paid for the privilege):

• Wag’s Review
• Foundling Review
• Litro Mag
• Change Seven
• Circa Mag
• East Jasmine Review
• Green Briar Review
• Halfway Down the Stairs
• Hobart
• Hypertrophic Literary
• Jersey Devil
• Cecil’s
• Louisville Review
• The Masters Review
• Cigale Literary Magazine
• Seven Circle Press
• Gone Lawn
• Guernica Magazine
• Hark
• Isthmus