Tag Archives: pay for publication

In Search of New Places

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As I published the last post, I realised I’d missed something out.

One of the new titles I was looking at asks for a donation to accompany the poems. It’s less than the cost of buying a coffee at a coffee shop, so I suppose it isn’t ruinous. But it seems wrong. as I discussed recently. I would link to the previous post, but I can’t remember when it was. And I’m too lazy to look.

Regretfully, I won’t be submitting. If it was a printed magazine I would probably buy a subscription, but I am in two minds with online magazines. I know there are costs involved, but I also know I have costs for WP, for newspaper archives and for other research services I use. Somewhere I have to draw a line.

The second was a magazine that doesn’t send rejections. They say if you haven’t heard after a month you can take that as a rejection. It’s one way of cutting down the workload, and avoids having to be nice to hundreds of people, no matter how bad their work is, but it’s also a bit rude. I have, in the past, submitted to magazine with this approach but never been successful. Maybe it’s because my negativity transmits itself, maybe it’s because it’s an approach favoured by young, cutting edge editors and I’m just a dull, old-fashioned poet.

I know I often say I’m looking for new places to submit but there are some lines I don’t want to cross. Paying to be published is one.

I’m not quite so sure about the other. Which is worse – a guaranteed (though impersonal) one month cut off, or an editor who waits three months to reply.  (Some, to be fair, reply in days – they are the best!)

 

Photos from May 2016

 

Thoughts on Editors

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So far this year I have had 16 acceptances. One came this morning and prompted this post. That’s from 30 submissions, so it’s a touch over 50%. I have done better in past years, but this year, as I have said, I have tried harder and sent submissions to people who habitually turn me down. It’s character forming.

I’ve been scouring the internet looking for more places to submit and have found a few, but run into three problems.

One is that some only accept postal submissions and I no longer like sending them. Paper does actually, as the expression goes, grow on trees, but I feel it’s better to use emails for both convenience and carbon footprint.

Two is that the editors of these harder to find journals can be quite aggressive, which is probably a reason why they are not so well supported. In general I find editors of Japanese style magazines are nicer and more helpful than those of mainstream poetry journals, but if they aren’t, why should I bother with them?

And three – when I relaunched my poetry writing I decided to aim for the best magazines. I did. I got rejected. I am still rejected. But when I did get in it was worth doing and quite exciting to find myself in a journal with people I’d actually heard of. Better to be rejected by a quality journal than be accepted by one of lower quality.  And better to aspire to meet the quality threshold of a better journal.

My Orange Parker Pen

There is another reason, I just remembered. Some magazines want to be paid to include my work. With some, it’s voluntary – I can access a quicker decision by paying, but with one they actually want you to pay for inclusion.

Few magazines have ever paid. I can live with that. I can live with taking out subscriptions for magazines. That seems fair. It’s a hobby and hobbies cost money. But to pay for inclusion? I don’t think I’ll bother tank you.

Poetry – creatively stacked but a touch light on stock