Rickshaw

 " The Rise of the Submission Industrial Complex "

"the data we see at Chill Subs, our platform that tracks thousands of literary magazines and submission calls, paints a pretty clear picture: 

submission fees aren’t the exception anymore, they’re the rule at the top. 

 Across all the literary magazines we track, about 13% charge fees. 

 Zoom in on Brecht De Poortere’s top 1000, and that number jumps to 24%. 

 Narrow it further to just the top 100 most popular magazines, and it spikes to 56%. 

 That’s not a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. The higher the prestige, the more likely it is that writers are paying just to be considered." 

"By 2015, several of the top names in the industry, including Ploughshares and American Short Fiction, had begun charging fees. 

And it snowballed from there. You can see the appeal. Multiply that $1.86 by thousands of submissions per month and it becomes one of the only consistent revenue streams a lit mag can rely on."

"Karan Kapoor, a writer from India, explains:

When I first started sending out work about six years ago, it was brutal. A $3 submission fee (slowly becoming $5) might seem like pocket change in the U.S., 

but thanks to conversion rates and a little thing called late-stage capitalism, 

in India it can buy you a full meal, a rickshaw ride to and back from the restaurant, 

 and a lecture from your mom about saving money. If you’re submitting to 100 magazines a year—which, let’s be honest, is what it takes to get two or three acceptances if you’re lucky (and I do mean lucky, not talented)—that’s $300. " 

*

"Benjamin Davis is the cofounder of Chill Subs, a platform used by over 50,000 writers to discover, track, and submit to literary magazines.  

He runs Sub Club, a top-selling Substack newsletter about opportunities in literary publishing, and co-created Forever Workshop, a monthly writing education series. 

 His work in the literary community has been featured in Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly, and Brevity and he’s written about the economics of indie publishing for Lit Mag News, The Writer’s Co-op, and more."

The Rise of the Submission Industrial Complex 

https://lithub.com/the-rise-of-the-submission-industrial-complex/