I’m also a self-published novelist.  My themes are controversial. My novels are about students protesting war, women union organizing, and young and old folks fighting on environmental issues.  Consequently, the commercial publishers are not interested in my novels.   Having self-published my novels, I can say, I have never sold enough books, e-books or paper, to cover the cost of self-publishing them.   But the response from my small group of readers has been uplifting.

When I retired, I moved on to short-story writing.  I searched through literary magazines trying to match the stories I wrote with the magazine’s desires.  Many of the magazines charged a “submission fee” of ten or twenty dollars.  I did not like paying a fee, but did it a few times and was published occasionally. It was nice to be published, but it was a slow process toward recognition.  When I did not get published, I lost the fee to the magazine’s coffers.

Being familiar with how economics is built on exploitation, I decided to do some calculating.  If I had a literary magazine and I charged $10 per submission, and let’s say, I got 1000 writers to submit at that fee, I would have $10,000.    If I offered to pay three of these writers for their short stories, I’d pay out $3000 and keep $7000.   If the number of writers submitting were 2000 paying a $10 fee, I’d obtain $20,000.  I could then select and publish six writers and pay out $6000 and keep $14,000.  The money I kept would go into the cost of operating the web site where the magazine is published, but that is a small cost. (I know because I pay for a writer web site where I advertise my novels and publish some of my short stories and poems.)  Looking at these calculation, I could see that most of the “submission fees” would go into my pocket.  I began to realize why many writers go into publishing.  It’s more lucrative.

We all know that getting paid $1000.00 for a short story is good pay. So like myself, I know there are many writers out there who would pay $10.00 and roll the dice hoping to get the $1000 for a short story.  We can visualize ourselves sitting at a restaurant announcing to our writer friends how much we just got paid for our PUBLISHED short story.  Yes, $1000.   However, the selection of a short story for publication is based on whim, the whim of the editor.  In spite of the editor’s Master’s Degree in Literature and superior grammar skills, many stories get published that make the average person frown and scratch one’s head.  Getting published is a gamble for any writer.

Browsing the lit mags further, I note that many are of a liberal persuasion. They invite and publish writers from around the world. India, China, Philippines, Columbia, Argentina etc.  It may be that many of these people live in New York City, but chances are they live in these much less expensive places to live than NYC. Could it be that just like the manufacturers of shoes, shirts, umbrellas and laptops, the lit mags have discovered that stories are cheaper if they are manufactured outside of the U.S.?  An offering of $500 to some writers would be enough to live on for six months. It pays to be liberal?

College presses are struggling under budget cuts.  Any magazine that doesn’t charge a submission fee is being financed through grants or the sale of advertisements in their publication.  This helps to define their tastes in literature.  If you want to make money—do something else.  Keep writing as a side-line.  Writing articles may bring in a little extra money, but writing for a living is dangerous.