How to Avoid Submission Fees: Lessons Learned from 20+ Years of Sending Out My Work—and Curating Opportunities for Others

Advice on finding fee-free publishing opportunities

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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Let me begin by explaining what this piece is not: It is not a diatribe against fees charged for writers to send work to literary journals, contests, and presses. Nor is it a defense of such fees. Frankly, the debates over literary submission fees aren’t new, and they won’t end soon. At this point, I don’t often find them particularly constructive. In the meantime, for many publishing opportunities, fees remain—and, for various reasons, many writers continue to need or prefer fee-free options.

I’ve always been keen on fee-free opportunities, both for my own literary work—I began trying to place short stories, essays, poems, and book-length manuscripts more than 20 years ago—and for the free monthly newsletter that I’ve been publishing for writers since 2004. It’s true that when I launched the newsletter, I included both fee-free and fee-charging calls and competitions. But I gradually shifted my focus.

That’s because there came a time when I seemed to be flooded with magazines, websites, and other newsletters that publicized ways for writers to spend money as they sought homes for their poetry and prose. If I was going to continue to devote my time and energy to a service-oriented newsletter project, I wanted to offer something with distinct value; I settled on highlighting ways for writers to get published (and, not incidentally, paid for winning/published work) without having to fork over their own funds to do so.

Herewith, then—gleaned from long experience ferreting out fee-free opportunities—are five (and a half) suggestions for anyone who must or simply wishes to avoid (or minimize) submission fees.

1. Read guidelines—carefully. And then, mark your calendar.

The submissions advice that every editor proclaims (sometimes pleadingly) is relevant in this context, too. That’s because even if they normally charge fees for journal submissions or contest entries—and remember, not all of them do—many publications and presses offer periodic fee-free windows, which may vary in length from a single day to a month. Often, this information is detailed within the guidelines that are posted on the journal or publisher’s website.

For instance, within its guidelines, Ninth Letter specifies which months they’re open to fee-free submissions, and which months require fees. Split Lip does the same, while adding that “in an effort to promote Black voices,” Black writers may submit fee-free year-round.

For its part, the guidelines page at New Orleans Review includes a calendar of fee-free windows for writers from different groups, corresponding with various heritage/awareness months. And Iron Horse Literary Review maintains a webpage that delineates discrete days for fee-free submissions for both journal and contest submissions.

Moreover, tucked within many guidelines pages you will find a note that a journal or contest may be receptive to waiving a fee upon request. (You can find examples of these thanks to

Emily Stoddard

, who has begun to track poetry-book contests that offer fee waivers.)

One final observation: Occasionally, guidelines pages will also mention if a journal will receive submissions sent via postal mail, for which you’ll pay only in paper/ink/postage. (Again, you’ll find an example here with Ninth Letter.) Especially if you’re sending something slim—a couple of poems or flash pieces—and you’ve stocked up on Forever stamps, this option may appeal.

2. Follow journals and presses on social media (and/or sign up for their free newsletter updates).

Maybe you resist social media. And maybe you can’t follow every journal or press, or subscribe to all of their individual newsletters. But you can connect, in some way, with some of them. And when you do, you’ll discover that it’s not uncommon to find in among those tweets, posts, or emails announcements about brief, “pop-up” fee-free submissions windows that aren’t always publicized ahead (or ever) on the main websites. A prime example: The Maine Review.

3. Don’t dawdle.

Several journals (examples: Cincinnati Review, Nashville Review, Orca) will remind you within their guidelines that their fee-free submissions are capped. This means that they’ll close when a certain number of submissions have been received; it can make sense to act fast if you want to send something in.

4. (Try to) get a grant.

Believe it or not, the literary ecosystem has yielded a few grant opportunities that aim specifically to help writers cover submission fees. These include the Gasher First Book Scholarship, which provides $250 to the grantee, who must be seeking to place their first collection, “to cover the costs of submitting their manuscript to presses.” [UPDATE: PLEASE CONSULT COMMENT SECTION BELOW REGARDING THIS SCHOLARSHIP.] Poets seeking to publish chapbooks and full-length manuscripts might also check the Submission Fee Support Circle organized (again!) by Emily Stoddard.

For the remainder of 2023, Vincent Anioke’s grants to support the efforts of Black writers can help cover both journal and contest fees, as well as MFA application costs. (The application form for a similar Literary Support program, organized by GrubStreet specifically for U.S.-based BIPOC writers, currently features a message that although the program is “on hold” at the moment, writers should “please check for updates beginning June 2023.”)

5. Remember that filters, and filterers, are your friends. (Usually.)

They aren’t always perfect, but many databases that allow you to search for opportunities also give you the chance to limit results to those that don’t charge fees. For example, Submittable’s “Discover Opportunities” feature (warning: you’ll need to be logged in to the platform to access it) includes a “No Fee” option; unfortunately, in multiple cases, I’ve found when I read the fine print that fees do, in fact, apply. Winning Writers provides a more reliable option in its pre-filtered database that’s dedicated to  “The Best Free Literary Contests.” (You’ll need to be logged in here, too, but as with Submittable, there’s no charge for access.)

A number of newsletters and similar resources will also perform some filtering work for you. Some feature only fee-free submissions: My own aforementioned newsletter, which further limits offerings to opportunities that pay writers for winning/published work, and Cathy Bryant’s Comps and Calls, which emphasizes opportunities in the United Kingdom and signals which are also paying ones, are just two examples.

In other cases—such as Pamelyn Casto’s Flash Fiction Flash (which despite the title, isn’t limited to fiction) and the markets newsletter from WOW! Women on Writing—you’ll find both fee-charging and fee-free opportunities, but these curators are careful to present fee requirements (or lack thereof) up front. Readers can thus skip ahead to the next fee-free opportunity if so inclined.

I can’t conclude this segment of the piece without citing that still-fairly-new literary resource that is Chill Subs. I literally cannot keep up with all that’s developing there, or with which features may be falling behind some paywalls. But as far as I can tell, their new Sub Club newsletter will continue to share some helpfully-annotated market news free of charge, and of course their ever-expanding database remains open to all.

5.5 Subscribe.

This one I almost didn’t list, because it does require an up-front monetary investment, which can be significantly more than the cost of a single submission. But I didn’t want to omit it altogether. Hence, I’m inclined to give it only “half-credit” as a recommendation.

The fact is that some literary journals will waive submission fees for current subscribers; if you are able to support one or more journals through a paid subscription, you might consider selecting a journal of possible interest to you as a submitter, too. (I know that you know that you need to be familiar with every journal you send work to, but I also know that thanks to free online content, libraries, and other resources, it’s not necessary to hold paid subscriptions for each, even if, in an ideal world, you might.) For just two examples, click over to Fourteen Hills and Ploughshares.

To return to the very first suggestion on this list: Read the guidelines. That’s often where you’ll find a mention of this subscriber benefit.

Again, despite the bandwidth devoted to them, submission fees aren’t going to disappear anytime soon. But for now, at least, writers can avoid them. It takes some effort—and a lot of attention to detailed fine print. But it’s far from impossible.

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