I'd Do Anything for Lit Mags (But I Won't Do That)!
Editors respond to Atticus Review & NFTS; lying in your cover letter; behind-the-scenes with editors; defining writer success; poetry book stats; a billion-trillion calls for submissions; and more
Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!
Greetings Lit Magicorns,
This past weekend, I shared Atticus Review’s announcement that it would transition to blockchain and NFTs. As always, we had a lively and interesting discussion. Shortly after posting that piece, I found additional thoughts from editors at other magazines. I thought their responses might be of interest.
From the Editor of HAD:
From Taco Bell Quarterly:
From Glass Poetry Press:
From the Editor of Boston Globe’s Books section:
From the Assistant Essays Editor at American Literary Review:
You get the idea. It seems unlikely Atticus Review’s transition will inspire a new wave of NFT-minting magazines. Though one never knows. Technology trends rise, fall and sometimes rise again.
Still, if the NFT venture falls flat, what will the editors do next? Will they return to the old publishing model? Fold? Atticus Review has long been a solid, reputable magazine. I find the embrace of web 3.0 interesting/bizarre/fascinating/horrifying, so will be watching to see what happens.
I’ve also reached out to the editors to inquire about work that was published on the site already. Will it be minted as an NFT? Will it remain archived in regular old Web 2.0? I will let you know what I hear.
In other news, if you have ever wondered whether it might be a good idea to lie in your cover letter, the editors of have some news for you:
This Week’s Pet Peeve
Cover letters that say something like, “Thank you for your kind words about my prior submission.” When we see statements like that we try to remember the author and what they may have sent us previously. Often we can’t. Sometimes we look it up and find that we never sent kind words or that the author has never even submitted to us previously…Same goes for phony credits. When we see publishing credits that include some top tier journals, sometimes we try to find what the author has published in those venues. Sometimes we can, and sometimes we can’t. Frankly, if we find you’ve lied to us in the cover letter we read your work already predisposed to decline.
At Electric Literature, Benjamin Schaefer has a beautiful reflection on pursuing literary success, validation, sobriety, and confronting what it is one truly needs creatively. In All of My Accepted Stories Started with Rejections he writes,
I might place a story with a dream publication, or win a scholarship to a prestigious writing conference, and I’d experience the familiar rush of external gratification and validation. But eventually that rush always faded, and when it did, I’d update my resume and turn my attention, full-throttle, to the next opportunity on the horizon. The more I pursued success in this fashion, the less I was able to integrate any real sense of accomplishment. The time between achieving some milestone and the point at which I moved on from it became shorter and shorter. There was always more success to achieve.
And therein lies the rub when it comes to rejection. Because yes, rejection is inevitable in the business of writing, but only because the pursuit of success is inexhaustible, which makes pursuing success as a need—as a constant source of gratification and validation—an exercise in unsustainability.
For those of you who enjoy my video interviews with editors, there’s another Editor Interview YouTube channel in town! I was so pleased to find the Wild Roof Journal’s Substack, and more than a little jealous of Editor Aaron Lelito’s professional-looking setup. Here he interviews September Herrin, Founding Editor of Weird Lit Magazine, “a platform for the weird and boundless.”
At
, Angelique Fawns and Angela Yuriko Smith interview Angela Yuriko Smith, Editor of sci-fi Space and Time Magazine. Says Smith,“As far as what we might be looking for in this next open call (to be published in October), given the current political climate in the US, I'd say stories and poems that have unification as a theme, resistance to oppression and freedom of thought will be well received. This is just my prediction. We will have to see what the First Readers, and then Final Readers think.”
If you’re interested in learning more about shaping personal narrative,
is organizing its first-ever personal storytelling summit on May 3rd in NYC. “Hear Jane Pratt and over two dozen essayists, memoir authors, storytellers, and magazine and book editors discuss their approach to first person writing and the power of personal narratives.”And at
, Emily Stoddard provides upcoming calls for submissions as well as interesting stats on book publishing in 2025 Poetry Book Publishing: Trends, Deadlines, and a Tool for Your Submissions:About 79% (137) of the 173 reading periods in 2025 charge a fee. The average fee—$24—is higher by $1 this year.
But talking about one average fee doesn’t tell the full story. It hides how significant the gap is between presses on the question of fees:
95 reading periods—almost 70% of those charging a fee—charge more than the average fee of $24.
If you look at just those 95 periods charging over $24, the average fee is actually $28.
This means presses prioritizing lower, more accessible fees skew the total average and provide cover for the top chargers.
In fact, among those (42 reading periods) charging less than the average fee, the average fee is actually $15.
For those of you seeking homes for your latest & greatest, there is a wealth of submission call roundups out there. (Please note: I now only gather these roundups in the first newsletter of each month.)
has January's 25 Jazzy Open Submission Calls! “All Paying, No Fee Calls to start the year!” has January opportunities for “literary magazine calls, fellowships for LGBTQ+ and artists of colour + a variety of residencies.” has 2025 Opportunities for African Writers: “Up to $25,000, Travel, Workshops, Digital & Print Publication, Contests etc.” has sub calls from “Michigan Quarterly Review, The Pinch, StoryBottle Co., Berkeley Fiction Review, Public Books, Story, BUST, and The Bridport Prize”The Irish Writers Centre has Opportunities for Writers: January 2025
of The Practicing Writer has “50+ fee-free, paying/funded opportunities, success stories, and more.” has 84 Recently Opened Submission Calls, Upcoming Deadlines, Contests, Theme Calls & More, plus many other curated lists.Erica Verrillo has 67 Calls for Submissions in January 2025 - Paying markets
Authors Publish has 5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in January 2025 and 41 Themed Submission Calls and Contests for January 2025
As for us, lots coming up in the days ahead. Our next Lit Mag Chat is this Wednesday at 2:30 pm est. We also have an interview with the editors of Hunger Mountain on January 30th. You can learn about these events and register right here:
We are reading Hunger Mountain right now for our Lit Mag Reading Club. The entire issue is online and free to access. Read it here.
You can learn more about our Lit Mag Reading Club here:
Another Year of Reading Lit Mags! 2024-2025
It’s time to kick off this year’s Lit Mag Reading Club!
And that you adventurous Arieses ramming your way into every open door, you caring Cancers crab-walking your way through one consideration to the next, you untamable stubborn Tauruses, so grounded, so strong, you fluttering Geminis always so playful and coy, you busy-bee Virgos, loving lionesque Leos, you Libras with all the weight of the world balanced in your cool open palms, you and you, passionate Scorpios crawling through the seeds of all your secret intuitions, you Southern celestial and deeply philosophical Sagitarriuses, you inventive Aquariuses always winding through the rabbit holes, you slippery fishy swimmy passionate Pisces, and you! Capricorn! me! Capricorn! with your birthdays forthcoming or maybe just past, you happy goat! you tricky monkey! you of determination, you who perseveres, you allegedly “A-type personality” which can’t possibly be true, not for all Capricorns, because, well, lol, nope, but anyway, whatever they say about whoever you are, you and you, everywhere, celebrating, easing, aging, flying, becoming yourself amidst the air wind water and earth, you, forever, rising suns and the light of a million gleaming moons, is the news in literary magazines.
Have a most abundant week, pals.
Fondly,
Becky
And now a word from one of our lovely sponsors:
“Submit or Quit” Events are Launching!
Meg Pokrass, Founding Editor of Best Microfiction, is adding a monthly event, “Submit or Quit”, to both of her popular Substack Newsletters! Paid subscribers to either newsletter will be able to participate in a submissions event every month. The events are a weekend long so writers can jump at their convenience. There will be suggestions for magazines to submit to and fun, supportive interaction. Submitting is hard, and the goal is to make it enjoyable. Become a subscriber to Meg Pokrass Microfiction Workshops or Prompts of Resilience (recommended by Etgar Keret) today!
I've been published in multiple top-tier magazines, but mostly in the pre-Internet age, as part of a previous career. That means that if some suspicious editor decided to look me up at NYtimes.com, etc., they might not find me and conclude that I am a liar! (I've even had to ask my library's reference experts to track down some of my long-ago publications when I couldn't put my hands on the original.)
Yikes. That's really unfair.
As a previous Editor-in-Chief of Atticus Review, I have a little inside info. The magazine has gone back and forth over the years between the original publisher (Dan) and the new owner (David), who is a big tech person (though seemingly 3-4 years out of date). Though I never worked with David, my impression was that he was very interested in monetizing AR. My question for AR is if they charge $ for submissions and then pay writers with NFTs.