Q: Is this...normal?

"Not necessarily alarming, though certainly unsettling."

Welcome to our weekend conversation!

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Last month a writer tipped me off to a lit mag doing something quite questionable.

The following are the correspondences between the writer, who is based in Ireland, and the online journal The Galway Review.

In October 2023, the writer submitted to the magazine:

Afternoon to you

Hope you’re in grand form.

Thought I might send a few pieces of work winging your way.

Thanks indeed.

And, My Best,

[writer]

Before we continue, can we all take a moment to swoon over this writer’s magnificent Irish brogue? I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed seeing how submissions are done in Ireland. I could read this writer’s cover letters all day long.

Okay, so back to the magazine. They replied that day:

Dear [Writer],

Thank you for submitting your work to The Galway Review. Your submission has been forwarded to our board of editors for review. We kindly request your support by donating €20 to help cover the reviewing and editorial costs. Click here to DONATE

Furthermore, we are excited to introduce our digital department's new suite of services. Writers can now access discounted web services to establish and promote their online presence. Additionally, we have partnered with the Galway Academic Press to provide affordable print services, allowing writers to publish their own books.

For more information about our digital and print services, please contact us at thegalwayreview@gmail.com

Sincerely,

The Galway Review

Donate:

https://www.paypal.me/thegalwayreview?locale.x=en_IE

Okay, so they are confirming receipt of the work, advertising the magazine’s services and asking for a donation. Not necessarily alarming, though certainly unsettling. You submit to a mag and they immediately hit you up for money? Plus €20 ain’t no small chunk of change. (It’s about $25.)

Let’s continue. In May, the writer had not heard anything, so emailed the magazine to follow up on the status of the submission:

Hi All,

Hope all's well.

Doing a tidy-up of the spreadsheet, thought I'd check in and ask as to the status of the submission sent through Oct. 1, of which four pieces remain outstanding.

My Thanks

I’d like to pause here to point out that, as far as I am concerned, this writer is doing everything right. The writer is patient, courteous but also assertive. (For anyone wondering, it is perfectly fine to query a lit mag when they’ve had your work for roughly eight months. This writer handles the inquiry well.)

And lo! That same day, the writer received an acceptance letter.

There’s only one catch. It looks quite similar to the initial letter confirming receipt of the work. The only change is that the work was “approved for publication.”

Dear [Writer],

Your submission was forwarded to our board of editors for review and all were approved for publication. We kindly request your support by donating €20 to help cover the reviewing and editorial costs. Click here to DONATE

Furthermore, we are excited to introduce our digital department's new suite of services….

For more information about our digital and print services, please contact us at thegalwayreview@gmail.com

Sincerely,

The Galway Review

Donate:

https://www.paypal.me/thegalwayreview?locale.x=en_IE

To which the writer, in a state of innocence and joy, sent just the loveliest reply:

Och, that's wonderful news indeed, and I'll surely donate, aye. You do great work, sure.

Damn, I've been hoping to be published by yourselves since I lived in Galway in my 20s! :)

Which makes it all the more heartbreaking when the writer doesn’t hear from the magazine for months after. In January, a full nine months after acceptance, the writer inquires:

Hi All :)

Hope you're well.

And, of course, Happy New Year.

Thought I might check-in to ask if there's a rough publication date due?

My Thanks again!

To which the journal replies (bold emphasis mine):

Thank you for submitting your work to The Galway Review.

Your submission was forwarded to the board of editors for reading, reviewing, and editing.

We are delighted to inform you that the board of editors has approved your submission for publication on The Galway Review website. We are honoured to publish such fine writing.

To help cover the reviewing and editorial costs, as well as the expenses for updating the website layout, coding, publishing your post, and promoting it on our social media channels, we kindly request a donation of €20.

You can click here to DONATE…

Now, the writer is getting nervous. The writer replies:

Hope all's well.

Have a wee query for you.

Had four pieces accepted by the Galway Review in May, and have tried to email to get an idea when they'll go out, but keep receiving strange auto reply donation requests, rather than any human response.

Wonder if you can shed some light?

My Best

Now the editor shows up and says:

It’s a human response I am afraid.

I don’t have any auto replying in place.

Yours sincerely

Ndrek Gjini

Writer:

Thanks Ndrek,

So can I ask what the response means?

I queried the publication dates but the email seemed to avoid answering the question?

And here, at last, is the kicker:

I [sic] will be published online max 1-2 days after the donation

Yours sincerely

Ndrek Gjini

Now, at last, the writer understands what has happened:

Aha. So you're not in fact a publisher or a poetry journal, but some sort of scam nowadays?

Donation does not imply you *must* pay, and accepting work, which the writer then withdraws from submission elsewhere, only to then expect 20 quid is absolutely abhorrent behaviour, wouldn't you agree?

Am I misunderstanding this, or are you saying that the Galway Review accepts work loosely, but then requires a donation (a contradiction in terms that).

I do hope I'm wrong here and just getting the wrong end of the stick.

Are you using the word donation to 'demand' payment? If so, why do you not list this as a fee, rather than a 'donation'. It seems extremely poor form.

To which the editor simply refers the writer to the magazine’s submission guidelines:

Read this. It’s there unchanged for more than 2 decades.

I have nothing to do with it.

So essentially, this magazine is accepting work. Then, once accepted, they ask for the equivalent of a $25 donation. When confronted with the questionable nature of this practice, the editor simply points to the submission guidelines and says he has “nothing to do with it.”

Here, though, are this magazine’s guidelines:

Note that they state a donation will be requested, not required as a condition for publication.

Heartbreaking indeed! I included the full correspondence between writer and editor not only because the dialect is so darn delicious, but so we can see how easily such events transpire. The writer is an experienced poet with many publications. The writer is eager to publish in this magazine. The writer does everything right. And then…the magazine turns out to be something other than what they appear to be.

This writer is not alone. When I heard about all this, I posted on X about a lit mag asking for donations once they accept work. I did not name the journal. A writer reached out to me. (The blue message is me.):

I love this writer’s attitude. When you encounter something that feels like a scam, walk away. Then have a good laugh.

There is also, it turns out, a reddit thread dedicated to this magazine:

I’m newish to the publication world, but I’ve had work published in about two dozen literary magazines and journals now, and this is the first time I’ve encountered this. I submitted to The Galway Review and they, in under an hour, accepted all of the pieces I submitted for publication. Within their acceptance email, they said I must “donate” €20 in order for my work to be published. They do not have a submission fee, nor does it state anywhere in their guidelines that there is a fee of any kind, yet they said that it is a requirement to pay €20 in order for my accepted work to be published. Is this normal? I have never had this happen and am slightly taken aback at the forced “donation” as a trade off for publication. Any tips/advice are much appreciated.

Here are some of the responses:

Seeing all the responses, the original poster added an update:

Update: I got angrier about this as the day went on. At first I thought I was overreacting (I’m newer to this kind of thing, idk) but after reading your responses I just became furious (thank you ❤️). I emailed them back, withdrew my work, told them the definition of “donate”, told them they’re misleading and taking advantage of writers, and reported them to Duotrope and Chillsubs. No response from Chillsubs yet, but Duotrope responded almost immediately and disqualified them from their site entirely, as they do not support literary outlets on their platform that require writers to “pay for publication”. I’ll update if Chillsubs responds. I appreciate you all for your kindness and willingness to help.

To which someone very sweetly replied:

Congratulations OP you’ve gone from anonymous Redditor to Personal Hero, amazing work.

Keep writing with integrity and you’ll find a publisher that’s right for you eventually. Took me twelve years to get traditionally published and I’ve worked in publishing lol

I only saw this because someone replied to my comments but if the other people who’ve commented here could come back and see this, too, they would also be proud of you.

So, there’s a nice happy ending.

But not all endings to such stories are so happy. Some writers may not know that this is abnormal. They wind up paying a large sum in order to have their work appear.

At the very least, writers submit, wait months and months, then get an acceptance, withdraw the work from other magazines, patiently wait for nearly a year, only to be told that their work will appear once they “donate” to the magazine.

Now, let’s be clear. Donating to a magazine is a lovely thing to do. Editors asking for donations is perfectly fine. Many lit mags rely on donations to survive.

I also want to be clear that none of this should cast negative light on the many writers who have published in this magazine. Did they pay to have their work appear? I have no idea. Are writers responsible for all of a magazine’s practices? Absolutely not.

And if writers do pay to have their work appear, that is not a problem. If this is what a writer wishes to do—and they do this willingly, knowingly—that’s their prerogative.

What is a problem is when a magazine accepts work and then asks for a donation and makes the donation a condition for the work’s publication, without ever informing the submitting writer this would be the case.

Writers, you should never be required to pay a cent in order to have your work published. If that will be the case at a particular magazine, the editors should be absolutely clear about this in their guidelines.

If you are ever unsure of what a magazine is asking from you, or why, never be afraid to ask for clarity from the editor or seek answers from the writing community. If something feels off, it may very well be so.

Once you know something is not right, then you can know to distance yourself. Walk away, have a good laugh. And down a pint of Guinness, aye. It will all be grand.

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What do you think?

Is this something you’ve encountered here or at other venues?

Are other presses doing anything similar?

Is this a sign of the times, and a troubling one at that?

Have you ever encountered something at a press that feels…not quite right?