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Writing Contests and Fees

I recently tweeted this: “PSA/Pro tip: Do not submit to writing contests that charge entry fees. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Many folks agreed; others wanted to argue a bit. Let us remember here that I am speaking as someone representative of professional writers, and that I have some experience with selling short stories as well as editing and publishing them.

One thing that guides my thinking is this: There is a thing in science fiction circles known as Yog’s Law, which is that the money always flows towards the writer. (If you are self-publishing, that flow may get circuitous, but generally you should not be putting money into increasing the profits unless you are getting the lion’s share of them.)

Here are the arguments that have come my way, and my opinion on them. Some are reasonable; others seem less so for me.

Sometimes what you get in return for the fee is a good value. This is an argument I have some sympathy for, because I know getting professional critiques and acknowledgement is sometimes instructive and usually pleasant. I’ve submitted to a contest because the prize involved personal interaction with the judge and I figured it was pretty much the same as buying a raffle ticket for it. But such contests are the exception rather the norm. No matter what, think about the fee and weigh it carefully, as well as whether or not you are guaranteed to get it. I’ve seen some fees ranging a hundred dollars and up and that starts getting pretty iffy. If you’re paying that much for the same sort of brief editorial feedback you might see when submitting stories, why not just submit them?

Sometimes the fee supports a charity or writers organization. Again, some reason behind this argument, but it would be more efficient to give them the money directly. I have been working with a nonprofit for close to five years now, though, so I understand the fundraising woes. This is, though, an inefficient way of raising funds that depends on a great deal of volunteer time and energy and the ROI is iffy, depending on the skill of the people running things. Perhaps the organization might look into membership fees, pledge drives, bake sales, crowdfunding, or other alternate means of funding.

Charging a fee is a way for a magazine to support itself. There are other, better ways to make money than to monetize the writers, and it’s also a bit cynical not to believe in your product to the point where you think the main audience is the people who want to publish in its pages.

Charging a fee means better submissions. Great reason for editors and magazines; meaningless to writers and in fact, means people that self-reject will be even more likely to do so. It also ensures economically disadvantaged people don’t get to participate. The price of a latte for one person may be the next person’s daily food budget.

A fee contest is how a small press finds new manuscripts to publish. No. Plenty of small presses do not do this.

There are reputable contests out there charging fees. Sure! But if you have a story that you think is publishable, send it out to a magazine. Going the route of writing and submitting stories is a more efficient process of moving upward as a writer than submitting to contests.

Contests get the writerly juices flowing and encourage people to write. If that works for you, swell. Some people can only write in a particular kind of notebook; others only in a coffeeshop with a triple macchiato. Be aware not everyone can afford it, and that you’re tacitly encouraging the system, and then base your decision on how cool or not you are with that. Mileage will vary, but I personally like to know the basics of whichever route I’m taking.

Overall, my feeling is that a magazine that charges fees for contests views the people submitting stories as a source of income, not as partners in the publishing venture. Beyond that — and more importantly, to my mind — a publishing model that publishes only the people that can afford to submit means only the economically privileged can participate and therefore discourages economic diversity – which, in this intersectional world, affects some groups more than others.

That said, there are definitely some contests out there that are well-meaning while others are downright predatory. If you’ve got a question about one, you should check the Writer Beware website and contact them if you don’t see information about it there.

And if you find a contest that doesn’t charge a fee? Still read the rules carefully. A contest should not automatically give the runner publishing rights to the entries, for example, but many ask for that in the fine print. Got a question about a contract? The SFWA Contracts Committee may be able to assist.

Wondering how to get started sending stories out? Here’s a brief video with the basics:

Given that I sell classes to writers myself, is coming after contests capitalizing on people’s dreams of being writers a bit hypocritical of me? Mmm, maybe. I try to counteract things by offering a lot of free scholarships and providing what I think is pretty good value for my students, and I try to steer them away from scams and exorbitant prices.

Want more advice like this? Check out these resources for F&SF writers or sign up for my newsletter.

4 Responses

  1. Cat, what about organizations with contests that offer cash prizes? They couldn’t afford to give the prize without charging an entry fee. You could say “raise more money in other ways” but presuming the organization is already trying multiple ways? To me, for writing organizations, it comes down to: They should not, over the long haul, take in more money from aspiring writers than they are giving back (in cash prizes)? But I do agree with many of the points you make, and am also concerned about all the scams and unscrupulous ways writing anxiety tuns into unseemly profits.

    1. I agree that this is a place where things slide into greyness, and a lot depends on one’s perspective. For a writer that wants to support a particular organization, yep, this is a way to do it, though not the most efficient one. And people like prizes, and sometimes they can build recognition or open up other opportunities.

      Along the same lines, if the organization is providing high-caliber feedback or something else that is similarly unique and valuable, that’s great for a writer that wants that learning experience. (In which case though, maybe the organization should be just doing a “critique your query/story/whatever for $X”? Seems more efficient.)

      For a writer whose focus is “I want to get things published and build my reputation as a writer” though, in my opinion this is a route that is inefficient and exacts an economic toll that has the potential to privilege people with means over those who don’t have such.

      (I owe you an e-mail! Trying to wade through that mailbox this afternoon.)

  2. I’ve submitted some work to SF markets, and the experience has been consistently good. Nothing published yet, but I’ve been shortlisted and gotten some really encouraging personalized rejections.

    Some of my work is contemporary with speculative elements rather than straight-up SF, and for that I’ve looked at literary markets as well. The experience there has not been so good. There are a whole lot of journals, often associated with a university creative writing program, but they’re mostly pretty small. Charging fees for submissions seems to be the norm, even for the reputable ones with some history. Sometimes the submission fee is a dollar or two, just to act as a speed bump. That I don’t mind so much, but they don’t always respond, which is NOT okay. Sometimes they require submitters to subscribe to the journal. And the contests usually have fees of $10-25.

    I’ll stick to SF markets in future.

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Writing And Courage

Gray and white linoleum print of a fantasy creature resembling a sea horse
Linoleum print I did in 2008 (?). Meant to use it on Christmas cards, then never got around to it.
To talk about this, I need to talk about the scariest thing that ever happened to me. Bear with me.

In 1999, I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. The car behind me tapped my bumper, sending me fishtailing across several lanes, and under a trailer truck, which sheared the roof off the car. I got out of the emergency room with a lot of stitches in my scalp, but otherwise unharmed, and then had to get home to Brooklyn, which was an adventure in and of itself.

Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of it. I recall thinking this was it, and wondering how much dying would hurt, in what seems in retrospect a surprisingly calm moment.

Since then, I’ve had trouble driving. I have panic attacks on the highway and even as a passenger, trucks pulling up alongside send my heart rate up. It took me a long time to realize this was affecting my life. It took me even longer to admit to myself I had PTSD and needed to work on it. It was very weird for me to realize that I couldn’t just think my way out of a panic attack.

So this summer I’ve been driving in when volunteering in the Clarion West classroom. It’s not a bad drive, but it takes me on a highway, and across the 520 bridge, which was way outside my comfort zone at the summer’s beginning. Now it’s a lot more endurable, but still scary, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get to a point where I feel comfortable on the terrifying part of I-5. It wasn’t pleasant when I started, and it’s still not pleasant. But I pushed myself, because I didn’t want fear to make my life smaller.

By the same token, we need to not let fear circumscribe our writing. We need to write about things that obsess and confuse and frighten us to the point of nausea. We need to tell stories about the things that scare us, and what we do when we’re scared. Because this is how we confront and transform the abysmal moments in our lives. We are the laboratories in which our stories brew and bubble, and the ones distilled from our pain will be better than the ones imported from outside sources.

You can write anything in fiction. Go for it. No one knows where your life ends and the fictioneering begins, so use the material life gives you freely, gleefully, fully. Face the themes that terrify you and write your fears out without worrying about who will read them. It may not solve them, it may not make them any less scary, but at least you’re using them. And your stories will be so much the better for it.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

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To Write Short Stories, Read Short Stories

Roadside Sculpture
It's hard to pick favorites, but I did in this post.
I find that when I read short stories, more short stories of my own come to me and I believe Delany when he says that you can’t write anything better than the best stuff you’re reading. Here’s ten of my most accessible favorites, mostly speculative fiction, but with a few lit writers in there as well.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – Vonnegut is the best of the best, and I don’t just say that because he’s a fellow Hoosier. Welcome to the Monkey House is a great collection to start with and one that I read over and over in high school, but I’m also fond of Look At the Birdie, published posthumously.

Carol Emshwiller – Also amazing, also doing things so skillfully that plain language manages to become part of such a lovely construction that the grain of the words seems ornamental as well as story material. I just love Emshwiller, and getting to publish one of her short stories during my time at Fantasy Magazine was a highlight. I particularly recommend I Live With You and Report to The Men’s Club.

James Tiptree Jr. – For some of the most wonderful titles around, for some of the most subversive and interesting spec fic ever, look no further than Tiptree, aka Alice Sheldon, who shaped the field to the point where they named an award after her. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever and Brightness Falls From Air are both good starting points. (Julie Phillip’s biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, is a fascinating read that brings even more to the stories.) And the award anthologies are FULL of good stuff that shows some of the best in the field.

Philip K. Dick – Dick does ideas, and amazing ones, but he’s also a really solid writer. Start with the volume edited by Jonathan Lethem, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. Like Tiptree, this is one of the people who didn’t just subtly shape the field of spec fic but banged their name into the side of it with a sledgehammer.

Donald Barthelme is one of the writers that falls into the literary side of things, but spec fic readers that like slipstream will find him well suited to their tastes. Sixty Stories should be sitting on your shelf.

Grace Paley is also literary, but holy cow, just go buy her three slim little books of fiction (which is all we have, sadly) and read them. Enormous Changes At the Last Minute, The Little Disturbances of Man, and Later the Same Day are the titles. Having Grace at my dinner table asking for a second helping of the pumpkin cheesecake and warning us all that at some point of the meal her false teeth might fly out of her mouth and that if that happened, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to pretend it hadn’t happened, was one of the greatest moments of my time at Hopkins.

O. Henry is a classic, prolific short story writer. Some stories have aged better than others, but going through his collected works is a good use of time for a short story writer. Three things he’s good at: plot construction, pulling on the heart strings, and dialogue.

Joan Aiken did more than write some great YA fiction. She’s also got a ton of good short stories. Many are adult, but The Serial Garden, which contains all her Armitage family stories, is full of good fantasy.

Theodore Sturgeon was prolific and has done some amazing speculative stories t. The nice thing if you’re a bibliophile is that North Atlantic Press does a complete edition of his short stories (which I covet and wouldn’t mind for Christmas if any spouses named Wayne are reading this), starting with Volume I, The Ultimate Egoist.

James Thurber is another writer that I hit in high school and who I read over and over. His letters are actually one of the books that shaped my life: his good humor in the face of adversity shines in them. Flash fiction admirers should check out Fables for My Time.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

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