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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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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

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Maunderings About Rewriting a Novel

Picture of Cat Rambo with a dragon on her shoulder
The human associated with this fine dragon is Goldeen Ogawa (http://www.goldeenogawa.com/).
So I’m working on this novel. If you’re friend or family, you may know something about it, or even have read one of the many, many earlier drafts.

And I’m really happy with it, but holy cow, is it hard to rewrite a novel. Because you’ve got to manage it all in your head while working with smaller parts of it.

I was trying to think of a comparison to make to Wayne, who is a software developer. And actually, it’s a lot like working on a large program with pretty of submodules and pieces, because when you change one section you need to figure out how it affects all the other pieces. And there’s repeated objects, or other things, and I think a little of those like global variables, so to have to make sure they’re declared before you can start using them. (As you can tell, I spent some procrastination time on thinking this out.)

Something I’m doing, which is probably rather insane of me, is that I transferred the book, which was in a Word doc, back into Scrivener. That’s because I have been severely reordering the scenes. I printed it all out, and went through that hardcopy with pen marking up some stuff and shuffling it around until it was all in the order I wanted it in.

Part of that is the process for dealing with what I’m comparing to global variables. That’s a thing that gets referenced more than once over the course of the book. Because you want it set up right the first time it appears and then for details to unfold about it in an order that makes sense and keeps building on the thing.


For instance: Bella has five Fairies, hummingbird-sized, living in the pine tree outside her window. She’s tamed them with table scraps and candies, and listened to them enough to understand their rudimentary language and call them by the names they call themselves:

Where another might have named them, I’ve listened long enough to know the names they have for themselves: Dust and Yellowhair, and their offspring, Finch and Flutter and Wall. They shelter in the evergreen, build nests of scraps of paper and rags. In this cold, they wrap bits of cloth around themselves in mimicry of clothing.

They like candy the best, but meat second to that, the fresher and bloodier the better. They scorn vegetables or breads, though they will take fruit, when it is at its ripest, just before it spoils.

They trust me.

Any mention of the Fairies that uses their names needs to come after this passage, which establishes. Later on, we find out one is getting picked on by its fellows:

Yellow-hair hangs in the air, watching me. But it’s not till I step back from the sill that she advances, dives to seize a candy, a ball of amber sugar as big as her head. As though she’s emboldened them, the rest come in turn. I try to see which of them might be looking more bedraggled than the others, but I can see little difference.

Jolietta kept chickens. There you’d see it. One more miserable than the rest, pecked and sat upon, with ragged bald patches. Animals have no patience for the weak, nor do Beasts. Is one of the Fairies ailing, perhaps? It seems to me there are fewer than usual. When they’ve taken their candies, I go back to the window, lean out despite the cold wind, and peer into the boughs. There, that little shape, is that a huddled Fairy? Snowflakes whirl, obscuring the sight.

That in turn builds this moment:

I go to the window and look into the whirling snow. There’s a limp little form in the corner of the window. Wind and snow greet me when I slide the window up, but I manage to gather the half-frozen little Fairy. Finch.

He’s fought with his fellows. They must have tried to drive him away.

There’s more further on down the chain, but I think that’s enough spoilering for one blog post. But you see my point: set up an object (or person, or place, or concept, or whatever) and then build with it. As part of my reordering, I’ve been making sure that all happens in the right order, and that’s let me trim out some repetitious bits as well.

The book was, at one point, chockful of different POVs, and I was (somewhat reluctantly) persuaded to pare that down. It was the right choice, though, because it made me focus on the two most important characters, Bella and Teo. I wanted to make them very distinct from each other, so I switched Bella’s POV from third person attached past tense to first person present tense. Holy CRAP did that make her come alive and let me take a character who had been unsympathetic before into one that you can (I think) really enjoy and love even when she’s at her most full of braggadocio and self-absorption.

I was sad to lose a couple of POVs, particularly three which had a nice love triangle going on, but they’ve been set aside to go into the second book (this is intended to be a trilogy). But now I’m going back to that rewrite after this short break for air, so wish me luck.

I still don’t know what the heck the title is, really. And I’m not so sure about my main character’s name.

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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Retreat, Day 21

IMG_6608Feeling a bit more caught up, some solid word count today. If I can bank a little more tonight, I’ll give myself a treat tomorrow and go down to check out the Santa Cruz boardwalk.

Today’s wordcount: 5102
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 119160
Total word count for the week so far (day 2): 10976
Total word count for this retreat: 57637
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, Bloodwarm Rain, “Blue Train Blues”
Works finished on this retreat: “California Ghosts,” “My Name is Scrooge,” “Blue Train Blues.”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 45 minutes

From Blue Train Blues, completed today in first draft form:

The next obstacle presented itself a few miles further on. Fog covered the road, and the car swam in and out of it, a submerged salmon leaping through foamy water, curls and tendrils swirling in its wake. My lord drove slower, but barely, and more than once we swerved to avoid an incautious cow or deer. I tried not to think of how many things stood too low to be spotted through the fog.

We ascended to a hilltop and saw a basin of fog in front of us, an immense white bowl. I started to say something about the odd flapping noise that was just starting to creep up on my consciousness but before I could begin, my lord shoved me sideways, then rolled in the opposite direction himself. A massive claw flashed in the space between us and rasped against the metal before the dragon swooped back upward.

“Hold tight.” We leaped down the hill and into the fog.

My lord steered with face tense, watching the road flash by mere feet from our front wheels, not slowing. Overhead we heard the flapping of the wings.

Then the hoot of a train, off to the right, somewhat ahead.

“What are you thinking, sir?” I asked. “That’s not the Blue Train. It’s the train to the western coast.”

“I know,” he said. “But the crossing is up ahead, I can hear it.”

“But not see it.” Fog thickened and lessened around us; sometimes I could see his resolute face, other times he was lost to me. Overhead those wings flapped, and sometimes fire coiled, once a great wash of it directly overhead accompanied by a foul, sulfurous stench. My cap had blown off my head many miles ago, and I felt the hairs atop my head singe and vanish.

“Hold tight!” my lord yelled over the roaring of the wind and if he added anything to that, it was lost in the howl of the train and the sudden flap of wings and then somehow we were soaring through space just ahead of the train, so close I could count every bar in the cowcatcher in front of it and there was a vast scream and crash as the dragon and the train collided, and then a whoosh of flame, exploding outside, that cleared the world of mist and revealed chaos.

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