Avoiding scams and bad deals

The old rule from the writing world still holds: money flows toward the writer. A publisher pays you for the right to print your story. When the money starts flowing the other way, slow down and read everything.

Fees that are normal, and fees that aren't

Some respected literary journals charge a small online reading fee and keep a free route open. In the directory: Ploughshares charges $3.75 online and nothing by mail or for subscribers; The Southern Review $4; The Iowa Review $4 online, free for subscribers; AGNI $3 online, free on paper. Those fees pay for the submission software and readers. They are marked on every listing, and the "No fee" filter hides them.

Paying to be published is different. Be wary of any of these:

A "publishing fee", "editing fee" or "marketing package" after your story is accepted.
An anthology that accepts every story and then asks you to buy copies.
A request to pay for a critique before the editor will consider the story.
Pay described only as "exposure", "contributor copies" or a share of future royalties, while the market still asks for first rights.

Judging a contest before you pay to enter

Entry fees are common in contests and are not a scam by themselves. Fish charges €24 for a €3,000 first prize; Bridport £15 for £5,000. Some good contests are free: Writers of the Future and the Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers charge nothing. Before you pay, check:

The prize against the fee. A $25 fee for a $100 prize, with no limit on entries, mostly funds the organizer.
Who judges. Named judges with their own publications are a good sign. "Our editors" with no names is not.
Past winners. Look them up. A contest that has run for years has a list, and you can check that the winners were published.
What happens to entries that don't win. Read the rules for rights. A contest should take rights in the winning stories only, and only for a limited time. Bridport, for example, takes a non-exclusive license to publish winners and leaves copyright with the author.
Whether the deadline keeps moving. Repeated extensions often mean too few paying entries.

Contract terms to question

"All rights" or no end date. A short story sale normally licenses first publication and some non-exclusive rights. Reversion should be stated, often after a few months to a year.
Copyright transfer. You should keep the copyright. The Kenyon Review and The People's Friend, for example, say so on their guidelines pages.
No payment date. The contract should say how much, how and when: on acceptance, on publication or within a set number of days.
Rights you didn't expect. Film, translation or merchandise rights, or permission to use your story to train AI software, should be named and paid for if they are included at all.
No way out if the market folds. Look for a clause that returns your rights if the story isn't published within a set time.

Checking a market you don't know

Read an issue. A real magazine has stories, an archive and named editors.
Look for the pay rate on their own page. If it isn't there, it may not exist. The directory only lists markets whose page states a rate.
Search the market's name with words like "payment" or "complaint" to see what writers say.
Be wary of unsolicited invitations. Legitimate editors rarely email strangers to say their story was "selected" for a book that costs money.

If you find a problem with a market listed here, tell us. We recheck the page and update or remove the listing.