Paying for Online Submissions

The other day I got an email from Carve magazine, who've announced they're now accepting online submissions again. The catch? They're charging $2 per submission, to cover the magazine's cost of printing and sorting the submission.

Catch? It's not a catch. It's fabulous! I like making email submissions. It's the easiest way for me to submit and up until now it's meant I don't get stung by postal charges.

But postal charges are not *really* the issue with submissions. It's the time it takes to print, package and post something that costs me.

I'm busy. I work crazy hours and try to fit my writing into the cracks. So if I have to submit something to a country other than the UK, I can't just slap a few stamps on an envelope and drop it in the post after work - I have to go into a post office *during work hours*, get my envelope weighed, then pay whatever I'm asked.

This means I mostly just don't get around to submitting anything. Which of course means I don't get much published. Which of course makes me feel like less of a writer. Which of course makes me write less...blah blah blah.

But give me the chance to send a few online submissions at any time of the day or night for the reasonable sum of $2 or €2, and I'll submit!

I know magazines and journals hate email/online submissions. They get swamped by multiple submissions and a huge amount of crap writing - email makes it too easy. But start charging $2 a submission, and I think not only will you reduce the 'crap' and multiple submissions, you'll actually make a few cents off every single submission you receive. I can't see how any mag or journal making money from receiving, opening and recycling piles of hard copy manuscripts.

And then there's the issue of carbon emissions. Surely it's more eco-friendly to send a digital copy of a submission direct to an office, where it can perhaps assessed even before print-out...)?

I love Irish literary mag the Stinging Fly. But they only accept postal submissions. It'd be great if they'd consider an easy-peasy pay per online submissions policy!