Running a literary journal is labour of love.
You think it’s going to be easy-peasy when you start it up.
People submit their work. You read. You choose the vignettes you want to
publish. You publish them.
Four steps. Sounds simple, right?
It’s not, really. But it’s certainly rewarding, and somehow,
the more Vine Leaves grows, and the
busier we get, the more hyped about it we become. Every time we send an
acceptance letter out, it’s like a drug high. But it lasts so much longer, and
we never experience that period of “coming down.”
Today, I thought I’d give you a glimpse into our world. Some
things might get a little technical, but it doesn’t matter. I want you to see
how this all works, so that when you submit your writing to a magazine, you can
do so with a bit more assurance that it’s not just going into some random slush
pile that barely sees the light of day. There’s a lot of work involved, and we
care about you.
I’ll also break down the
costs, so you can see for yourself, that any money we make is like giving water
to a man stranded in the desert. Though we’re not suffering. So maybe that
analogy doesn’t quite work. Let’s try this: It’s like giving water to a man
stranded in the desert, though he’s still able to survive on the water of a
little oasis called “We Love Our Job.” There ... that’s better.
Okay, this post is long. So if you’re out of time, maybe
you’d like to bookmark it, because it’s worth coming back to when you do have
time. Even if to read in short bursts.
First, let me tell you that Vine Leaves Literary Journal has just surpassed its second year
anniversary. We’re still going strong and have every intention of getting
bigger, bolder, and better every year. We want to last. A long time.
A few facts before I get into the nitty-gritty:
- We pay contributors for their work.
- The only thing we ask a submission fee for is a contest—but
this is because we need to earn enough money to match the value of the prize. Most
of the time we don’t even do that and have to dig into our own pockets, but
that’s okay and to be expected.
- The anthology isn’t free. But it’s a paperback. It costs
money to make, print and ship. It’s also in COLOUR, and therefore more
expensive to produce. The prices we have set, however, we believe are very reasonable,
and do not actually earn us much of a profit, as you will see below.
- All staff are volunteers.
- We receive, on average, 400 submissions every reading period.
- Every quarter, Dawn and I spend about 50+ hours each
considering the shortlist of submissions, an extra 30+ hours designing the
journal, and another 20+ hours taking care of administrative tasks. We also
have two readers and an assistant editor who spend time reading submissions and
doing editorial tasks. Let’s add on another 20+ hours to each of their input.
That’s a total of 210+ hours every three months spent keeping Vine Leaves alive. All combined, that’s
a whole month of full-time work. We wouldn’t put in this amount of time without
pay if we didn’t love it. Trust me.
Without further ado, let me give you a breakdown of some of the
costs and tasks involved in running Vine
Leaves. The reason I’m giving up all this information is because we want
you to see that we’re willing to do the very best we possibly can to maintain a
venue that showcases and celebrates excellent literature and art.
The Website
Cost to date: $360.
This includes the annual costs of the domain name, and the use of Weebly, our
webhosting service.
Tasks: Initial
design and creation. Then, regular updates with every new issue, new editor,
new feature, new cover art, new links, new etc,. We want to make sure that the
information on the website is always comprehensive and up-to-date. There’s
nothing worse than having a question and not having the answer at the place it
should be. We log into it at least once a day to make a change, or a tweak, or
to update something. We spend about five to ten minutes on the website, three
to four times a week. That time triples when we have a new issue coming out.
Cost to date: $480.
Call for submissions adverts.
Tasks: These are
online avenues where we advertise
all call for submissions, and any contests we
may have running. There’s no use running a literary journal if there’s nowhere
people can find out about you. These ads are written, sent to the appropriate
people, and paid for, all on particular scheduled dates.
Submishmash & The
Online Journal
Cost to date: $120.
Submishmash membership fees.
Tasks:
Submishmash is a service provided to literary magazines to make receiving,
reading, and accepting/declining submissions easier to tackle. But that doesn’t
mean there is no work involved in setting it up. Every submission period we rewrite
the automatic responses: Thank you for your submission; Default Decline;
Default Accept; Default Made Our Shortlist. We also make sure these are done on
a particular date so that people who start submitting work for a new reading
period do not receive an email thanking them for submitting to an issue that
has already been published.
In addition, once submissions have been read, we:
- accept all the submissions we want to publish.
- decline all the submissions that made our shortlist, but
didn’t make it in, with a personal rejection.
- decline all the submissions we don’t want to publish, and
send constructive feedback to at least 20% of them. (This is important to us as
part of our mandate to help writers.)
- extract all the accepted pieces and compile them into the
manuscript which will become the new issue.
- extract all the author bios, format them, and post them to
the website.
- extract all the PayPal addresses, compile them into a
separate document so we know who to pay once the issue has gone live.
- archive all submissions, so they don’t get in the way of
any new submissions coming in.
- design the journal and upload it to the website.
- upload all the issue’s art/photography to our Vine Leaves Facebook page.
- write and send out a newsletter announcing the new issue
and any other information we want to relay.
- pimp the issue on social media.
The Annual Anthology
Cost to date: $882 (this does not yet reflect all the costs for this year, however).
Typesetting and interior design (I just don’t have time to do this myself,
though I would if I could), Lightning Source title set-up fees, ISBNs, printing
costs, galleys, postage and handling, sample copies for reviewers, giveaway
copies for promotion.
Tasks: Dawn and I
read through all four of the year’s issues and choose our favourites, which is
not an easy task considering we published them online in the first place
because they were ALL our favourites. Narrowing it down to the best of the best
is time consuming, and requires repetitive reading and discussion of choices.
But it’s totally worth it. It always brings a smile to our faces reading all
the pieces again, and it’s certainly a great reminder about why we do this.
This is how it all goes down:
- Compile a manuscript, proofread it.
- Send manuscript and photography to designer with
house-style instructions and an idea of our “vision” for its appearance.
- Calculate retail costs, input the data into Thorpe-Bowker,
and Lightning Source.
- Edit the designed first proofs, and compile the contents
page, send edits back to the designer.
- Create a page for the anthology on the website.
- Compile a list of emails for all the anthology contributors
and email them to let them know that they’ve made it in.
- Set up a public pre-order system and add it to the website.
- Set up a deep author discount link and send it to the
contributors. (We can’t afford to give copies away to each contributor at this
time but we hope to be able to do this in the future.)
- Send second proofs (PDF) to contributors to check we have
spelled their names correctly and nothing has gone awry with their work.
- Input any changes that the contributors spot.
- Give it one last proofread, put changes through, and send
to designer.
- Upload the interior and cover to Lighting Source, hit
submit, and wait for them to approve it.
- Once LS approves it, we order a print proof, and if it's all ok, we approve it so that LS can start
distributing to retailers, if not we go through the last two points again.
- Input all pre-orders into the Lightning Source system so
they can be shipped to all who purchase directly through our website. These
have to be done one by one. It’s quite the task!
Contest Prizes
Cost to date: Last
year we awarded a spot at the Homeric Writers’ Retreat & Workshop that was
worth 1550 Euro. Next year we’re giving away $500 + publication for a vignette
collection. This contest will end up costing us anywhere between $700-$1000.
You can’t have a contest without an awesome incentive to enter, right? If it’s
not appealing to us, it’s not going to be appealing to submitters, so we do the
best we can to make the prize the best possible within our means.
Tasks: Setting up
the contest, acquiring judges, sending out adverts, reading—lots of reading,
discussing—lots of discussing. We have to be totally sure of our choices, and
we don’t just want to skim people’s work. They have paid good money to enter the
contest. We give it the attention it deserves. Then comes the tasks involved
after we’ve announced a winner (which is a task in itself) and will follow much
of the same pattern as what is done for the anthology.
Facebook Ads
Cost to date: $190.
Tasks: Inputting
the necessary information into Facebook for anything we feel could do with a
little more exposure. Fiddly, and a little time consuming, but worth it, even
if just to get our writers a little more attention than usual.
Contributor Fees
Cost to date: $614.
We pay $5 USD to each author whose work we publish. This adds up to about 125 -
150 every quarter. From next year we will be paying in Euro as it makes more
sense for me being in Greece. Though, it will still be the equivalent of $5
USD.
Tasks: Gathering authors’
PayPal emails and depositing their cash ... ONE BY ONE. Yes, it takes time.
Quite a bit, actually. But I like to imagine the tiny thrill at the other end.
It’s always nice to be paid for your writing, even if it is just the cost of a
coffee.
The Pushcart Prize
Cost to date: 2 x standard postage to New York.
Tasks: The Pushcart Prize is for little magazine and small book press editors (print or online). Come November, we read through the "best of" anthology. Again. And choose our Top SIX pieces of work. This is even harder than choosing for the anthology! But what a great way to show appreciation for an author's work, huh?
TOTAL PROFIT TO DATE FROM
CONTEST FEES, ANTHOLOGY SALES, AND DONATIONS: $950.
As you can see we haven’t made much. We aren’t even close to
breaking even. But we hope to change that soon. Though really, any money we
make will just go straight back into the journal. And one day we hope to pay
contributors professional rates. And hopefully our volunteer editors and book
reviewers as well.
Miscellaneous
Costs: Well-spent time.
Tasks: Emails,
emails, emails, emails, emails, coffee, emails, questions, emails, emails,
praise, thank yous, THANK YOUS, emails, coffee ... ACCOMPLISHMENT ... lots of
it, smiles, laughs, emails, vignettes .... and there is: A HUGE LOVE OF THE WRITTEN WORD.
We love our job. We love our writers. We love our
supporters. To date we have published the works of almost 350 authors and
artists. THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY. Can you believe it? We are so proud of that.
And we love the work of each and every single one of them.
If you’re a fan of Vine Leaves, and feel like offering some water to the man
stranded in the desert, you can do so HERE. Any amount, big or small,
would be very much appreciated! Alternatively, you could purchase our 2013 annual anthology, and get some great literature and art to boot!
So how did this all way up with your expectations? Did you
have any idea that this amount of work went into running a literary journal?
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