Hi all!
Verandah is a literary and visual art journal published in Melbourne, Australia.
2013 will mark its 28th year in print and editors are currently seeking submissions of short literature including flash fiction and poetry. There is a lot of talent here and we'd love to see contributions from the LitReactor community become part of the journal's long history. Deadlines are May 1 for art and June 1 for words.
For guidelines, check out www.deakin.edu.au/verandah
Happy writing!
Kyah Horrocks, editing team
Why is there a submission fee?
Don't worry, Brandon hates all new literary journals (See litreactor.com/columns/author-beware-new-lit-mags). One must have touched him on his "special place" when he was a child.
Nice alt account, "Alexis."
Hi Brandon,
Verandah is an independent not-for-profit publication. Submission fees are what keep it running. All staff volunteer their time. And despite how disparate my moods can be, I've yet to reach the point where I'm using that time to sprout multiple accounts to Smeagol with myself, if that's what you think is going on in this thread. And Alexis, one of its editors may be a new user to LitReactor, but Verandah is in its 28th year and is hardly a new journal!
I hope you both consider submitting something. As a writer I know that contribution fees such as our $10 charge can be annoying, but in this case it directly supports an independent print production.
Cheers guys
Ten dollars? No thanks dude.
I don't see the fee as the biggest red flag. I see the blatant typo on your home page as the biggest evidence that this is not a journal I'm excited to submit to.
A ten dollar submission fee and a contributor copy as payment. That is laziness. Charging writers to keep your publication going instead of actually hustling some journals.
Despite the fee and the typo, the biggest flag to me is this:
Don't worry, Brandon hates all new literary journals (See litreactor.com/columns/author-beware-new-lit-mags). One must have touched him on his "special place" when he was a child.
- Is this how you let your editors speak to potential writers for your journal? For the record, I'm with Brandon on this. I doubt 'Alexis' is a real person, and if she is, why isn't she noted on the site?
Seeing as I've only submitted a few things in my very short writing career (but have never had to pay anything to submit), I'm not all that versed in how common the practice of charging submission fees is. I looked through this journal's entire website, and on one of the pages, they claim that most of the premiere literary magazines and sites charge submission fees (or something to that effect) so I'd love to hear from any of you more experienced submitters out there just how common this actually is.
Despite the fee and the typo, the biggest flag to me is this:
"Don't worry, Brandon hates all new literary journals (See litreactor.com/columns/author-beware-new-lit-mags). One must have touched him on his "special place" when he was a child."
- Is this how you let your editors speak to potential writers for your journal? For the record, I'm with Brandon on this. I doubt 'Alexis' is a real person, and if she is, why isn't she noted on the site?
I think you read that wrong, you missed the comma in their response. They were addressing Alexis, not saying that Alexis was one of their editors. I had to read it twice myself, no worries...
^ Hmmm... I thought it was missing a comma after 'editors'. Oh well, regardless, I ain't payin'.
@Strange
It's out there, but definitely not the norm.
PANK charged for a while, but I don't think they are anymore. Word Riot, Cream City, Glimmer Train. None of them charge for submissions.
I don't see what makes them premiere. I've never heard of them. There isn't a preview or a contributors list anywhere.
$10 is really high. I've only paid once ($2), and this was to bump my story to the top of the slush pile and it was an optional fee. Spark also charges if you do not submit within a certain period, which I can also understand and accept.
So, basically you're telling me this Verandah thing is most likely a scam?
I don't think it's a scam. A terrible business model...probably.
But they're students, guys. Give them a lil break. It's nice that they get to do that on their campus.
Students at plenty of other universities do the same type of journal, with no fees. These guys have funding from the school and they have sponsors. Do print on demand or something.
Everyone who has posted in this thread, as well as those who will come to post, should all submit and pay the submission fee. That would be an easy way of determining whether or not it's a bunk deal. If it's a scam we would only be, so far, collectively short by one hundred dollars. big deal.
right guys?
edit
got excited. i dont know how to delete posts, or capitalize on this clumsy website.
I'm more into making money, son, not giving it away.
Hi all,
Thanks for voicing your concerns, we're not precious at Verandah, and if we're going to edit a journal as long-standing as this one we need to be aware of the impact our web presence is having with readers that are unfamiliar with the publication.
No, we're not a scam. We are an art and literary journal that goes to print once a year and comes out of the Arts faculty at Deakin University in Burwood (eastern suburb of Melbourne), Australia. An editing team is selected from final-year students of Deakin's Professional and Creative Writing stream and thus creates not only print publication opportunities for emerging Deakin writers (who naturally constitute its primary contributors), but professional editing experience as well.
Submission fees, book sales, sponsors and a small internal grant fund the journal. The fee is applicable to all contributors outside of Deakin, i.e. Deakin students submit for free. The sum of our funding is typically enough to "scrape by" without incurring a debt. As I mentioned, all the staff work for free. This doesn't even count toward our university credits. I suppose it might be possible to find a way to run the production without the fee, but this isn't the model that has been adopted in the journal's 28 year history. Local writers tend toward a willingness to support independent print publications and funnily enough, the culture here is that journals asking for a fee are perceived as having increased 'legitimacy'. Clearly, this is a barrier in reaching out beyond our local writers. I will take this experience to the next batch of editors in 2014 and perhaps they will install a new policy that is more palatable to online communities.
The website was compiled and uploaded by a third party, I can't thank you enough for pointing out the typo. We will address this as soon as possible, obviously it's unacceptable.
Perhaps the situation is different in other places, but locally a submission fee for print journals and literary competitions is quite common. If it is unusual to the point of being prohibitive, I apologise for the cultural difference there and although I hadn't anticipated it, I can certainly understand the scepticism.
As for the user named 'Alexis', this person is not affiliated with Verandah in any way. I believe user 'Brandon' was suggesting that the Alexis character was an alternate account that I was using to disparage him. This is absolutely NOT the case. My comment to Alexis was addressing her, not identifying her as an editor. The "one of its editors" new to LitReactor that I was referring to was myself. What a mess, sorry for causing confusion. Commas are powerful little things when overlooked, I will remember that.
I hope that clears things up a little. Needless to say, I won't be expecting many contributions from within this community. However, your responses have helped us address some factors that are prohibitive to Verandah's international and online appeal, so I thank you.
All the best
Kyah Horrocks, editing team.
I think if you had a list of contributors or a blurb or two, people would be more into the journal. I don't doubt your legitimacy, having been running for 28 years, but you need something more than, we're in print, we're awesome, to entice writers from overseas. How big is your circulation? Things like that.
Maybe offer a semi-recent issue for free as a PDF.
Most writers aren't going to shell out the $25 for an issue to see if they have something along your lines and then $10 to submit.
I type with an abrasive tone, but I'm really not trying to come across as an asshole.
Kyah, thank you for the response.
Just to clear something up, I know you didn't make the "Alexis" account. No worries there.
I believe the core issue with this journal is essentially you'd like us to pay to be in a publication none of us have ever heard of. Regardless of a 28 year publication history, that's a hard pill to swallow, especially when we're constantly being given various leads on publications that don't charge--or even better--pay. As I said, I don't believe this to be a scam...but paying to submit something is going to turn a lot of people off.
Thanks to everyone,
I couldn't agree more with the suggestions that have been made towards improving our online credibility. The response here has really given us an insight into how the journal is being perceived and what improvements we can make for our international market. You've given us reasons to re-evaluate our justifications for submission fees, and our website should definitely show some real evidence of our history and reputation. I have a lot of advice for the next production team and hopefully if you hear about edition 29, it will come with more appeal after integrating this kind of feedback. I can't stand productions that won't adapt and it looks like Verandah has some issues to address if we want to play nicely with the LitReactor community.
Thanks again for your perspective.
Kyah Horrocks, scam artist editing team
These guys are legit, I've seen them around, even thought of submitting. BUT even with a growing trend of charging $1-3 for submissions, even some journals charging a MANDATORY fee to submit, I've never heard of a $10 fee to submit a short story, when you don't pay anything in return. It's not just you guys, Kyah, I wouldn't pay a mandatory $3 fee to ANYONE. I have paid $10 to submit to a few contests, such as BOMB (a very well known magazine) but I got a subscription AND the prizes were HUGE (lots of them, and big money). Maybe things are different down under, and maybe a student run journal has to raise it's money in different ways, but I think you'll find a LOT of resistance to this here at LR and other places. MAYBE if the fee was $1-3 and there was payment of the stories. MAYBE. Hell, if any of you LR guys have the spare cash, a great story, and dig the aesthetic (the design IS pretty cool) take a shot. I mean, what's $10? The price of a movie? Lunch? A pint or two at the local pub? Your call. But I won't be spending $10 to submit. Best of luck, Kyah.
Hello again everyone,
After nine months in production, edition 28 of Verandah is ready for launch at this years Melbourne Writers Festival. For anyone who may find themselves down under this month, I'm posting here an invite to our launch event should you be interested in dropping by. (One hour isn't an extensive event I know, but in accordance with Australian law, there are several hundred pubs within stumbling distance.)
There is a strong chance that next year, the new editing team will be negotiating an arrangement with a third party to host e-versions of our latest editions online. This will mean that If we choose to appeal to LitReactor for submissions again, there will a better chance for this community to get a feel for our content and to gain a little confidence in the legitimacy of our publication.
As our funding tends to trickle in throughout the year from various sources, including submission fees, we were unable to confidently promote offers of prize money when we first began advertising for submissions. I'm happy to report however, that this year we were able to allocate $150 cash prizes to each winner of the poetry (1) literature (2) art (2) and editor's choice awards. Each featured contributor will also receive a copy of the journal itself and a select novel as an added reward.
Thank you all once more for the lessons we learned in this time around. With your help, we're sure that future editors of Verandah will employ a better strategy in appealing to the talent within online communities such as this one.
Regards,
Kyah, Hayley, Jonothan, Leizl and Lauren,
V28 Editing Team
Just joined, and I'm sure this thread has long gone the wasy of the dodo, but I just want to agree that $10 is far too high of an investment for submitting a short story that might not even get published. That said, I would like to say that I really enjoy your journal's visual asthetic. Quite nice. Would love to check out an online version to get a feel for the type of fiction you tend to publish.
Hi Benjamin,
We are definitely hoping to address the key concerns of submission fees and the availability of online content. There will be a fresh batch of editors for edition 29 and we will be passing on our recommendations to them. There is a chance we may enter into a partnership with a certain third party who has expressed interest in hosting e-versions of the journal. With a bit of careful budgeting and a lot of luck we may be able to reduce if not eliminate submissions fees, especially if next year there is a tighter focus on fundraising. Sadly, with recent government cuts to university funding, making positive changes to both of these issues may end up being quite a difficult task for new team. Fingers crossed.
Thanks for the compliment about our aesthetic. We were fortunate to have a great designer this year (also an unpaid student) and some really fantastic art submissions to choose from for the cover. The look of next year's journal as well as what kind of content will appeal to the editors is likely to be completely different, and Iguess that's one of the curious and wonderful things about this publication.
Thanks for the feedback! And stay tuned for developments, if you're interested in liking our page we're at https://www.facebook.com/verandahjournal and on twitter @verandahjournal
Kyah
A lot
A lot of placs have fees. Either you do it or not. the magazines have to make some money too. I don't mind paying a little bit now, until I get Awesome.
Sadly, with recent government cuts to university funding...
It's a wonderful time to be an Australian student, is it not?
"sigh"
EDIT: actually, I take that back... we still have it amazingly good here, I'm a little embarrassed for complaining.
I don't have a problem with a small, optional fee. But when it's a $10 MANDATORY fee, and they don't pay anything in return, that's where I get hung up. The money needs to funnel back to the author, IMO. Not the other way around.
^^^
What Richard said.
