Statement of Reading Fees and Transparency
Five South charges a nominal submission reading fee for many important reasons:
1. Everyone on staff at Five South is a volunteer and donates upwards of five or more hours per week. Editors will often triple this time during issue production. Although we're a primarily digital publication, Five South is a complicated journal with many moving parts and requires the same dedication and infrastructure as any magazine in book stores.
2. Our yearly overhead ranges between three to five thousand dollars, not taking into account the initial set up fees we accrued in 2020, nor any applicable state and federal taxes.
3. We do not use a subscription-based model. General issues, The Weekly, and Non-Fiction are free to read.
4. We are not a part of the non-profit system and therefore ineligible to win grants or financial awards.
5. There are no free-to-apply grants or awards (that we know of) for journals outside the non-profit system. Further, we could not afford a grant writer, even if we wanted one. It is common for the same upper-tier journals to win the same grants every year. It's a game we can't win, so we don't play. We'd much rather keep our costs down and publish pieces we feel connected to and want to share with the world.
6. Five South believes in the power of literature to transform lives on both sides of the submission process. Authors get publishing credits and honorariums to validate their work. Readers get something wonderful to read. Our editors and screeners get job experience, community, and a sense of purpose; they get to actively participate in the production process. While we happily donate our time to Five South, we cannot avoid that operating a literary journal will always cost more than it makes.
It's helpful to look at our fees as a small donation that contributes to the longevity and spirit of independent publishing.
We understand your submission costs can add up. Five South is dedicated to making this process accessible for everyone, so if you're struggling with a true financial hardship, we will gladly waive the reading fee. Please email editor@fivesouth.net for a direct and private link to bypass the payment screen. We also offer FREE submission windows multiple times per year. Sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter to be notified when they happen.
Thank you for reading and being a part of The Five South community.