Notes from the slush pile.
What submission software really costs, who is holding your writers' manuscripts, and what it takes to keep an archive that outlives the company you rented it from. Written for editors, by one.
Where will this year's submissions be in twenty years?
Every magazine becomes an archive whether it planned to or not. An export is not an archive, platforms do go away, and nobody loses twenty years of records on purpose. They just stop paying.
What Submittable actually costs a small literary magazine
The published price, the $0.99-plus-5% on every paid submission, and the year-end arithmetic for a magazine running one fee-reading period and one contest. Screenshotted on the day it was written.
Free Submittable alternatives for literary magazines
What else exists and what each one charges, why a free tier and free software are not the same animal, and the honest list of what self-hosting asks of you in return.
Own your submissions
Writers trust you with unpublished work, and most magazines keep it in a room they rent by the month. On custody, vendor drift, and software you are allowed to read.
Your submissions page belongs on your own domain
The call for submissions is the most-linked page a magazine has. If it points at a platform, every share, listing, and bookmark is building somebody else's website.
It is your software. Change it.
Tiered rejections, a scoring scale your readers will actually use, wording you can live with, and a database you can finally ask questions of.
Run your own submissions desk.
Green Submissions is free, self-hosted software for literary magazines. The slush pile, blind reading, contests and fees, revisions, and contributors, all on your own server.