Hello everyone!
When we launched Auroras & Blossoms, we knew that things would not run smoothly all the time. We expected criticisms and problems, like any other publication. Unfortunately, the last few months have been very rough, and we have been forced to make an important decision.
Today, we would like to tell you about it.
During the second half of 2020, we started receiving an increasing number of irrelevant and careless submissions. All of them came from artists opting for our free route offer (for one piece), and who had not read any of our detailed FAQ / submission guidelines.
Slowly but surely, these submissions began overwhelming both our e-mail inbox and our heads too, making it incredibly difficult for us to spend time reviewing paid submissions. We ended up being faced with a major backlog and numerous complaints (even threats!) from the artists submitting via the free route, who did not seem to understand the concept of a priority listing (for the people who paid a fee) and how we run a magazine.
Conversely, the paid submissions we received were usually a breeze to read and easy to accept. Their authors were professional, respectful, and they often had a healthy pride in their work.
As a result of this, in August we made the decision to drop the free route altogether (except for 13-16 year-old artists) and settled for a fee of $6 per piece. Many artists, including those who had opted for the free route before, were up in arms about this, accusing us of trying to steal their money and get rich off of their backs. Others completely understood and supported us 100%. Their support continues to this day and we are very grateful for it.
We would like to make it very clear that we do not enjoy charging a submission fee. We would love to be able to publish an artist’s work for free. Unfortunately, a magazine does not run itself. It is actually a costly endeavour both in time and money for the people involved in its production. You need dedication and patience to make it work, just like you would for any other serious business.
Actually, only a few magazines make enough money to pay both staff and contributors. The main reason for this is that they have been around for a long time (they have a household name or established presence) or they have sponsors whose financial support helps offset their bills/ongoing costs.
We do not have sponsors. Our only sources of revenue are submission fees, donations, and book / magazine issue sales. Furthermore, we actually pay ongoing royalties per piece to artists who are featured in our issues and anthologies. You will not find this often in the industry, particularly when it comes to online magazines / journals.
What Your Submission Fee Covers
To those who equate paying a small fee for the chance to be published in a magazine or anthology (and receive ongoing royalties in the process) to vanity publishing, here is our answer:
If you can do all of the same things that we do for only $6, please let us know, as we would love to hire you! Publishing means: formatting, proofreading / editing, cover design, video trailers, uploading to Amazon and other platforms, and regular marketing / promotional work.
When you pay the submission fee for your pieces, donate to us, or purchase a copy of our books / magazine issues, you help compensate us for the huge amount of time we spend running Auroras & Blossoms.
NB: Paypal and Stripe keep a fee for each donation or fee payment you send to us. The same goes for Amazon, Draft2Digital, and other online bookstores where we sell our books. So we actually do not receive the whole amount you send us!
The number of hours we spend running Auroras & Blossoms
Every day:
- Promotional material creation – 30 minutes
- Promotional activities – 30 minutes
- Social media posts and interactions – 1 hour
- Blog posts – 1 hour
- Emails – 2 hours
- Research – 2 hours
- Brainstorming sessions – 20-30 minutes
- Website updates – 20-30 minutes
- PoArtMo Collective – 30 minutes
Per project:
- Your submissions – 30 minutes to 2 hours / entry
- Writing of books and guides – 30 hours (minimum) / project
- Formatting of magazine issues, anthologies and other books – 15-20 hours (minimum) / release
- Proofreading / Editing of magazine issues, anthologies and other books – 15-20 hours (minimum) / release
- Cover design – 5 hours (minimum) / release
- Emails to selected artists – 3 hours / release
- Preparation / Running of the PoArtMo Show – 5 hours (minimum) / show
- Video creation – 5 hours (minimum) / video
The money running Auroras & Blossoms costs
- Domain name – US$20 / year
- Hosting – US$120 / year
- Advertising – US$300 / year
- Streamyard – US$96 / year
- Animoto – US$360 / year
- Miscellaneous promotional costs – US$150 / year
NB. This running cost list above does not even include all of the countless hours that the two of us spend on the magazine and Auroras & Blossoms in general. This is not a salaried position for either of us!
If you ask other magazine editors about their own costs, they may share much higher numbers. We are able to keep ours quite low because of the following:
- Cendrine has a long experience in marketing and using WordPress. She also designs our covers and promotional materials, creates our video trailers, updates our website, and formats / uploads our magazine issues and anthologies to Draft2Digital, our ebook distributor.
- David proofreads our issues and anthologies, involves himself in editing and contributing process to projects, works as the PR expert of the duo, and has a knack for efficient research/niche promotion.
- We do not use Submittable or similar services to deal with submissions. While a majority of magazines rely on them, their rates are way too high for us. Hubspot for this reason has served us well up until this point.
Our Revenue in 2020
$360. Yes, you read it right: $360. (Actually, $355, but we wanted to boast a little bit. ;-))
Now, our goal is not for you to take pity on us and shower us with donations (even though they are truly appreciated). We do not personally gauge our success on how much money we make from our magazine. We just want to be transparent as possible with you and publish the best content from you that we possibly can. We also believe that education goes a long way. Many of you have never run a magazine or publication, so you cannot know what really happens behind the scenes, and how much time, work and money are involved.
We love what we do and that is why we continue to do it with passion and professionalism. But we are sure that you now understand that we cannot support you, if we do not take care of the needs of the magazine first and this also means supporting us too. Without financial support and our charging a small minimum submission fee, we would no longer be able to cover our costs and continue to run Auroras & Blossoms.
Our Stance on Simultaneous Submissions
We know that simultaneous submissions are standard practices in the online magazine/journal industry. Unfortunately, we are not a standard platform/magazine, we are actually an exclusive digital content provider.
Every submission we receive takes us between thirty minutes and a couple of hours to review/discuss. This is time we cannot spend on other things, including other submissions. The more entries we receive, the heavier the workload. This means often having to work well into the weekends and late at night.
This, in itself, is fine of course. The real issue is when you withdraw your work because it has been accepted elsewhere. It means that our time was wasted.
What is even worse is when artists do not respond to our emails and suddenly decide to withdraw their submissions as soon as the issue or anthology is ready for publication. It has happened to us on more than one occasion.
That is the reason why we do not accept simultaneous submissions. Furthermore, no amount of pressure will get us to change this decision.
Thank you for reading us! We hope that this message will give you a greater appreciation and understanding of the way a magazine is run, along with how and why we make the decisions that we do. They are all for the benefit of the artists that we publish, plain and simple.
Happy creating!
Cendrine & David
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