2024 Poetry Book Publishing: Data, Deadlines, and a Tool for Your Submissions

What makes a submission fee fair? Who is excluded, and how often?

Hello, poets—I’m here with the big update on poetry book publishers. This yearly kickoff-style post is a diversion from the usual monthly fare, but 2024 is not really a “fresh start” kind of new year for me, and I know it’s not for many of you. Once again, in the face of violence and the ongoing murders of Palestinian poets and writers and artists and journalists and their families and and and, I want to ask: How’s your heart? Once again I’ll get messages asking me not to use the word genocide or to not get into “politics,” and once again, I’ll wonder what it is we’re supposed to be doing here with our poetry, if not telling the truth and refusing to turn away. A recent reading for the Edward Said Libraries re-steadied me in this, and I wanted to share it here too.

As for this year’s poetry publishing update, here’s what you’ll find:

• The list of 2024 poetry book submission periods, as a spreadsheet to track your own submissions.

• Questions raised by the data this year, with invitations for poets, publishers, contest judges and readers, and funders.

• Data and insights on submission fees, with more nuance on the top chargers.

• What if we submit in solidarity with poets who are excluded by this system? I’ve gone deeper with accessibility data this year, and I want to know what you think.

This is the sixth year of this project. It began as a simple tool to track submissions for my first book, which came out last year. In 2018, I started sharing the spreadsheet with fellow poets, and the project grew organically from there. It now reaches over 3,500 writers and tracks almost 200 reading periods.

Your support means a lot as I do this work. If you have the means and want to help this project keep going, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Half of paid subscription support goes to a fund to help poets cover book submission fees. Half goes to my work to research, update, and create new resources.

As always, please don’t hoard the goods. Let’s abolish gatekeeping this year. Share this with other writers. Send it to a poet whose book you want to read someday.

If you know of updates or new reading periods, please get in touch. Ideally with a comment here so other folks can read what you shared. I’m just one imperfect person doing this research, and this is a collective resource that ultimately belongs to all of us.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and bringing your work into the world—

Emily Stoddard

2024 Poetry Book Publishing Spreadsheet

I track contests and reading periods for full-length poetry books. As of January 2024, there are 184 opportunities on the list. That’s 184 different reading periods, not presses. Some presses appear multiple times, because they have multiple submission periods.

Every January, I go line by line, one website at a time, to update the list. It’s a spreadsheet on Google you can copy and customize to track your own submissions:

This is up-to-date as of January 3, 2024 and will be updated throughout the year. The spreadsheet is sorted by date, and the ongoing (i.e., no deadline) reading periods appear at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

There are a number of reading periods that are on hiatus or have deadlines yet to be announced for 2024. Those appear with “TBA” at the very end of the spreadsheet.

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Trends & Questions

The average submission fee appears lower—so far—this year.

It was $24 in 2023, and it’s $23 as of today. But a good chunk of reading periods haven’t updated their 2024 guidelines yet. Based on past trends, there will likely be some fee increases later in the year.

Which publishers actually practice equity?

If a press has made promises about equity and inclusion, do those promises show up in their submission practices? As a poet, if these are values of yours, this is one of the easiest filters for deciding where to submit. For instance, if a press’ fee is above average and they offer no fee support, you may decide to share your work with more inclusive presses.

What makes a submission fee fair?

I’m curious how this data helps us have a more specific conversation about what a fair exchange is, between poets and publishers. Each year I try to fill out and parse the data a little more, so you can know what to expect at each place you might submit.

For example, thirty reading periods charge a fee of $30 or more. And only six of those practice accessibility by offering fee support of some kind. With their higher fees, do those reading periods offer anything more in terms of compensation, author copies, etc.? In some cases, yes. In many cases, no.

How many hours should a poet have to work to submit?

A different angle on fair exchange: If you live in Michigan like I do and make minimum wage ($10.33 per hour), you’d have to work about three hours (depending on taxes) to afford just one submission at the average fee.

Many groups hold power in this system. What will you do with yours?

• What if contest judges—often more established writers with more influence—are our best advocates here? What if they only agree to read/judge on the condition that it’s free to submit or the press offers fee support? (And fee support can mean many things. I’ve got more examples for you this year.)

• What if publishers use this data to assess how their fees compare to their peers—and make changes as needed to be more fair? I’m grateful to publishers who already do this, and I hope more will use the project this way in 2024.

• What if funders use this data to evaluate how/if potential grantees are delivering on their promises of diversity, equity, and inclusion? I shared an example of this in the 2023 update.

• What if we refuse, as poets in solidarity, to submit to reading periods that are inaccessible? For example, the National Poetry Series is a dream for many, but the fact is, it’s the least accessible reading period on the list. More on that below.

Submission Fees in 2024

About 77% (142) of the 184 reading periods charge a fee. Of those charging, the average fee is $23 right now (pending more updates).

But I’ve come to realize that talking about one average fee doesn’t tell the full story. It hides how significant the gap is between presses on the question of fees:

• 98 reading periods—69% of those charging a fee—charge more than the average fee of $23.

• If you look at just those 98 periods charging more than $23, the average fee is actually $27.

• This means presses offering lower, more accessible fees skew the total average and provide cover for the top chargers. In fact, among those (44 reading periods) charging less than the average fee, the highest fee is actually $20. And the average fee among just this group is $14.

So there are really three benchmarks when it comes to fee accessibility:

• The least accessible reading periods, with an average fee of $27

• The more accessible reading periods, with an average fee of $14

• The fully accessible reading periods, with no reading fees

As poets, these ranges can help us pay attention to a fair exchange. If a press is charging in the highest range, are they offering anything extra to warrant the higher cost? Is there a larger cash advance, higher royalties, etc.?

For publishers, this is a quick metric to evaluate your submission policies and openness to poets from a range of backgrounds. Where do you want to fall on the range of accessibility? If you’re in the least accessible group right now, are you offering fee support of any kind to keep the door open?

Fee fairness comes in many forms.
Waivers are not the only way.

It’s clear some presses are doing things differently. Best of all are presses who keep the door wide open with free reading periods. It’s often the scrappiest/smallest presses that show this level of commitment to accessibility, such as June Road Press, Acre Books, Game Over Books, and Cornerstone Press.

There are various business cases for charging fees. Some publishers explain their “why” in their guidelines. Rather than delve into the “why” of fees here, I’m interested in the “how” of fees, because that’s where fairness is actually practiced. Some presses are taking noteworthy approaches:

• The Lighthouse Poetry Series at Cleveland State now offers a sliding scale fee starting at $1.

• Perugia Press offers tiered fees and free submissions for BIPOC writers.

• Tinderbox Editions offers a fee-free period at the start of their submission window.

• Black Lawrence Press has an early bird, discounted fee submission window.

• River River Books has a pay-what-you-can model and asks for $10 to $20 as a starting point, but they stress it’s OK to not pay at all if you can’t afford a fee.

I’m curious how sliding scale and pay-what-you-can is a more generous and supportive model, compared to fee waivers.

Sliding scale reduces friction for poet and publisher alike. Poets don’t have to carve out separate time to request a waiver, wait for a response, and then submit if they get a waiver. And the press doesn’t have the administrative burden of fielding all those waiver requests. The waiver model creates its own barriers, so I’m excited to see presses trying other approaches.

But I think we should also keep asking why some presses clearly value this work and are creating more options for accessibility… and why some presses do not seem to prioritize this work.

Do we want to keep sharing our work—and our money—with presses that are not engaged in an accessible submissions process?

Too often we believe the gatekeepers are all “out there,” holding the keys to our poetry books far away from us. But six years into caring for this data, I want to say it more clearly than I have before:

As poets offering our work, we do have power here.

On the one hand, I’m doing more outreach to ask presses about fee support. My hope is that a personal hello will invite more publishers to be a “yes” on this. I’ll update the spreadsheet and the monthly bulletin as I learn more.

On the other hand, I feel it’s time for more direct and vocal solidarity with poets who continue to be excluded by this system. Personally, I no longer submit manuscripts to presses with inaccessible fees and practices.

What about you? How does this information affect your submissions?

Over 3,500 writers read the bulletin now. That means if we collectively decide on an action, we could bring some serious attention to accessibility and fee fairness. I have ideas, but I want to know what you think.

How accessible is poetry book publishing?

Based on the data I have now, over 60% of the poetry book ecosystem is excluding poets who can’t afford fees.

Of the 184 reading periods I track, 42 charge no fee at all.

Of the 142 reading periods that charge fees, only 30 reading periods claim to offer fee support or waivers of some kind.

And I’m being generous about what “fee support” means. For example, the Michael Waters Poetry Prize offers 50% off to graduate students only.

This means if you can’t afford to pay submission fees, you can access 72 of the 184 reading periods. That’s just 39% of the opportunities to publish your book.

Meaning your voice is not included in more than 60% of the poetry book ecosystem, to the extent I’ve tracked it here.

Is this list of 184 the absolute, entire ecosystem? No. I don’t include presses that only offer hybrid publishing or demand you hit a pre-sales number to even go to print. While I share region-specific and niche opportunities (e.g., contests for people of one age group) in the monthly bulletin, I haven’t yet included them on the big spreadsheet.

So a poet may find there are more doors to open beyond the list I keep. But I do believe the list of 184 is a strong representation of what the traditional “front door” into poetry looks like and how accessible it is.

So who opens that door and who does not? In 2024, I want to get more specific about this. That includes celebrating inclusive presses more overtly and asking more questions about inaccessible reading periods. You’ve got to name a thing to change it.

The Least Accessible: National Poetry Series

The highest fee. No fee support offered.
Almost $55,000 in submission fees collected in one year.

The highest submission fee on the list is $35. Five reading periods charge this, including the National Poetry Series. (“National” as in U.S. citizens, long-term residents, those with DACA, TPS, or LPS status.) Four of those reading periods offer fee support of some kind:

• Michael Waters Poetry Prize at the University of Southern Indiana — offers 50% discount to graduate students

• Omnidawn First + Second Book Contest — offers fee waivers

• Omnidawn Open — offers fee waivers

• Academy of American Poets First Book Award — offers fee waivers

The National Poetry Series is the only one charging this much and not offering fee support of any kind.

Their website says they do not offer waivers “because we use Submittable to process our manuscripts, it is not possible to evaluate entrants on a case by case basis and therefore we cannot make exceptions to the entrance fee.”

According to its 990 filed in December 2022, the National Poetry Series has an annual revenue of about $400,000 and assets of over $700,000. Just over $328,000 was listed as expenses for publishing and promoting the five books chosen in the series.

And $54,495 in program fees were collected in just one year—as in, the submission fees, or what the National Poetry Series describes in the 990 as: “In order for a candidate to be eligible for an award they must submit a fee with the submission of their manuscript. This fee helps defray costs in the judging of the awards to candidates.”

To echo what I’ve asked elsewhere in this update: Is this fair? Who is excluded by these practices?

I’m not trying to diminish anyone who has won the National Poetry Series or submitted there before. I submitted there myself, before I started digging into these numbers.

But now that we know, we can talk about it. We can ask questions. I’ve reached out to the National Poetry Series to ask if they're open to revisiting their fee policy. I hope they’ll consider this, and I’ll share what I learn in future updates.

And of course, we can also choose to withhold submissions, if we want to be in solidarity with poets who are excluded from the National Poetry Series. Maybe this is a point of collective action for us. Or maybe it’s something we do individually and in a less organized way.

That’s where I’d like to hear from you. And I guess I want to make it clear in 2024: this isn’t just a spreadsheet to take care of your own book. It’s also a tool we can use together to take care of each other and make this system fairer for all of us.

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Up Next: Compensation + First Books

Thanks for staying with me on this deep dive. There’s more, but I need to pause for now. I’ll share more in forthcoming weeks, such as details on compensation and a closer look at opportunities for debut books.

All the resources and posts here are free—and will continue to be free. This is a collective resource, made with lots of love for all the poetry people.