BONUS LAB REPORT:

I started leveraging Draft2Digital (D2D) quite heavily again sometime just within the past 4-6 months. I saw more sales on much older works of mine from four or five years ago, shortly after uploading through D2D, than I have with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), but anytime there are fees to keep your publication account up and running, I am pretty much saddened like most. Here’s part of the email received on April 14th, 2026:

If you already have a D2D account (if you’re reading this, you probably do), the activation fee doesn’t apply to you. New accounts will include a one-time fee of $20 (USD). This activation fee, combined with our verification tools and human reviewers, will help us maintain a secure, high-integrity publishing environment.

Like many platforms, we’ve seen a significant increase in automated and low-quality account creation in recent years. This onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles and risks indies being associated with low-quality “slop.” A modest activation fee can make a real difference and allow our team to stay focused on supporting genuine authors like you.

It also stated:

An annual maintenance fee of $12 (USD) will apply to accounts whose earnings from book sales, meaning your net proceeds after D2D’s commission, total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period. If you earn $100 or more from your book sales over 12 months, you will not be charged this fee.

Draft2Digital is primarily supported by earning commissions on book sales. For accounts that earn less revenue, a small annual fee helps offset a portion of the steadily rising costs we pay to maintain those accounts, including compliance, security, and infrastructure upkeep.

Maintenance fees will start going into effect in 30 days, on May 14, 2026, and will be based on your account anniversary date. We’ll always notify you in advance.

These were titles that had sales hadn’t sold on KDP in several years, so while very little, this is still an accomplishment. Below are my personal D2D sales for 2026 thus far, and these were via OverDrive:

What Has My Experience Been Like With D2D?

I have had, thus far, a pretty good end-user experience with D2D. eBook formatting is rather tricky for poetry in general, too, and the poetry formatter, or rather template style options, are nicer than what some platforms out there offer in terms of eBook interior adjustments to try to help reduce alignment problems. I know there have been some complaints over payment delivery, but I have not hit a threshold as of yet to be able to tell you anything there. Customer service has always been responsive and good so far as well. Of course, others will be drawn to platforms with no upfront or annual costs.

I understand where D2D is coming from, but if all platforms begin implementing these fees, then we’ll be in a world of hurt. I have yet to leverage D2D for print-based books, and you must hit a minimum of 64 pages as of 2026, but with a navigational and upload test, it’s not too bad, honestly. I think there are better ways or methods for publishing platforms to address the concern of “low-quality” or “slop” uploads, maybe a different screening solution or having some agreement in between holding the author accountable for any damages incurred or complaints, perhaps—I don’t know. Most authors wish to keep their work up long-term without fees or deductions on top of the peanuts received back from royalties.

Will I Keep My Work On D2D?

For now, yes, I will just for personal publication usage. I invested a lot of time getting those publications entered, and D2D distributes your work to a massive amount of cool channels, and I won’t be delisting anything for the foreseeable future unless the annual fee continues to jump. Due to the cost, I don’t believe I’ll be leveraging D2D for digital versions of the chapbook series we do at Dipity Press though. I wouldn’t be able to cover two accounts. I am unsure if my D2D will ever exceed $100, and I highly doubt it will this year. But particularly, what I love the most about D2D is that it gives you the ability to push your work to library channels, as you see in the screenshot below.

However, you are not guaranteed distribution into them, for example, my guidebook and some, though not all of my collections, were prohibited from entry, predominantly due to either the content or genre disqualifying them.

I believe it was via Overdrive or Hoopla directly that said “no.” I had been turned down for a direct library account for Dipity due to the series not being large enough yet, which then led me to start using my sitting D2D account. I’ll add that formerly I was a Smashwords user, so with the merger in March 2022, some of my work was already plugged in, but not everything, as I had only had a handful of titles through Smashwords and more elsewhere and through KDP. I made a decision not too long ago to remove nearly all of my titles from the Kindle Unlimited or the “Select Program” because it prevented me from distributing to other channels, excluding library-based ones. The moment I started doing that, I saw more sales via D2D.

Smashwords and Amazon KDP were the first platforms I tried back in 2013 for eBook releases. I think the merger between Smashwords and D2D caused older author bios to be included with books you had deployed from Smashwords, unless you tick “add an end page with the author bio.” I hope that Amazon KDP doesn’t get on the maintenance fee bandwagon. I personally don’t mind activation fees, and that doesn’t affect me. Although an annual maintenance fee of $12 USD may not be much to some, if you’re just starting out or your earnings are far below $100, typically, then it becomes more of a loss.

What Else Is Out There?

While I won’t be leaving D2D or Amazon KDP, I am aware that Bookvault is potentially considering adding an eBook option. I briefly looked at Publish Drive a few years ago, but the pricing nowadays is quite eyebrow-raising. I believe Publish Drive lets one upload just one eBook title free of charge. I have over 50+ predominantly digital titles personally, so if I went with Publish Drive, it would cost me $83.99 as of 2026. I don’t have experience with leveraging IngramSpark for eBooks, but they did get rid of their hefty revision fees this year. There are others out there, like StreetLib, that charge $99 a year for up to 100 titles.

To me, D2D has room for improvement in terms of the navigation over their UI I think it could go further in terms of design when you go to access your reports, but the most important part is that it’s functional. Also, I don’t think this happened to me at first, but I could be wrong. You do encounter an upload threshold cap on D2D or notice per day. I think it happens somewhere within 3-5 titles or so for me now.

All in all, I really do love the feature offerings of D2D, but again feel like there are maybe alternatives that could have been implemented besides the implementation, activation, and maintenance fees. gain, Once again, totally understand that platforms need to minimize “slop” and “AI-generated” content, though flooding their system. Compared to what’s out there, Draft2Digital is still pretty inexpensive to use as of 2026, and great for authors looking to mass distribute their publications fairly quickly. Some distribution spaces vary and tend to have longer wait times, and that’s to be expected.

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by buying me a coffee, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!

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Tip jars and donation campaigns are a vital part of helping lit mags push through during tough times, and every dollar truly matters as we all sadly have monthly bills on top of super tight budgets. Most lit mags leverage tips or donations, and membership tiers to not just alleviate the pressure of expenses, but to start up new publication series and increase payouts over contests and contributor acceptances. From the cost of website fees to submission management systems and other rising operational expenses, some lit mags and presses have stayed afloat for numerous years thanks to community-supported donation campaigns and generous tips.

Not just lit mags and presses use tips and donation platforms, but a lot of content creators, artists, and writers all over the world do too; we often see these links in social media bios and on author pages.

P.S. Most of the email may get cut off in your inbox, so be sure to read the full list and conclusion points at the end in the Substack app or online. If you are a submitter, reading this as I stated in my guidebook, giving a large donation or tip will not give you brownie points, nor should it give you a better chance of acceptance than others who do not tip or donate in advance. The editorial team is solely looking at the quality of the work you have submitted and should not take that into account at all. Some of these may be ones you’re already familiar with or new ones that you may look into for your own personal author or artist support pages, too, and are not just for lit mags or non-profit organizations. Also, just a reminder that tips should never be required; if you see a lit mag or publisher doing that and it’s not optional, run far, far away. No matter which one(s) you choose, it is beneficial to look at reviews and customer feedback online tied to each platform, pick one that fits your goals, and is easiest for you to grasp.

Here are some (not all in existence) of the tip jar and donation platforms, integrations, etc. that I am aware of through my experience running Dipity Lit Mag since 2022:

Ko-Fi

Before Submittable and after Ko-fi, Google Forms, and Oleada (replaced with Ola), the first method of handling tips, and even back when we used to have sub fees for second-time submitters and just a Google Form, was technically Ko-fi (pronounced co-fee) and rhymes with (no fee), according to one of their social media posts I saw—I used to say Ko-fi like Wi-Fi, but I believe that’s wrong. Anyways, I discontinued our old page and moved to GiveButter, which I’ll cover a bit below. However, last year I left Buy Me a Coffee and went back to Ko-Fi pages due to a bizarre technical issue that took a long time to hear back from with a username change, and also moved away from GiveButter and later also moved away from Fundly (which went under SignUpGenius acquisition), and ended up picking Raisely towards the end of 2025. I do see a lot of YouTube channels, and artists use Ko-fi links too.

Ko-fi nowadays is so much more than just a way to receive tips. Despite no costs to use it, I believe there’s a 5% service fee and an additional Gold plan that’s $12 month. There are other features to monetize Discord and ways to offer shop discount codes, plus more features I have yet to look at. Something we have started to allow at Dipity Press over the past two years is to link additional direct Ko-fi and PayPal support links for poets who have had chapbook releases with us too. I have seen some like Vellichor Literary Magazine, shown below, use the shop section to share access to issue releases with a $0 minimum or pay-what-you-want (PWYW) system (optional) entry:

Buy Me a Coffee

A lot of people till today confuse Buy Me a Coffee wth Ko-fi, but they are separate. I always wondered if they would ever merge one day, who knows. I used to plug in a Buy Me a Coffee link in early or mid 2025 to Dipity Lit Mag’s site, but switched it to the pizza icon instead of coffee for a while until moving back to Ko-fi. I personally prefer tea and pizza over coffee. I do like it still, and overall Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi are more friendly for international tips and payments than perhaps Venmo and Cash App. Akin to Ko-fi, Buy Me Coffee has additional Patreon-like features, such as a membership option, not just a shop. I have never used either to date—the additional support options, so I can’t give feedback there yet, but I have found some out there leveraging it; however, I tend to see Patreon and Substack in use more still as of 2026 in the lit mag world for membership tiers and subscription-like benefits.

A good example of the other features in use is over on Poetry Pea’s page tied to Poetry Pea Journal: they have also created extras and membership options through their Buy Me a Coffee pages to support their cool poetry podcast, YouTube channel, etc., similar to what’s possible through Patreon. P.S. If you love haikus and Japanese short-form poetry, def check them out:

GoFundMe

Many lit mags and presses still today create GoFundMe pages or campaigns to support events across the year. If a campaign is intended to run for a full year, of course, the goal and end date will be longer. Here are examples of active 2026 campaigns, one from FlowerSong Press and another from FLARE magazine. In addition to GoFundMe, the Editor-in-Chief of FLARE Magazine also uses Ko-fi for a personal “Support the Editor” page:

GoFundMe states that for transaction fees, 2.9% + $0.30 is automatically deducted from each donation.

Givebutter

Their name is, of course, fun. I did like Givebutter; it’s very easy to use, but I moved away from it due to a lack of international options I was looking for. If Raisely did not exist, I would go back to Givebutter. One neat feature that they have is an auction section. It seems as of 2026, it’s still geared towards U.S.-based accounts. We never saw anyone use our Givebutter button; most submitters would leave us tips through Submittable when we would add additional optional checkboxes at the very end of the submission form, with amounts of $5-$20+ to choose from. Like most donation platforms, there are premium options available with extras, which you’ll find on their website's plan grid. This is an example from Polyphony Lit’s Givebutter Perennial Campaign page:

Alongside a donation page, you can have other campaigns over time:

You’ll find at the bottom of non-profit Givebutter landing pages, verified checkmark ones like Poliphony Lit, which is marked as a verified 501(c)(3), and Press Pause Literary Magazine. But again, you do not have to be a non-profit to be able to use Givebutter.

Donorbox

I think I looked at Donorbox within the past few years or so, but I personally do not like systems powered by AI, as you see in the screenshot mentioned.

This is an example from Poetry Online’s website's Donorbox site section:

They also have a profile page for it tied to Donorbox, where a donation and comment wall is visible, and the amount contributed with names can be displayed if the donor chooses that option, akin to what’s possible via GoFundMe campaign pages:

Zeffy

I do not have experience with Zeffy myself, but often when I see alarming, recent mixed customer service review experiences, I tend to stay away from those platforms, especially when dealing with money or donations. You want to ensure there’s a smooth experience for you and anyone who donates. However, I have heard of a few literary arts magazines and presses using them and not running into issues of any kind, and mostly positive things in discussions though on the capabilities.

Here’s an example from Weird Lit Magazine, again, most donation landing pages are quite similar design-wise, with a one-time or monthly option:

You can facilitate membership tier options similar to Patreon and Buy Me a Coffeepages, too:

Fundly (now with SignUpGenius)

I left Givebutter for Fundly, but again, SignUpGenius has acquired them, I believe, so our campaign got shut down, so I then moved to Raisely. Fundly was great because it was again more friendly in terms of not just supporting U.S.-based accounts back then, unsure about the changes that have happened with SignUpGenius.

Raisely

We are currently leveraging Raisely at Dipity Lit Mag alongside a Ko-fi page I just created recently. It was easy to set up and customize; you just need your campaign to undergo approval after you create the landing page and goal. I have not used it that long, but Raisley states you can:

Set the additional donation Tip Percentage to be 6% of the initial donation to cover any payment processing fees and Raisely’s 4% fee. Customize the Tip Checkbox Message to say “Yes, I want to cover processing fees so 100% of my gift can make a difference” or something similar.”

Tally Forms

I will not list all form builders in existence here as I mentioned most on the Lit Mag Lab podcast and elsewhere already, but some lit mags like ONLY POEMS and their sister publication Strange Pilgrims have used Tally Forms to create neat submission pages and then optional tip jar choices with selectable illustration cards like below in the screenshot, and then they have their editorial feedback services beneath that or other add-ons that are not required. A few months ago, on the podcast, I mentioned it looks like ONLY POEMS noted they were moving away from Submittable slowly in the update episode no. 112 on their new website and layout. They also left Ghost and pivoted to Substack for their membership tier space. Source: https://submissions.onlypoems.com/fast-response

Tally Forms also uses Stripe, “this includes processing fees for payments, currency conversions (if applicable), and any additional charges set by Stripe based on your account or country. [They] do not add any extra fees on top of Stripe’s pricing.” Source: How to build a payment form in Tally

PayPal

We’re all familiar with PayPal, so I won’t go over it a ton; it has PayPal.Me or support link pages that can be created. There are some transaction fees, of course, which can be found on PayPal’s website. Here is an example of Fine Print Press’s additional PayPal page link from their website.

Keep in mind that Fine Print Press moved from Oleada (had a different fee structure back then via PayPal, and now they’re striving to leverage the Tip Jar Option feature solely through Duosuma as well)—that is again fine to use more than one way to collect tips and donations. Sub fees, tips, and donation platforms and structures are subject to change over time. You’ll notice they have a notice plugged in to Duosuma and their website, which states:

We have transitioned to a tip-based system instead of the $3.00 submission fee we had been charging. We always waived submission fees for people who asked (we never wanted the fee to exclude anyone from being able to submit) but we also realize that having to ask for a fee waiver isn’t always easy to do. This new system still encourages a $3.00 tip, but it can also be less or more depending on what you are able to contribute. The money collected from our submissions goes solely to funding the printing and distribution of our publication, as well as other expenses such as the hosting of our website.

Subfolio

I moved my reading team over to Subfolio, a submission management system, in the summer of 2025. The great thing about it is that there is a built-in toggle that can be enabled by the founding editor on the submission call buckets of their choice to be able to accept optional tips from submitters who decide to leave one to support the publication a bit further, and it appears that submitters can change their tips, which is also awesome.

It looks like this zoomed in below on the submitter’s side. Tips are received much faster due to the Stripe integration, if I recall, between 7 and 14 days, and on the site, it states, “optional submission tips are available to be switched on for free and paid submissions.” Most submission management systems I have come into contact with between 2025 and 2026 use Stripe, but not all. There are a few onboarding steps for Stripe account creation or connecting an existing account to use it, and it’s not difficult at all.

Note: As a lit mag or press that’s NOT a registered non-profit, you should typically be using the words “tips,” “tip jar”, or “support us.” Some payout systems that are integrated into submission managers or even platforms with Stripe, for example, when connected to Subfolio on the backend will request and require that you change your wording, especially on your submission management landing page, to NOT state “donate” or “donations” anywhere if you are NOT a 501(c)(3), per their terms of agreement. I recently switched all of our wording this month to say nothing but “tips” to be approved by Stripe’s account review team as instructed, so that we can facilitate global contributor payouts for our annual poetry contest directly through Subfolio. Also, hopefully, in the future, we can support small contributor payments for acceptances, too, one day, when we reach that point, for now we only award one cash prize each year due. Of course, it’s totally okay if you leverage “buy me a coffee” or annual funding campaign donation page events outside of whichever submission management system you’re using.

Source: Subfolio Pricing - Details

Duosuma

As mentioned earlier, Duosuma—Duotrope’s submission management system also has a tip jar integration. I never used it myself—the tip jar with it, but it states on their guide: “with Tip Jar payments, the submitter selects how much money they want to give you. You can set the pre-selected amount, as well as the minimum and maximum values. The minimum value can’t be less than $1, and the maximum value can’t be more than $100.” Duosuma also uses Stripe. You’ll see a TIP JAR OPTION rectangular label visible on categories that have that option.

Sources: Duosuma Billing, Credits, and Charging Fees, and Duosuma Submission Tip Jar Report

Dapple

The cool thing about Dapple Submission Manager is that it leverages visual-oriented drag-and-drop functionality across its forms, like Submittable, and also on the backend with the queue, where team members rate and review submissions. Dapple also uses Stripe for facilitating tips, with the ability to set fixed options or custom entry tip amounts.

As a founding editor, you just have to set up your Stripe account if you don’t have one for your preferred lit mag e-mail address. Again, the onboarding steps connecting to Stripe are fairly fast, akin to Subfolio and Duosuma. Sometimes Stripe will again request additional brief, but specific details from you to verify how you’ll be using Stripe in agreement with their terms of use and review your account connection, etc.

Source: How to Add a Tip Jar or Donation - Dapple Help Center

Submittable

Submittable did permit us to use the word “donations” on our landing page back when we were on it for our additional optional form fields. I stopped opening an individual Submittable tip jar category bucket to have room for another call too. With Submittable as of 2026 still, though, you must wait 30+ days or the following week of the next month to receive any tips, payouts, etc. as a lit mag, which is problematic considering how many bills occur in the last week of the month and most POD and book distribution places do not give your payouts until your $20-$100 threshold is hit, or a certain date is reached the following month. e.g., for us, the week of the 15th.

Tip jars are typically facilitated by founding editors through individual checkboxes in Submittable or an entirely separate category bucket for tips. Here is an example of Neon Orgami’s optional tip, “Support Our Mission” section on their Submittable single poem form:

While I have used checkboxes in the past, it is not a good option because Submittable gives you a limit on the number of call buckets per month (6) on the CLMP membership discount plan, and also limits the number of form field creation options for each category bucket. Rather than have publishers with calls do this, I think Submittable should have a Tip Jar system better integrated or available as of 2026; that’s not the case, nor is there a good standardization over how lit mags are going about asking for tips. If a submitter tips $5, then the lit mag or journal is not getting all $5. According to their site: “they charge $0.99 + 5% of the total sum collected, 4% of which goes toward [their] processing costs” and “submitters have the option to pay [via] credit card or PayPal.”

Some are using checkboxes, and some are using category buckets like below. This is an example from Split Lit Magazine on Submittable. They have created multiple tip jar buckets open across various times throughout the year, with other submission management systems, the tip jar is an option visible, and there is not really a need for this structure of multiple buckets—most lit mags I have seen just have one overall one too via CLMP’s most basic membership plan $29 USD a month for Submittable or must upgrade to go beyond basic limits, although a suggested or fixed tip amount may be preferred for some lit mags.

Screenshot Source: https://splitlip.submittable.com/submit

You can come across more lit mags with tip jar buckets via a Google search by typing “tip jar submittable” or through the Submittable Discover page and do a keyword search of “tips” and “donate.”

I think it would be nice if Submittable added better features to support optional tips, then lit mags would not be doing this, nor would we see bizarre things where some publishers are oddly marking tips as required, rather than just inputting a direct overall submission fee if they do charge fees and wind up showing in the “No-Fee” filter they have on the Discover Opportunities page search as I shared in overview video episode no. 35 on the Lit Mag Lab podcast, which is alarming to submitters seeking solely fee-free opportunities. Here’s also a quick Submittable Discover Page search of lit mags and presses that have active, separate, optional Tip Jar buckets created as of March 2026:

Red Rock Review uses the word “Donate” on Submittable, like below in the screenshot, and others above have a separate bucket open for it, as you can see, and that’s fine. Also, it is a nonprofit biannual journal. Again back on Submittable I did use both the word donate and tips and never was flagged for this on our submission landing page, but once again we had to change our wording tied to our submission system landing pages and site page policy to state explicitly “optional additional tips” and “feedbck editorial services” not “donations” to be approved specifically for the Stripe-based Global Payouts feature to be able to pay the upcoming selected winner through Subfolio for our contest call, so we no longer have to heavily use PayPal or third-party payment apps to complete our prize event or contributor payments we hope to do in the future over accepted work.

Bonfire

Bonfire has a unique structure, where you can fundraise through custom merch, and they have additional benefits, I believe, if you are a registered non-profit, but you can use it as an individual or for personal causes too. According to Bonfire, “once your nonprofit is verified, all of your processing fees are reduced from 8% to 3.5%, you get a verified nonprofit page, and can customize your page.”

I wish Redbubble had a donation feature like Fourthwall or a fundraising option of some kind like Bonfire. At some point and time several years ago, I did a brief trial of Bonfire and also Sellfy, but we’ll discuss merch shops later, perhaps aside from just one more fave listed after this one. It’s def a fun way to raise funds through selling T-shirts, drinkware, hoodies, and more. Here’s an example of Flower Mouth Press’s Bonfire page:

Fourthwall

As I mentioned just earlier, some merch shop platforms like Fourthwall have a donation option built in, too. I do love Fourthwall and have leveraged it for a little over two years, but still prefer the sticker quality of RedBubble. There are some membership features we have yet to use, but I like how you can have digital and physical print-on-demand (POD) products created.

Once you reach 500+ subscribers, you can connect your Fourthwall merch items to your YouTube channel too, which will appear beneath videos.

You can also create discount codes for contributors on PDFs, etc., or have free items available too. At the checkout, others see an optional “Add a donation” button like below on a Fourthwall shop page:

Patreon

Technically, some lit mags convert the memberships or subscription sign-ups into a form of donations or to support their publication. Patreon is mostly for membership subscription tier options, bonus content, and unlockables. I haven’t used it a ton personally, but I have tried it in the past. It is another way others can support a publication each month for usually a small amount, and as you go up the membership tiers, you get more essentially—the thing is you must plan out in advance what regular bonus access or content you’ll make for members. Also, Patreon has higher platform fees, I think as of 2026 it’s ranging between %5-12%.

Examples I have shared of this are Blue Cublice Press (associated with The First Line Literary Journal), Moss Puppy Magazine, Seaside Gothic, Chestnut Review, and a few others covered on The Lit Mag Lab podcast, leveraging Patreon predominantly, some do offer annual memberships to be paid in full instead of just monthly.

I will perhaps cover ways that lit mags can support their operations further, but it is discussed in the Lit Mag Nation guidebook from last year too—working on a larger scaled up 6x9 print edition or slight revised version or update of it to address the smaller print font not as easy on the eyes later this year hopefully, but it is technically available as an eBook now and few other Europe-based bookstores currently.

Substack

Lit mags in today’s world technically do use Substack to facilitate what’s called pledges or subscription tiers to support the publication or to gain access to bonus posts, e.g., interviews. You’ll find posts where others state they have converted their publication into a “donation-based Substack” model, in a sense. You’re welcome to leave a tip on my own Ko-fi page under my pen name under the Lit Mag Lab Substack about section to my links or even support Dipity Lit Mag, since the series is tied to it, but totally no worries if not. I have some additional things that I do cover in my guidebook, which pairs with the podcast episodes. On the other hand, many free Substacks have been adding “buy me a coffee” hyperlinked images or custom buttons to support them at the bottom of each post too. Stripe is integrated with Substack, there’s “10% of each transaction and (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee) and a billing fee for recurring subscriptions (0.7% for recurring payments as of July 2024).” Here’s an example of what some do with coffee button links via Button > Custom in Substack:

I think others like to contribute custom amounts or lower than $5, which makes tip systems more attractive. You may come across articles on Medium, elsewhere that mention some earned more from Buy Me a Coffee instead of Substack, or vice versa. I stopped by ’s publication called ArtDHD, and a few other Substacks have these rad banners, so you can hyperlink a graphic rectangle like this into Substack at the end of your post as an alternative way to support your series. I have seen others out there, just sharing an example from “Buy Me a Coffee” Banners - Free to Use” post from 2024. You could, of course, make your own too, to match your publication’s color-scheme or vibe:

Squarespace

With nearly all website builders, there are donation block options or integration of store app features that accept a credit card, PayPal, etc. Many of the donation or tip platforms I mentioned can have an embeddable HTML code-based button added or a widget box published to the site itself. Below is an example from Argyle Literary Magazine on Squarespace:

This is an example of Wilson Literary Magazine’s donation box pop-up once “Donate” is chosen on their WordPress website. As you’ve seen, most tip and donation platforms of course allow for anonymous contributions (excluding submission and form systems):

Conclusion Points + Notes

• The most common way I see others leaving tips for us is through Subfolio and choosing our additional editorial feedback options instead of Ko-fi. Back when we were on Submittable, I did have a range of suggested fixed amounts, starting at $5 and up, $10, $15, $20 etc, and others would do that with their submission, but we had separate buckets back then for feedback, now we can have additional fixed paid feedback checkbox options within Subfolio and far more form fields. Your best bet is to have a submission management platform or form system that allows tip integration, as the one core place with the most traffic is your submission categories area or “Submit Work” landing page. I do like Fourthwall, Buy Me a Coffee, and Ko-fi pages, Givebutter, and Raisely overall, though.

• I haven’t used every donation, tip, or subscription platform in existence, just giving some common examples again that I see in the lit mag community. I’m sure that in the upcoming years, more new ones shall arise. Another donation platform I heard about some organizations and companies using one called FastAction, or ones that are not perhaps free, I believe, like Bonterra, for small non-profits, but I could be wrong there—also Bloomerang and Keela. I have seen some content creators use Liberapay too. Obviously, lit mags and presses will be drawn to ones without any monthly pricing plans or that are completely free to use.

• Any tips, donations, funds, or payments you receive are typically considered taxable income.

• Transaction fees are subject to change as time goes on.

• Remember that some donation platforms may require that you are a registered non-profit or may have location usage restrictions, though not all, even with tip-based platforms and merch-based stores; this may occur, so do read carefully or ask their support team if it’s not clear to you. Keep in mind, Kickstarter is not for donations; it is a fundraising platform, one where you must reach your goal, if I recall correctly, otherwise you don’t receive anything from supporters of your Kickstarter campaign.

• Again, I have seen multiple lit mags and presses switch their donation and tip jar platforms over the years. It is best to stick with platforms as long as possible. Of course, I don’t like hopping around unless I absolutely have to for a better end-user experience. Most of your traffic will be through your submission system or form area, therefore it makes sense to have a system that integrates with the ability to support tips like via Stripe or to direct others with a brief note or link on how they can leave tips to your lit mag to help cover operational expenses. There are some donation platforms out there that do not let you withdraw funds immediately, perhaps, or there is usually a processing delivery window for most tip systems of some kind. Many tip systems like the “buy me a coffee” ones support Stripe and PayPal.

• Some lit mags have seen success with Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee memberships more so than Ko-fi, perhaps by looking at the number of supporters, etc. On the other hand, I have seen some lit mags draw hundreds of people each year towards their Ko-fi shops and pages successfully, you want to make sure your links are easily accessible across your social media channels, website and put brief reminders over tips and how others can support your publication in more than one place or where they’ll see FAQ or landing submission page, and have a separate “Support Us” page.

Coindrop

Just another additional share. I know Linktree exists and did go back to using it for Dipity Lit Mag, also BioSites via Squarespace, but I found out recently about Coindrop.

It is predominantly geared towards showcasing payment app URLs, strictly, subscription and tip platforms links collectively.

I agree that link in bios do tend to direct traffic away from your own website sometimes, but I do like some of Linktree’s layouts, so I went back to it vs the landing page we used to have on our site with rectangular boxed links. There are some link in bios that come with a built-in tip jar support URLs tied to your PayPal account or various other payment apps and subscription platforms. Above, I did not cover the membership and subscription platform’s pros and cons for you, nor for the tip options, but perhaps I will do so in the distant future; this is more of a general list with some bite-sized thoughts.

There’s nothing to date restricting others from using more than one route for collecting tips and donations. Many lit mags use a combination of 2-3 tip avenues and a donation or community membership subscription tiered platform, or a single platform for everything, to support their publication. With enough support, this can help them become fee-free.

You cannot always rely upon grants or community-driven donations, to come through each year and some lit mag editors resort to usng their own personal 9-to-5 job salaries to sustain their literary publication, therefore its a good idea to have more than one series that your publication maintains and multiple ways to support it, e.g. merch shops, 1:1 feedback sessions, digital subscriptins, membership tiers, etc.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: What do you currently use for intaking tips and donations? Are there any other ones not mentioned, and do you like it?

Also, feel free to share if this list helped you in any way.

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by buying me a coffee, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!

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We just opened back up poetry, flash fiction, and more calls at Dipity Lit Mag on Subfolio. I have a separate Substack for Dipity Lit Mag. If you’re interested, do check them out, and I released a few new podcast episodes. I am still ironing out the mobile views and linking a few older pages back, but the main ones are back on our website. A recent topic outside of Substack came up on visual art, too, so I want to talk about this on The Lit Mag Lab.

BONUS LAB REPORT

To start, I’ll provide some background shares. As some may know from the accompanying audio version of this tip series, outside of tech support, I have been doing cartooning for most of my life, sketch art, and wired computer mouse drawn pieces, up until 2020, when some incidents impacted me physically, which is why my art style and focus changed. I did a few magazine and digital collage-based designs back in my middle school and high school days, though, too.

Here are some sketch oldies and some of my laptop cartoon sticker designs above that I reposted last year, too. I started diving back into poetry, and then began dabbling in reel design, motion art, and photographic digital collages around 2021 in Nevada.

My personal poetry collection covers are nearly all digital collages—a few are just text-based, for instance, some incorporate in the background random photos from friends and my mom, myself, even—the same goes for my reels and podcast covers, some are film photos from friends, and a few transformative fair-use collages with multiple photos that do not require attribution per their license and allow commercial use. In my earlier self-publications, I used to do collages and edits from pretty random fam road trip photos from Minnesota, Arizona, and Nevada.

The Lit Mag Lab podcast covers and Substack banners, for instance, are also digital collages I do—same with the Hummingbird Blink podcast. In my spare time, I do a few design projects, custom photo collages, and animated reel designs for musicians and bands’ releases, and incorporate snaps from photographers they work with. I tend to do a lot of mirror-like photo designs, wolf, and space digital collage art.

When I started Dipity Lit Mag, I began doing these short layered video collages incorporating poets’ profile photos into them, and then, due to sudden video storage cost changes with our site host provider a few years later, I switched to creating mini square digital collages for each piece instead. Using Steve Gerson’s as an example, this is just a screenshot of an old video clip edit and photo collage example from 2023 with the incorporation of a vintage dictionary animation, and a few of his other antique photographs appear later on it for one of the themed challenges we had, and is NOT AI:

I did not want to pay for unlimited storage, so I stopped doing our video collages. These digital collages have been fun to create, though I announced last year that we’re going to be discontinuing those and changing what our entire online section looks like because I also don’t have the time to do them except for podcasts, and I don’t want my team members waiting on me to do these collage designs, it tacks on time to our publication schedule. We still have most of these up for now, but they will be archived in the near future and out on just our podcasts, perhaps, so that it looks cohesive with our new direction, which is indicated in our submission calls. Across our legacy issues and series reboot, we have also featured both traditional and digital collage artists and photographers in the past few years.

This, for example, below from our online section, is NOT AI; it’s just a digital collage I did, comprised of human-captured photos from a few different free stock photo libraries.

We have a NO AI policy at Dipity Lit Mag, like most of my friends’ lit mags. It is hard nowadays for artists, because people see handmade vintage and digital collage art, drawings, etc., and now more than ever assume everything is just AI, and others are able to closely replicate a style of work you do through machine-generated prompts in a matter of seconds or minutes. It is also tough for founding editors, even with NO AI policies, to determine if work was AI-generated; no analysis tools are 100% perfect. I have seen some publications take down cover and interior art that they discovered violated their AI policies, or the artist lied.

If you go out on Duotrope or sites, quite a few lit mags still do not have AI policies up or noted anywhere when it comes to their visual art submission calls. AI is facing a lot of lawsuits, so I would really stay away from it and ensure your policy is in more than one place, or where others find your listing. It’s not going to eliminate the risk of others submitting AI, still, and disregarding your policy, but it can minimize it a bit.

One receipt artist, who has had some recent great posts below on the sad and frustrating things happening with AI and challenges with algorithms, is Ade:

Made by Ade

This isn’t how I expected AI to screw me.

Hello friends. I wasn’t planning to do this, but I can’t contain my rage. This one’s going to be a rant. Sorry. But my story ends with irrational optimism so stick with me…

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4 months ago · 69 likes · 17 comments · Ade

Made by Ade

A New Chapter in the Algorithm Wars

There’s something creators don’t see coming with AI. I didn’t see it coming until recently. Perhaps you are already ahead of me. Here’s what will happen…

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4 months ago · 30 likes · 5 comments · Ade

A few days ago, it actually happened again, on our open call submissions sign post on social media, someone said in a comment, “I don’t trust a lit mag that uses AI in their marketing,” —the post was a quick digital collage of four individual elements and a split sped up mini video edit of a crowd of people walking and NOT AI. I had also done another variation of that neon sign digital ciollage design in the past last year. On top of this, on my birthday on the same day, for the first time ever, I received predominantly AI-generated birthday cards with my face on it; ironically, a relative put one of my old hand-drawn cartoon sketches integrated into one of the “cards” too. I know it’s the thought that counts, and it was funny to see that, but those who gave me AI birthday cards know how I feel about AI art and prefer traditional art and handmade items.

I don’t think it’s right for AI to train on writers’ and artists’ work. I have some friends in the community who use AI for personal fun, but don’t do that for client projects, or some do a mix of both AI and non-AI pieces, and I think this confuses others. It is hard for the human eye to distinguish what’s not AI; however, oftentimes it’s pretty obvious, and there are tell-tale signs if someone doesn’t outright mark it. If we ever discover an artist we worked with used AI or plagiarized, or lied, we will pull it down, replace it, and implement a flag and account submission ban.

There are use cases where others may argue that AI can help some industries, perhaps, but in my opinion, AI is severely hurting traditional artists and musicians; unfortunately, members of my family have a polar opposite stance on the dangers of a lack of AI policies and regulations to protect artists across the world. I do hope it improves in terms of regulation.

I run photo submissions for our print call through Google’s Image Search tool, to help see if they are stock or have appeared elsewhere, but this doesn’t always help in cases of AI detection. AI detection tools are not 100% perfect either; no search tool is, and if you compare a few tools out there, they will at times give you different results, or shady ones have constant false positives, so it’s tricky. I have caught submissions sending us photos from online, Pinterest pages, etc, that were not theirs or pieces that incorporated work that violated copyright. From time to time, we have received AI-generated pieces sent to us despite our guidelines and human-work-only agreement checkboxes.

Although this is a bonus post, if there are any tools your own lit mag uses to scan or further check whether a work is AI, feel free to share in the comments. Many lit mags, my own included, have been impacted by stolen work and plagiarists, too. I am focusing on art in this post, but I have discussed plagiarism a bit on the podcast, mentioning advanced searches, Small SEOTools, and Quetext, which are pretty good, but absolutely, they don’t catch everything.

Anyways, traditional visual art can be a stellar way to further distinguish your publication series from others out there and can elevate it. There are many ways I share this in my guidebook to do so, like below, but I am expanding upon this furter with screenshot examples and will be mentioning a few more specific names here to find artists instead, including my mini reviews of them, how AI is impacting them, glaring issues and things to be cautious of on art licensing platforms I used to list my own artwork designs on for sale.

Firstly, here are the main ways to incorporate art into your lit mag or press:

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BONUS LAB REPORT:

Today, we’ll look at some past print tests from the Dipity Press chapbook series, a fun extension of Dipity Lit Mag. Mixam has a print-on-demand service option via their PrintLink. I have used this for about two years now and think it’s pretty awesome thus far, since I cannot facilitate printing and binding, shipping large orders, etc., in-house myself. I will be going over what I like about them both and where I feel there needs to be improvements.

Below is the Mixam Photo Quality Staple Booklet vs Blurb Paperback:

We’ll start with my review and selections of Mixam PrintLink (on the left), then I’ll move on to Blurb:

Mixam PrintLink Selections:
Size: Digest 5” x 7” - Portrait
Body: Staple, Full-color printing, 48 pages, 100lb Satin Text
Cover: Full-color printing (outside), Cover: Full-color printing, Matte Lamination (outside), 100lb Satin Cover

Mixam Staple Booklet Rating: 8.4 out of 10

REASONS:

• Not flimsy, durable. I have tried a few different saddle-stitched printers, and out of all of them, Mixam has the best as of 2025 print-on-demand booklets.

• The one thing is that the covers, of course, do wear when you open or bend them, which is expected. Usually, you can stack some books on top of it to weigh it down or to close it back further.

• The illustrations really pop off the page, are vivid, and look nice.

PROS

• PrintLink can be a good solution to have if you’re unable to physically ship out orders yourself and have no distributor.

• No upfront costs, and there is NO requirement to have a barcode to sell through the PrintLink store; they just take a percentage of each transaction (or you get what’s left after the production costs) that should be reflected in your chosen listing price

• Excellent print quality overall on saddle-stitch

• Easy to facilitate multiple series through it, e.g., chapbooks and zines

• Dedicated store link landing page, bundle orders

• No revision fees as of December 2025, you just pull it down, resubmit it for review—I hope they never change this, as very few places exist out there that offer fee-free revisions.

CONS

• There are no pre-provided ISBNs, so you’d have to get that yourself, and add your ISBN for the chapbook

• You cannot see all order names associated with a number, nor contact addresses in their dashboard portal, so you have to contact their support with the email or find out the mailing address and full name of an order being reported as lost or not received, and open a support ticket.

• Fluctuating production costs do happen often, resulting in less back and sometimes rather high prices

• U.S. PrintLinks, as of December 2025, still do not have international shipping options it appears; however, they have the PrintLinks option available for publishers based in other countries, such as the UK, Ireland, Canada, Germany, and Australia. They told me that if you’re U.S.-based to do international shipping, you can create an account on another Mixam country site portal to generate a PrintLink; however, the options back when I tried were not 100% identical in terms of sizes, etc.

• No way to offer private discount links or codes—you have to adjust the price and save each time.

• No pre-provided ISBNS, and it is not mandatory to have an ISBN, but ideally, you should get your own ISBNs for your imprint to be displayed and listed instead.

• Each time you need to revise your files, it must undergo review by a Mixam print expert for screening, not necessarily a con, I think its really great that they do quality checks, but it can increase your release time—PODs like Bookvault as of 2025 let you upload revisions at no additional cost or wait time once you pay the one-time listing fee e.g. for the Great British Bookshop.

Blurb Selections:

Softcover Trade Book, Project Option: 5×8 in, 13×20 cm, # of Pages: 48, Economy Color

Blurb Trade Book Rating: 7.0 out of 10

REASONS:

• You may recall I reviewed a previous Dipity Lit Mag legacy design in this post: “Blurb Books vs Bookvault: Print-on-Demand Services Side-by-Side Review Trade Book & Magazine Test Results,” However, this is a much lower page count, so it’s nowhere near as thick as a literary arts magazine trade book design. I think books that are 30-40 pages cover feel too flimsy and thin, cheap even, or ones closer to 30 pages or their minimum. Mixam’s PrintLink covers are superb.

PROS

• Their UI is friendly and easy to upload a straight-up PDF in a matter of minutes once you get the dimensions as specified on their website.

  • Note: I typically leverage 5.5 x 8.5-sized files in Blurb’s upload section for the single PDF file option

• You can facilitate another version or private, discounted links as needed through Blurb; Mixam does not have this option, which comes in handy for sending copies out to others or contributors lower price than the official listing price.

• Economy color printing looks good; you can’t tell it’s on economy paper.

• Pre-provided Blurb-based ISBNs, but again, you should ideally get your own ISBNs to reflect your publication name and imprint, so that it doesn’t show as Blurb

CONS

• You can’t see who orders on the backend, and there is no way to export reports as of 2025; you’d have to make your own Excel spreadsheet.

• Again, much lower page counts ~34 pages can feel less durable and don’t look like the below. I would not recommend it for super-think publications unless you need something put in print quickly.

• For the most part, you should be able to choose an economy color paper, but at times, Blurb support has informed me that for some publications, to switch to standard paper for those distributed through their Ingram network connection, or certain book designs—mostly, I have encountered this with publications that include a lot of art and photography pages with a high use of all black backgrounds.

• When you choose expanded distribution or the Ingram network option, your listing price will go up substantially, unless you leave it on their bookstore server.

• A print proof is required to be purchased within 15 days for it to stay on their server, or any additional distribution options to be activated.

• Each time you need to revise, you must delete or pull the publication listing, then set up a new listing, and reorder a new print copy again.

CONCLUSION

As I shared elsewhere on the Lit Mag Lab podcast, I do prefer traditional publishing houses, handmade books, but not everyone can do this, so print-on-demand services are a great alternative for facilitating series you’d like to create. However, production costs have gone up towards the end of this year, on average, at Mixam through their PrintLink option, it has been $5-$8 USD, and used to be pretty much set at $5 for 32 to 48 pages in terms of production costs. I would say Mixam has better quality booklets than Bookvault. I know Lulu.com discontinued its saddle-stitched option for distribution.

Contributor and author copies have been less expensive to do through Bookvault; however, Mixam still excels in the quality of their covers and interiors for staple binding or saddle-stitched booklets. I’ll do a side-by-side review of Bookvault’s saddle-stitched option in another review in the future, perhaps, although I have discussed this a bit in the past already on here. However, some of the full-color photo quality book options, such as paperback, can have a much higher production cost for 170+ pages, slightly under $40—that is insanely high!

Lower page counts seem to work well for most of Mixam’s PrintLink options; the staple-bound option is probably the most reasonable for chapbook and zine creation. Of course, you don’t have to use Mixam’s PrintLink option; they do have other paper types and options through their one-off or larger order quantity services, e.g., 1-20. 50, 100+, but you’d have to ship those out yourself, since that is not print-on-demand.

Do note that the first one with Urban Enigmas was an initial test print, and the artwork matches on the right on both of our final versions. This was just due to an interior cover page I didn’t tug out, which I fixed:

Each POD place offers a flip-through preview window—Mixam’s is a bit better design-wise in terms of proofs, close-ups, etc. Their team screens publications pretty well and helps with full-bleed issues, and it can be tough to do spines for Blurb books. Anything thinner than Canva’s minimum allotted dimensions, you’d have to use another application, akin to Microsoft Publisher, for your spines on Mixam and Blurb books. I did not add spine text to these particular paperback versions of the chapbook publications because they were so thin; it would not have fit, of course.

I would not be one to use Blurb’s PDF download option because, as of currently, you can only set it at $5, so you should either set up eBooks through something like Amazon KDP, Draft2Digital, or your own merch store via your website to set a more appropriate price or even a PWYW system of some kind. We offer both paperback and saddle-stitched versions of our mid-to-full-length chapbook series and have a website download option on our micro-chapbooks currently.

Personally, both Mixam and Blurb’s customer support teams have been responsive whenever I submitted a ticket or request, and I have not had any major issues with either thus far. Of course, with PODs, a downside is that production costs can consume the remaining profit for your publication to apply to future projects and expenses, often times you get back less than a few bucks, but it depends upon your paper, binding, and format selections. B&W paperback books typically are less expensive than any publications that are hardcover or even softcover ones that include full color artwork, photography, or illustrations, which often require a premium or thicker paper type to really pop off the pages.

P.S. I may also share past hardcover print-on-demand tests with Blurb later on too. I was just focusing mostly on chapbooks and paperback options here.

Any thoughts you’d like to share?

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BONUS LAB REPORT:

As we all know, a lot of lit mags and journals leverage print-on-demand services (PODs) nowadays, such as Lulu.com and IngramSpark, often because they cannot do the printing and shipping themselves in terms of orders, or perhaps due to not having a distribution partner of any kind. This review may also benefit others looking for a service to use for their next upcoming series or their own book publication too. Today, we’ll do a side-by-side comparison of two PODs I’ve utilized in the past few years that have pros and cons.

Blurb is based out of the U.S, and Bookvault is based out of the U.K., headquarters-wise; both do international shipping. I believe Bookvault has U.S. facilities too and has recently expanded its offerings to Canada and Australia. I stumbled across Blurb in 2022 when I started Dipity Lit Mag, and later on, Dipity Press launched in January 2024. I will share that I’ve also used Mixam quite a bit the past two years, but that’s for another review later on, perhaps. Don’t forget to see my mini review summaries of others at 9 Print On Demand Options For Magazines, Chapbooks & Presses + Book Printing Services, and also check out 10 Book & Magazine Distributors + Fulfillment Options for Small Presses & Independent Publishers, and there are some accompanying Lit Mag Lab podcast Q&A episodes on these as well.

Here are the options I went with and my assessment:

Selections: Softcover Trade Book: 5 × 8 in. (13 × 20 cm) Economy Color Paper, Gloss Cover, 170 pages, 105 gsm Uncoated Rating: 7.3 out of 10

Bookvault Selections: Gloss Cover: Paperback Simplex/Duplex Cover Print (UK Only) Simplex Cover Printing (US) 5.0 x 8.0 in 150 gsm Coated, 170 pages Rating: 7.0 out of 10

The rating is strictly on the print quality for issue no. 5 above photographed. If we were to rate platform UI’s, then Bookvault would have the edge because, as of 2025, you can easily upload revision files at no additional cost, and there’s a lot more customization flexibility in terms of making adjustments to your publication before and after its release. Whereas with Blurb, you have to delete your title completely, upload and re-order another new copy to have printed again, which seems like a waste of money and paper for small revisions. PODs like Ingram typically have a revision fee, but another revision fee-free one, aside from Bookvault, is Mixam. I think Blurb, without a doubt, offers high-quality photobooks and is known as a leader in that category, but their paperback and platform options could go further when it comes to size and paper type offerings.

Blurb does have a primary shop, just named “the Bookstore,” and Bookvault has one connected too, called The Great British Bookshop. Doing a “lit mag” keyword search in the Blurb bookstore is another way to see some existing or past magazine issue series that had leveraged Blurb Books before—some of the listings from 2017 on, etc, come up as not found, though upon selection. I found more general magazine series or non-lit mags, fewer journals in The Great British Bookshop, and quite a few poetry chapbook titles. Mixam lets publishers have their own public shop space for each series and a definitive URL in regards to their print-on-demand, aka PrintLink option.

NOTES IN ADVANCE:

A main downside with Bookvault’s shop is a lack of consistency in payout delivery—I have had to input a support ticket each time when the payout time passed on the 14th, but they’ve always responded and resolved it, and their threshold, I believe, increased to €100 for The Great British Bookshop recently for non-UK based accounts, whereas Blurb’s threshold is $25 USD. I know others have had mixed experiences in terms of customer support in the world in general, but both Bookvault and Blurb’s support teams have been responsive and super helpful, always though. Blurb’s payouts tend to take much longer, e.g., several weeks or months overall if you go through expanded distribution routes as shown on their site, and one time they accidentally did two payouts and froze the account until it was returned. Blurb sadly also doesn’t let you customize the PDF or digital version pricing of your publication; they’re all priced at $5 USD. While Bookvault may not have revision fees, they do have title upload costs. I have had some averaging somewhere between $10-$15 each. I will share more in my conclusion later on here. You sadly cannot export sales and orders or title data out of Blurb, either.

Note: A majority of this review may get cut off in your email due to length, so be sure to check it out on the Substack mobile app or via web browser.

Anyways, let’s get started on my bonus review and commentary with additional photos, process journey shares—be sure to read toward the end to see the video share and read my concluding thoughts:

The example I’m using is from our 5th legacy issue, dubbed WHISKER FACTORY, so if you love cats, def look it up if you want and order it in your preferred online bookstore. I discontinued this style of the literary arts magazine Dipity, but the series is still available to pick up. As I share on the podcast, I’m taking my lit mag in a different direction, hopefully in 2026.

FRONT-COVER ANALYSIS:

The photograph quality of Ollie, the cat on the cover was better in my opinion over on Blurb, but do note that with the Bookvault print test in the side-by-side photo, there was a white line at the top in error on my part with choosing custom dimensions initially. The cool thing about Bookvault is that you have a wide variety of sizing options, as you see below, whereas Blurb, as of 2025, is a bit limited.

Of course, Blurb does have a 6 x 9 in trade book option and also a magazine-style paper option, which is 8.5 × 11 in. (22 × 28 cm), but I prefer smaller-sized issues and felt that their paper looked like it was on the flimsier side, personally, and less durable. I do wish Blurb would match some of the sizes that they have over at their sister company, MagCloud. Again, I did not choose MagCloud as I stated why in that guide of 9+ linked above. Bookvault had more of a yellowish or noticeable color tint difference on the top of the front cover. I would say publications that have between 30-40 pages with Blurb are on the flimsier side, too, and look better with higher page counts. Bookvault will tell you the minimum page count requirement only when you do their upload stages—wish it were in a KB article grid somewhere, but they do have cost calculators. Blurb and Mixam do show on their minimum page requirements well in advance. Mixam has a nice slider. The PDF to Book option, as displayed below in Blurb, is pretty straightforward and not tough, but spine text is something I discuss further down the road and share here. For a 5 x 8 in issue, my upload interior dimensions were actually 5.13 x 8.25 in; inputting exact-sized dimensions always resulted in an error.

Blurb’s paperback trade books have a flexible gloss cover. Over time, as you read and open it, the plastic gloss side exterior edges can lift up, peel over a tad, or crinkle, as you may notice below, and face wear, and all books and magazines are susceptible to that. Bookvault faced less wear over the course of essentially a year due to the heavier paper choice, 150 gsm, giving it more of a magazine-like feel. The higher the grams per square meter (GSM), the heftier it’ll be.

BACK COVER ANALYSIS:

I think both were fine on the back cover quality-wise with Milo’s photograph; however, I did not choose pre-provided ISBNs at Bookvault because that would entail listing one of their partner umbrella services or another as the publisher and distributing. Using the pre-provided ISBNs at Blurb was not what I wanted. If I had at the time a much larger budget to work with I would’ve purchased our own imprint and ISBNs for each issue, as it looks better overall to have your publication name listed in that field too, not another’s. Do listen to EP12: Do You Need An ISSN or ISBN For Your Publication? Again, Blurb specifies they are not the publisher nor any POD service; typically, as you read in the terms, they are simply printing, packing, and shipping orders—expanded distribution is an option, but that jacks up the price if you don’t leave it on their bookstore server. You have 15 days to order a print copy, in order for it to remain on their server and to be able to do other listing and distribution options; otherwise, it gets auto-deleted. Bookvault gives a dummy assignment ISBN for their bookshop, but does not require an ISBN for titles to be listed, akin to Mixam. Going forward, I will not be using pre-provided ISBNs for our magazine relaunch.

SPINE ANALYSIS:

I had never put spine text on a book in my life, nor had any experience before 2022 in terms of book and magazine layouts. The spine was one of the most challenging aspects, in my opinion. It took several test prints and uploads to get it to that point, as you see below (another reason why it helps to have a consistent page count). It cost me quite a bit to do re-uploads and to clean up the issues. I also got our ISSN numbers for print and online, not until issue no. 4. I wasn’t happy with the spine for issue no. 2, which was our thinnest issue, and issue no. 4, but I did my best. About a year and a half in, I went back, tugged out a few typos, added spine text, fixed page number alignment issues, added new back interior copyright pages with our ISSN no assignment, etc. Spines are necessary for thicker magazines. Also, if you have multiple titles over time or even get them shelved somewhere, it makes the title visible whilst one is browsing, or that would catch their eye if it were not facing forward. I didn’t like seeing the issues naked without spine text, and it looks good this way in my opinion.

How did I do it? Well, I found the dimension specification table on Blurb’s site for trade book spines. Then, I went into Canva and input those dimensions. It was more challenging for our other issues, like no. 2, which wasn’t near 170 but closer to 130, so I had to use Microsoft Publisher for the smaller dimensions. I nested the spine I exported in between the front and back cover. I had individually exported each file, the back, spine, and front into three separate files and dropped them in the 10.694 x 8.25 in dimension file for Blurb, for instance.

THE SIDE RESULTS:

Not bad at all, spine text on some platforms is a matter of trial and error. You do need to order a proof copy or print to double-check everything looks good. Issues no. 1 and no. 5 had nearly the same number of pages, so it was much easier to do the spine text dimensions with those. I intentionally did not pry the pages all the way open back then so I would not crease up the spine with lines until I did a share on this series.

INTERIOR ANALYSIS:

Shout out to NOXTROS, in the photo page example above. Check out his awesome music on YouTube, Instagram, and elsewhere! Blurb’s trade book was paperback; I didn’t go with Blurb’s magazine-sized print option, as you see on the left, that’s paperback, but if you’re wondering what I’m referring to, there are a couple of YouTube videos out there on that style I’m referring to that’s offered like this “3 examples of Blurb magazines” on Julia Schlosser’s channel. I personally really love glossy magazine interiors, and of course, that was lacking in our legacy issues since I chose paperback. However, the quality was still great on economy paper for photography. Now with Bookvault on the right-hand side, the paper feels like a cross between banana skin and your phone protector screen when you touch it, it’s not super glossy, but def smooth and more resistant to wear. I do like how durable Bookvault’s print test was—had Blurb had a much smaller magazine size besides 8.5 × 11 in. (22 × 28 cm)—or something closer to MagCloud’s size offerings, then yes, I would have probably gone with that. Blurb’s economy paper is still pretty vivid when it comes to photography; if you were to do their standard premium paper, it would be a bit heavier, less of a washed-out or tad lighter look. Some contributors and featured poets did YouTube videos and reels with past issues, and you couldn’t tell it was on economy paper.

CONCLUSION & ADDITIONAL PRICING THOUGHTS:

Once again, one of the main flaws presently with Bookvault U.S.-based accounts, or mine at least, is that payouts were not resolved until I entered a support ticket; however, I know they’re working on improving their platform gradually and have seen some wicked cool additions on the backend to their order metrics dashboard. eBooks, etc, are coming soon to their system and much more. I’ll add that updating the GBP pricing to align with our U.S.-based store and other listings is something that doesn’t register in a few days in the Great British Bookshop through Bookvault, so I typically have to put a support ticket on that as well, but they do always respond to help me out with price corrections. I have seen some Bookvault reviews and online forum boards stating quality control issues and problems with much larger volume orders in terms of shipping and delivery, etc., but I wouldn’t be able to tell you if that’s true or not, as I have only done pretty small quantities or individual orders with them and received everything fine.

Both Blurb and Bookvault are very easy to use. I never used BookWright, which is Blurb’s free software for book construction, as it seems to suit photobooks more, and I found Canva to be much more flexible for creating templates from scratch or inputting dimensions, and I love the drag-and-drop capabilities. BookWright was not for me, but it may be beneficial for some, depending on your layout.

I don’t use Photoshop for design work; I have never really used Adobe Suite products, just predominantly troubleshooted them for marketing teams and did license seat orders for various companies in the past. I do not use Affinity Publisher or Adobe InDesign, but I know others in the community who do like those. I discuss this in EP29: What Applications Do You Use to Construct the Layout of Your Literary Magazine? The last time I used Adobe products was back in 2015 or 2016 for a few weeks to make some SharePoint banner graphics. I was tempted to try it for magazine construction, did a trial of some Adobe products again, a little over a year ago, if I recall, but the price is what stopped me, and my older Surface Go at the time didn’t meet their technical compatibility requirements on top of that.

I would also recommend listening to EP19: What Are Some Of The Best Print-On-Demand Platforms Out There For Magazines & Presses? How much we get back after printing and shipping, etc., is typically more through The Great British Bookshop than via Blurb. The production costs appear to be way lower at Bookvault for their saddlestich and perfect bound options. PODs do tend to take a lot away in terms of profit overall, though. We do have the issues, and our other chapbook series is also available through The Great British Bookshop.

With Blurb, as I shared on the podcast one time, we were told we couldn’t use economy color paper after a revision upload and order, which they said was approved in error, so that’s why issue no. 4 had the highest unusual price tag on premium standard paper, when we did expanded distribution, and about 94% is taken away from publisher earnings per sale, as you see further below, and I ended up uploading it for free to read as our main sampler via YUMPU. Thankfully, over time, the print issues via Blurb’s expanded Ingram distribution do face price cuts and deep discounts in online bookstores such as Amazon, too, and it’s now $26 for no. 4, and our other back issues, even, are under $10-$25—we have no control over those discounts. Shipping through Blurb or solely their bookstore can be pricy for those outside the U.S., like Canada—I think it was nearly $10-$13, so the discounts in other online bookstores or via Ingram network, if distributed or places like Amazon, are typically better, but it takes several months for any discounts to be applied, and I’m unaware of how the timing works with Amazon discounts.

I always offer a private discount version to contributors, so they were able to get economy versions of each issue or pick up the digital version through our site. It wasn’t until 2024 that I got Dipity Lit Mag into digital subscription platforms for mobile devices and web, where our cover price was $8.99, excluding the monthly cost for the platform others face, which I shared in “11 Digital Subscription PDF Reader App Platforms for Magazines.”

The prices can get insanely high when you do expanded Ingram network distribution on standard non-economy paper or global network distribution with other formats. The reason I went with expanded distribution is that we did international sub calls at Dipity Lit Mag, but Blurb itself supports shipping to over 70 countries, but not all, and some poets lived in countries not listed, or their friends and fam who wanted to order issues. I also wanted physical locations to be able to order our issues through Ingram’s network, but on the backend, it’s just a purple bar; you can never see on Blurb who exactly ordered the issues—it just shows you the unit ordered and the network location.

BLURB BOOK METRICS CHART

SOME OF OUR TITLES ON AMAZON

WHAT’S THE BEST ONE BETWEEN THE TWO?

All in all, which one is more reliable? Well, Blurb has been more dependable in terms of following through on payouts, and they have consistently delivered print orders out to contributors; sadly, I think we may be using them less in 2026 as we try to change the format for our relaunch. Bookvault lets the publisher order proof copies at a very reasonable rate, and pricing can be set fairly since you’re paying for the listing fee—there have been times around the holidays when they had no upload fees for titles. Our payouts have been larger through Bookvault’s Great British Bookshop, but those did not have expanded distribution applied. Blurb tends to have a minimum list price requirement and tacks on additional costs to the listing fee for purchasers when you choose your wholesale discount for expanded distribution into Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Thriftbooks, and Gardners Books, so you do get very little back unless you increase the price. Here’s an example below on a past Blurb Books title showing Broad 40% and Comprehensive 55% for a 130-page economy paper-full color trade book title:

Most bookstores require at least a 40% discount and order solely through the Ingram network. This used to be less, and Blurb notified once their operational expenses went up, and all publishers had to go in and adjust their prices as needed. Also, Blurb does have one-time use discount codes throughout the year in their uppermost banner for publications housed solely through their bookstore server or, at times, for your own publication project orders. Blurb isn’t too bad, listing price-wise, as long as you leave it on their server and don’t choose the expanded Ingram network option unless you really want major physical bookstores to be able to order them.

I would say that Blurb can be on the pricier side overall, which is why you want to be mindful about your page count consistency, paper type, design, full color or B&W, no matter which print provider you choose, and ensure you have all the revisions in place before release, and comb through the issue multiple times. I began to share full previews out to contributors in Paperturn, for instance, and they could generate an email to our help desk and have a ticket change request before publication; usually, it just entailed a bio addition, word change, or updating photo credit details.

I wish Blurb would add more sizes and binding options that MagCloud or even Bookvault have presently. On the backend, Blurb and MagCloud are actually umbrella’d under a parent company, known as Reischling Press (RPI). When you do expanded distribution through Blurb, the titles do not stay up indefinitely or forever; you must have a continuous cycle of orders annually—I learned that through my own personal poetry publications when they pulled all of my self-published titles out of expanded distribution due to a lack of sales and purchase activity in online bookstores. A few years ago, Blurb didn’t use to require a proof purchase to have your publication distributed to online bookstores or Ingram—I suspect they changed this to cut down on distribution pull requests for revisions. Despite this, I think Blurb is a very cool POD out there, and it helped us cover international orders alongside Bookvault. We are able to easily send out individual proof copies to multiple addresses saved, e.g., one in NV and then one in the UK, as needed internationally for our chapbook series, for instance, as we offer 5 in the form of payment, etc. There were times I had to re-enter metadata on listings after saving more than once or making changes to descriptions, etc.

However, I would say one of my favorite print-on-demand providers would be Mixam in terms of quality; it’s just unfortunate that they don’t do international shipping through the U.S. on their print-on-demand, aka PrintLink option. You have to create an international portal account for Canada, European countries, and the options are not identical, if I recall in terms of options, etc. I also wish that more of Mixam’s minimum or large batch quantity order options in terms of binding, sizing, paper, etc., would be offered through their PrintLink option, too. There is no way for us to input a custom discount code on our Great British Bookshop-listed titles, nor Mixam ones. I’ll perhaps do a separate review of Mixam outside of this one, as I have tried printing both chapbooks and issues through them, too, over the years.

OUR TITLES IN THE GREAT BRITISH BOOKSHOP

Additionally, Blurb is one of the few POD services out there that let you create a private, discounted link for contributors, which sets it apart from others. When you’re a member of the Community of Literary Magazines (CLMP), you must either provide contributor copies or offer contributors a discount; hence, a feature like that is tremendously beneficial. I hope more POD platforms implement something like this. I would say Bookvault is quite cost-friendly, and if they iron out the payout system and price update issues I had, then it’s not too shabby at all.

So, if you’re looking for a print-on-demand provider again, just a reminder to read 9 Print On Demand Options For Magazines, Chapbooks & Presses + Book Printing Services—I repeated a few main points from there here, but not all, and cover other options. There are tons of minimum to large order quantity printers like Fireball Printing, PrintNinja, and Jukebox Print, which have phenomenal printing quality that I’d honestly love to use instead, but they’re way outside of my budget, and you’d have to get ISBNs and do the packing and shipping yourself after a batch order, as those are not print-on-demand services at all. I would much rather be a traditional publisher, meaning doing all of the printing, binding, and shipping in-house, but that’s just not possible for me, so print-on-demand is a good alternative solution and less expensive in the long run. On the other hand, again, most PODs take quite a bit of the profit away from sales, but they are ultimately doing the heavy lifting, printing, shipping, etc. Keep in mind, some lit mags and journals publish online and digital issues only, which is totally ok too; you do end up ultimately taking on more expenses with print, however, it’s a good idea to offer your publication in more than one format. For a while, I did try a hardcover dust jacket version, but it can be pretty pricy on standard paper, along with their square-sized photobook offerings that can be pushed to Amazon.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

Originally, the first POD I tried for Dipity Lit Mag was Peecho, based in the Netherlands, and I was drawn to their gloss and private store setup, but I was displeased with their quality check process, as I mentioned elsewhere in the series, and tried a few others geared towards photography, photobook services, which then led up to discovering Blurb. I think some things have changed with Peecho since I last checked them out three years ago, though.

I would say I am happy with the way our legacy issues turned out, and l learned a lot along the way, but 1 through 5 didn’t scream as magazines in my eyes, mostly because they didn’t have that gloss interior or ultra shiny print finish I wanted, but a lot of lit mags and journals exist as paperbacks, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Contributors said they liked the quality of our Blurb Books prints, too. Friends of friends who are photographers absolutely love Blurb’s photobooks for their portfolio work, gifts, or showcasing their travels, etc.

We are using more than one POD because I wanted a specific binding option and paper type for one of our series, e.g. saddle stitch, more so at Dipity Press, so I’d love to cut back on how many we’re using for the lit mag + press I run, but at the moment, it’s necessary to do so to cover international shipping, and I wanted to have our series available in another location as a back up ordering option. There are downsides to each POD, so it comes down to your paper, binding preferences, and which one has the most reasonable production costs and is easy to maneuver and use. Blurb, Bookvault, and Mixam’s PrintLink system have all been great thus far and are not difficult to leverage, but there is room for improvement in different areas, as I mentioned with each one earlier here and within the 9+ pros and cons print-on-demand list.

Last but not least, here’s a quick end-to-end Fast & Furious flip-thru, as I call it, of our Blurb printed trade book. I have uploaded all the other quick previews of issues to Dipity Lit Mag’s channel. Sorry, I do not have a Bookvault video out; there’s just the example photos you saw earlier on the right-hand side. Lulu.com was technically the first print-on-demand service I used way back in 2011 when I was 16 years old. Lulu.com does have a magazine-style print-on-demand option, but I have only poked around the platform, you know, when you upload files, etc., and haven’t tried that format besides their paperback and novel-like options in the past. I hope this helped you!

BLURB FLIP-THRU

Have you used print-on-demand services? Or what’s your go-to printing service or platform?

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by pledging your support, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!

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BONUS LAB REPORT:

This technically applies to tips for submitters, but also new founding editors, more so, covering this too, what to look out for, and what to keep in mind:

1. Long-winded statements and letters tied to sub guidelines and policies, when your guidelines are far too long, several pages to scroll through—that’s going to be super tough on the writer and artist, confusing even and they’ll miss things—too long—not straight to the point, or too short (vague in detail) and they’ll find loopholes in them—be thorough but “keep it short and sweet.” Chapbook manuscript and contest guidelines on sites tend to be a tad longer, which is totally ok, though—I prefer collapsible guidelines—it’s nice to use a submission system too because you can input reminders and reiterate the exact guidelines for each call tied back to what’s summarized or bullet-pointed on your website, etc.

2. Accepting AI work is a big no-no in my eyes—I only support traditional, human-made art and writing. This is, of course, controversial, but over 90% of the people in the lit mag world I know DO NOT support AI-generated work or tools. Submitters who don’t support AI will avoid your publication, of course.

Here is an example of a good bite-sized and straightforward AI policy from Strange Pilgrims:

3. Stating “we have no guidelines,” isn’t good, this may welcome a free-for-all approach or completely overwhelm your reading team or yourself in terms of volume; obviously, every publication has things they specifically look for, most editors have things, subject matter like and don’t like to see, e.g. generic cliche rhymes, so please indicate length requirements, whether or not cover letters are required or if identifying info is concealed, word count or line limits if any, allotted amount of poems, art, or stories, etc., at a time, how often one can submit after an acceptance, whether international submissions are permitted etc. Take some time to read the guidelines of other longstanding lit mags and journals (4-10 years old) and use them as a blueprint for what to keep in mind when creating your very own calls and guidelines from scratch in your own words. You must have guidelines and an FAQ page—otherwise, submitters will struggle, and it helps minimize repeat questions to your inbox.

4. Invisible masthead info—no names of who’s running it or where it’s located—will ultimately create question marks. It’s not necessary to include photos; however, submitters feel more comfortable when they can clearly see who's behind the operations of a publication, including a first name and last name and staff title(s). It shouldn’t be a mystery or hidden who is on your team, of course. If you’re an editor and concerned about privacy, use a pen name you can be addressed by, and put the state or country at a minimum. If you do apply for your ISSN, they do require a visible city location on your website and within your publication issues. Submitters do read masthead info and bios, so include a staff and about section, but do not have them play a game of CLUE or GUESS WHO.

5. Publishers with insanely high fees or ones asking for a boatload of money upfront are huge RED FLAGS; most submitters who see fees will not submit to a publication at all or completely avoid them. Once in a blue moon, yes, submitters may pay tiny sub fees—$1-5 or much lower in range, but fees that are $6-$20+ for general subs seem really fishy and too high. There are a lot of fee-free opportunities out there, so as I’ll say again, really ensure that you’ve exhausted all options before implementing any fees, e.g., Patreon or a fundraising event. I have seen pop-up shops or vanity presses charge $50-$100 or more—eyebrow-raising amounts. Contests in the lit mag world tend to be $18-$20 or more, however, those usually have a jumbo cash prize awarded to one or more of the finalists, some do give a one year subscription to issues too. Again, fee free contests are out there and submission opportunities, as a submitter it makes sense to pivot towards FREE first.

6. Bad tip structures—tips SHOULD NEVER be required for submitters; they should be OPTIONAL after one submits or before. DO NOT require tips or donations.

7. A needle-in-a-haystack “Submit Work” button is going to cause a WHERE’S WALDO? situation; submitters shouldn’t have their mouse cursor hip-hopping around multiple pages to find where to go—the location of guidelines and where to submit should be found in a matter of seconds. It’s ok to direct them to your submission management system landing calls page, but no links should take you out to bizarre, irrelevant, or suspicious slot machine-type pages or have tons of back-to-back pop-ups and a flood of strange advertisements and inappropriate products.

8. Just because a publication has a website doesn’t mean it’s legit. There are places out there with Fake 5-star glowing reviews littered on the site and machine-generated work posted, some pop-up shops have a bunch of AI-generated content spun up, covers, etc., or fake publishing houses and made-up names exist, or impersonators. Be aware of how to identify AI work—it can be hard, and there are tools out there, a clear giveaway when you examine it further carefully, but it’s hard to do with your eyes, and no tool is 100% perfect or accurate.

   1. Investigate editors a bit with quick Google and LinkedIn searches, NEVER reply or click on any suspicious emails outright asking for your work—stating you supposedly just have to pay a fee to do so, etc., or to exchange personal info—look carefully at sender addresses—people have tried impersonating me before too, a lot of lit mags and journals have a dedicated submission system or instructions on their website and do not handle any submissions via email, but not all, so it’s tough—compare sender addresses and hovering over links can reveal their true URL. If you’re ever unsure, it’s best to NOT respond, DO NOT click on any links at all, and delete the email.

9. Seeing everything paywalled or running into every published piece requiring a subscription for access is NOT a great reading experience and is frustrating—you should give visitors and potential submitters at least one free issue sample, preview pages, etc., to flip through or have at least make a few FREE pieces, e.g., poems, available to read on the website from back issues so they get a sense of what the publication looks for or has accepted in the past.

Here’s a great example of 32 Poems Volume 16 Number 1, offering a few pieces, two linked in blue, that are free to read online:

10. Publishers are reaching out aggressively, stating they are “short on work” but have hefty fees implemented or are asking you to pay up to do so—yes, some publications with minimal fees $2-$5, are genuine publications that use those fees to cover expenses or pay writers for their work and send reminder messages through Submittable when you for instance abandon a saved draft, but in most cases those reminders or notifications are just a way for them to grab some more cash. Remember to delete your drafts on fee-required publishers, e.g., within Submittable, that you have no interest in submitting to and do research on them—look at search results under their name, scan Reddit boards, Chill Subs ratings overview pages, the Better Business Bureau, social media posts, Substack comment sections of Lit Mag News, other writer news blogs, and take some time to see whether others have noticed scammy behavior.

11. “Too good to be true,” promising publication, a marketing package deal and more and practically guaranteeing an acceptance, or even asking for a bunch of personal information, to just join a group they’ve created of some kind and asking you to cough up money, at most, with submission systems like Submittable, your name, email, and preferred mailing address is provided, but nothing more—your submission should be reviewed carefully by a publication’s editor if solo run or undergo team rounds for fair consideration—you shouldn’t have to pay up chunks of money to become published at all.

12. Complicated Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policies or third-party organizations mentioned with no clear names behind them either, as we discussed on the podcast a tad, and referred to past discussions over on Lit Mag News, scroll down to the very bottom of websites, and on a lot of lit mags and presses, you’ll be able to view and read those, yes they can be long typically but you should examine those carefully before engaging with a publication further, honestly most have quite similar wording and sections but NOT all.

13. A conga line of KING KONG grammatical errors—when a submitter sees a ton of errors or huge hiccups in guidelines, paragraphs, etc., across the site, this could be a major turn-off as well, and gives a publication a yellow or red card, too. A few typos here and there are ok, we’re all human, but in every line or nearly every single one in the guidelines SHOULDN’T have errors in them—it creates a really poor experience for potential submitters, and they may feel that the editor is inexperienced or sloppy.

14. ZERO contact info—a publication should have a visible contact e-mail address for general questions, or better yet, a contact form/inbox section where the editor could be reached aside from, for instance, the submission management system.

15. Having constantly outdated or mismatched information can be detrimental to a publication’s success; it’s essential to update a lit mag site regularly, ensuring that your calls in the submission management system align with, for instance, what’s stated or outlined on the website. Submitters will move on if the publication looks like it’s been abandoned, or mistake it as on hiatus if much older calls are visible first to them.

16. SUPER PRICY issues—are the print or digital issues reasonably priced? If not, contributors will probably look away unless free or deeply discounted copies are provided.

17. LACK of CONTENT WARNINGS—while not mandatory, there are times I have come across some lit mags with very few or non-existent content and trigger warnings over writing and rather graphic photos or art. While some may be ok without those, not everyone, so it’s important to consider implementing a line at least in advance, an indicator, or a stoppage of some kind to give a heads up.

After reading, any experiences of scams you’d like to share or odd behavior you’ve noticed in the lit mag world in general that bothers you?

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by pledging your support, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!

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LAB REPORT

I discussed these further in EP67: What Distribution Options Exist For Literary Magazines & Presses? | Publishers | Fulfillment of the podcast, and also in EP63: Asterism Books: Online Bookstore & Trade Distributor for Independent Literature, do view the comprehensive list that is maintained by CLMP, see this public page: About the Closure of Small Press Distribution (SPD): FAQ. I’ve added a few others below that I came across or heard about in terms of SPD alternatives.

As stated in the The Lit Mag Lab podcast episodes, keep in mind that physical book and magazine distributors do not automatically accept all publishers and small presses that are interested in partnering; they must vet your publication and series, and sometimes they may request samples of issues, chapbooks, etc. It’s not necessarily about how many publications you have; each has different requirements and things they look for, and most take a small percentage of your sales or transactions, but ultimately can aid in overseeing the packing and shipping of orders—you’re just ensuring the inventory you have, which they need, is supplied consistently to their designated warehouse location. I would also recommend listening to EP12: Do You Need An ISSN or ISBN For Your Publication?. In a few other episodes, I also discuss ebook digital-focused distributors and subscription platforms.

If publishers are unable to get on board with a distributor, then they typically must handle the orders themselves and do self-distribution through their website, or some may leverage print-on-demand platforms, as discussed in:

Asterism Books

Website: https://asterismbooks.com/

Itasca Books | A Division of Bookmobile

Website: https://itascabooks.com/

Bookmobile

Small Changes

Website: https://www.smallchanges.com/’

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution (CBSD)

Website: https://www.cbsd.com/

Disticor | Magazine & Distribution Services

Website: https://www.disticor.com/

(IPG) Independent Publishers Group

Website: https://www.ipgbook.com/

Accelerate360

Website: https://accelerate360.com/

National Book Network

Website: https://nbnbooks.com/

PM Press

Website: https://blog.pmpress.org/2019/08/08/contact-us/

Ingram Content Group

Website: https://www.ingramcontent.com/publishers/distribution

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by Dipity Lit Mag & dipity.press, founded by Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series by pledging your support via Substack or buying me a coffee or pizza below if you’d like, but not required to by any means. Have awesome days ahead!

Support

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LAB REPORT

There are several free nomination events, and editors can select accepted work—there’s a certain number for each event allowed to be entered, along with a publication window that is eligible for consideration. Often, work that wins some of these award events will be placed in a print anthology series of some kind, which is very cool—consider these events like the Olympics, as many have said, but for lit mags and presses. Windows and guidelines, as well as addresses, can change over time. Please visit the website directly beneath each one to read the eligibility requirements and instructions in full. Although this list is for 2025, a majority of these nomination events occur annually, so I may update this in the future. I will also include a few other well-known, awesome events toward the very end from other organizations, such as the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP), which typically have rather massive annual cash awards for exemplary publishers.

Most deadlines have passed or are approaching soon, since it’s the end of the year, but do bookmark this, of course, and mark your calendar for next year. I discussed some of these on the podcast: EP27: What Are Some of the Nomination & Award Events That Exist for Lit Mags & Presses?

A lot of these award events leverage some kind of submission management system, or intake form, e.g., Submittable, Google Forms, etc. but not all.

Below are the most common ones that you can scroll through this list and check these out:

The Pushcart Prize

[They] welcome up to six nominations (print or online) from little magazine and small book press editors throughout the world. [They] also accept nominations from our staff of distinguished Contributing Editors. The nominations may be any combination of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs or stand-alone excerpts from novels. [They] welcome translations, reprints and both traditional and experimental writing.

Nominations are accepted between October 1 - December 1 (postmarked) for next year’s Pushcart edition. [They] do not accept nominations via email. Please send one copy of each work. Please do not send entire books or journals. No nominations can be returned.

Nominations must have been published (or scheduled to be published) in the current calendar year.

There is no entry fee and no form to fill out.

Website: http://www.pushcartprize.com/nomination.html

Note: For Pushcart, you’d have to print them all out and physically mail those in. They don’t want entire issues or books sent in, nor do they take emails. So each one on a separate numbered page, the title and author name, the piece, of course. I include the publication date on the right-hand side at the bottom footer for each one, followed by the publication magazine/journal/press name, and specify if it was online or print. Then include one last page in the envelope with the editor's contact info. I have only ever provided URLs for Best of the Net, but I know some include that on the individual paper printouts, too.

Best of the Net

Participant Qualifications:

• Submissions must come from the editor of the publication (journal, chapbook, online press, etc), or, if the work is self-published, it may be sent by the author.

• Submissions must have originally appeared online, though later print versions are acceptable.

• The poem, story, or essay must have been first published or appeared on the web between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026.

For journals and presses, each entry may include up to:

• six poems

• two stories

• two works of creative nonfiction

• and three works of art.

For the full guidelines on their website and time window requirements, please look at their site.

Note: You must provide the contact information for each writer or artist nominated, including their full name, email address, and all the URLs of the published works. I love submission management systems, as discussed in Over 8 Submission Management Systems For Literary Magazines & Presses [2025] Subfolio vs Submittable + Others Reviewed, because you can easily retrieve submission records for these events. Typically, editors do individual Google Forms for each piece, unsure if they’ll move to a different submission system one day for this event. Art can include, for instance, photography selected for the front cover of an online or digital issue featuring writing predominantly.

Website: https://bestofthenetanthology.com/

Best New Poets

Best New Poets 2025 is a book for emerging writers. will only accept submissions from writers who have NOT yet published a book-length poetry collection. This includes self-published books if they were sold online, in stores, or at readings. For the purposes of BNP eligibility, [they] do not consider chapbooks to be “book length,” and poets with only chapbook publications remain eligible to enter.

Poets with forthcoming books may enter if their first book’s publication date is after April 1, 2025. Writers who have edited and published an anthology or a collection of other writers’ works remain eligible.

The anthology takes submissions from three sources:

• nominations from literary magazines in the United States and Canada,

• nominations from graduate-level writing programs in the United States and Canada, and entries from an annual open competition.

Note: There was a $5 submission fee to this, as of 2025, not sure if that’ll change one day.

Website: https://bestnewpoets.org/

Best Microfiction

Each nomination should be a separate submission. At the top of each submission, please write your own name, the name of your magazine, and the author’s name and e-mail address.

You are welcome to nominate up to five microfiction stories that were published by your publication in 2025. Please do not include work that has already appeared in an anthology or ‘best-of’ list, or that has won a prize from another competition. If your nomination wins an award after our selections have been made, that’s fine. But if the work has already won an award, please do not submit it here.

So, to summarize...

Requirements:

1. Nominations from Literary Magazine editors only

2. 400 words or less

3. Limit of five nominations published in 2025

4. Deadline December 15th, 2025

5. At the top of each submission, write:

6. your name

7. the name of your magazine

8. author’s name and e-mail address

9. Not accepted:

10. work previously published in anthologies

11. work published in ’best of’ lists

12. prize-winning stories from other competitions

Website: https://www.bestmicrofiction.com/

Best Spiritual Literature

By nominating work for inclusion in Best Spiritual Literature, you are indicating that you have acquired the permission of the author(s) to do so.

Editors may submit a scanned copy of print pages or a PDF file of the text.

Submission period: August 1 – November 1 each year

Single genre submissions: Submit up to 6 poems (30 pp. max), or up to 2 works of prose (any genre; 50 pp. max). If the work is not easily classified, submit up to 60 pages of text. In the file, include the author’s name and biography, the name of your periodical, and the issue number(s) in which the work appeared.

Multiple genre submissions: submit up to 3 poems (20 pp. max) and a work of prose (any genre; 25 pp. max). If the work is not easily classified, submit up to 60 pages of text. In the file, include the author’s name and biography, the name of your periodical, and the issue number(s) in which the work appeared. & nonfiction).

Website: https://www.orisonbooks.com/submissions

Monarch Queer Literary Awards

Monarch Queer Literary Awards is a new annual anthology recognizing the best new queer writing and art published by literary magazines and independent presses. Most awards for queer and LGBTQ+ writing are dedicated to honoring full-length books; while we honor the critical importance of these awards, we aim to create a complementary space for uplifting the groundbreaking and often under-celebrated poems, short stories, essays, and artwork that are published in magazines, chapbooks, zines, and other collections.

IMPORTANT: They require that you ask your authors in advance if they would like to be nominated for this award before you nominate their work.

[They] will accept nominations from September 1, 2025 through November 30, 2025.

• Nominations must come from the editor(s) of the publication. Journals and independent presses are both eligible.

• The work nominated must have been initially published between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, either online or in print.

• [They] accept poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid, and art. Each journal or press may nominate:

  • Up to five poems of no more than 10 pages in total, AND/OR

  • Up to two fiction pieces of no more than 3,000 words apiece, AND/OR

  • Up to two nonfiction pieces of no more than 3,000 words apiece, AND/OR

  • Up to two hybrid pieces of no more than 3,000 words apiece, AND/OR

  • Up to five art pieces.

    • Both cover art and interior art are eligible for nomination.

• [They] do not accept any work that has been generated, in part or in full, by artificial intelligence.

• [They] do not accept any work that contains any form of hate speech.

• If accepted, they ask for non-exclusive anthology rights.

Website: https://monarch.gay/

Genrepunk Awards

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Genrepunk Editors’ Choice Award

• Published August 2024 – July 2025

• Submissions accepted August 10, 2025 – October 15, 2025

• Nominations from literary magazine editors only

• Any genre

• Up to 3 pieces

• No more than 25 pages each

• NO SELF-NOMINATIONS from writers/artists in this category, please

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Genrepunk Award for Disabled Creatives

• Published August 2024 – July 2025

• Submissions accepted August 10, 2025 – October 15, 2025

• Creator must self-identify as disabled

• Any genre

• Up to 3 pieces

• No more than 25 pages each

• Nominations accepted from readers and/or editors

• Self-nominations accepted

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Genrepunk Wildcard Award

• Published August 2024 – July 2025

• Submissions accepted August 10, 2025 – October 15, 2025

• Must be experimental, hybrid, multimedia, multimodal, interactive, etc. in some way

• Any genre

• Up to 3 pieces

• No more than 25 pages each

• Nominations accepted from readers and/or editors

• Self-nominations accepted

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Genrepunk Haunting Award

• Published August 2024 – July 2025

• Submissions accepted August 10, 2025 – October 15, 2025

• A story, poem, essay, art piece, etc. that gotten ahold of you and won’t let go

• Any genre (Not limited to horror!)

• Up to 3 pieces

• No more than 25 pages each

• Nominations accepted from readers and/or editors

• NO SELF-NOMINATIONS from writers/artists in this category, please

---

Nominations should not use AI in any capacity.

Website: https://genrepunkmag.wordpress.com/genrepunk-awards/

The Dipponaut Awards

The Dipponaut Awards is a brand new art-focused award event underway through Dipity Lit Mag open to literary magazines around the world, which will focus on web design, cover art, interior photography, and illustration pieces. NO AI, human-created work only. Physical trophies will be mailed to each winner and more details will be shared in the future regarding its launch whether it will be a print anthology or just online spotlight awards event. I am still finalizing the details and deciding on a few other things, such as the space and if we’ll consider concrete or visual poems as a category. Nominations must come from an editor at the lit mag where the work first appeared. For now you can follow it on social media channels and our site TBA.

Best Small Fictions

Best Small Fictions is the first-ever contemporary anthology solely dedicated to anthologizing the best internationally published short hybrid fiction in a given calendar year. Now in its tenth year of existence, Best Small Fictions features the best microfiction, flash fiction, haibun stories, and prose poetry from around the world.

Editors are encouraged to send their five best works of flash and microfiction, haibun stories, and prose poems published in the previous year. Submissions for the 2025 edition are now closed. Submissions for the 2026 edition will open on November 15, 2025, and will consider pieces published in the 2025 calendar year. A submission link will appear here when the submission portal is open.

Website: https://altcurrentpress.com/best-small-fictions/

Best American Poetry [DISCONTINUED]

After 38 years, 38 anthologies and two greatest hits collections, ‘The Best American Poetry’ series is concluding with its 2025 edition.

Website: https://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/

Best American Short Stories & Essays

Website: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/bestamericanseries

IMPORTANT: There is also Best American Food and Travel Writing, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy volumes (guidelines can be found on their submission guidelines button at the site link above when you scroll)

Aurealis

Any work of original speculative fiction written by an Australian citizen or permanent resident and published for the first time between 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2025 is eligible to be entered. Only the first published edition of a work is eligible for entry.

Works that have been created with the use of generative artificial intelligence are strictly forbidden from entry in the Aurealis Awards. This includes written and illustrative content.

Website: https://aurealisawards.org/

Forward Prizes

One of the most coveted prizes for new poetry [for those] in the UK and Ireland, honouring fresh voices alongside internationally established names. [It looks like events have taken place since 1992].

Website: https://forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry/

The Hugo Award

Website: https://www.thehugoawards.org/information-for-publishers/

Locus Awards

There is no submission process for the Locus Awards per se. [They] recommend submitting your book for review and then sending [them] a final copy. Titles can be written in by the voters, so even submitting your book isn’t strictly required, but getting the attention of the Locus reviewers and readers in advance is strongly recommended.

Website: https://locusmag.com/aboutlocusonline/submission-guidelines/

The O. Henry Prize

There are some big changes to the anthology. The two most important are these: for the first time, stories in translation are eligible, and now each edition has a guest editor whose brilliant, unique vision is reflected.

The guest editor chooses the twenty O. Henry Prize winners from a large pool of stories passed to [them] by the series editor. Stories published in magazines and online are eligible for inclusion. Stories may be written in English or translated into English.

For the full submission guidelines, see the contact email address details beneath the details page, etc.

Website: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/C97/the-o-henry-prize-collection/

SFPA Rhysling Awards

Nominees for each year’s Rhysling Awards are selected by the membership of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Each member is allowed to nominate one work in each of two categories: “Best Long Poem” (50–299 lines; for prose poems, 500–1,999 words) and “Best Short Poem” (11–49 lines; for prose poems, 101–499 words).

All nominated works must have been first published during the preceding calendar year of the awards year.

Website: https://sfpoetry.org/wp/rhysling-award/

World Fantasy

Website: https://worldfantasy.org/world-fantasy-awards-2025/

CLMP | Firecracker Awards

Submission Guidelines

• There is no limit to the number of unique entries publishers may submit.

• The entry fee is $65 ($55 for CLMP Members) for the first submission and $45 ($35 for CLMP Members) for each additional entry. Interested in becoming a CLMP Member? Join now.

Book Categories

• Books must be published by an independent publisher during the 2025 calendar year.

• Books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for adults are eligible. This includes English-language books from international publishers, books in translation, and graphic novels.

• Self-published books, including books published with “hybrid” publishers in which authors pay for part or all of publication costs, are not eligible.

• Children’s and young adult books are not eligible.

• Anthologies are not eligible.

• Posthumous submissions are not eligible. The author or translator must be living at the time of submission.

• Entries should be submitted by the publisher. However, authors may submit their own books if the publisher consents to the entry of the book. If an author submits their book themselves, they must provide contact information for the publisher in the application. CLMP will only communicate with publishers about submitted books.

Magazine Categories

• Magazines must be independent and literary in nature (primarily publishing fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and/or literary reviews).

• Magazines submitting in the General Excellence category must have published regularly for at least the past two years.

• Magazines submitting in the Best Debut category must have launched in the 2024 or 2025 calendar years.

• Both print and digital magazines are eligible.

• Magazines may be based anywhere in the world, but at least 50% of the magazine’s content must be in English.

• Magazines may be submitted in only one category.

Website: https://www.clmp.org/programs-opportunities/firecracker/

CLMP | The Constellation Award

• Presses must have a demonstrated commitment to championing books by people of color, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and AAPI authors.

• Presses must have a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their business practices.

• Presses must be English-language and/or Spanish-language publishers based in the United States.

• Presses must be independent publishers of literary books. (Over half the list must consist of fiction, poetry, drama, and literary prose.)

• Presses must not be primarily self-publishing. (At least 50% of titles must be published by authors not on staff.)

• Presses must not charge authors a fee to publish their work.

• Presses must have a two-year track record of publishing at least two titles a year.

• Presses’ annual net sales must be below $1 million.

Website: https://www.clmp.org/programs-opportunities/constellation-award/

Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines (REALM) Awards

The REALM program publicly recognizes excellent literary magazines produced by students with the support of their teachers. REALM is designed to encourage all schools to develop literary magazines that celebrate the art and craft of writing.

Website: https://ncte.org/awards/realm-awards/

The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers

The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers recognizes 12 emerging writers each year for their debut short story published in a literary magazine, journal, or cultural website, and aims to support the launch of their careers as fiction writers. The 12 winning stories are selected by a committee of three judges who are well-respected experts in the art of the short story. The winning writers each receive a $2,000 cash prize and will be published by Catapult in their annual anthology, Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize.

Website: https://pen.org/literary-awards/pen-dau-short-story-prize/

AWP Prize for Undergrad Lit Mags

Formerly the National Program Directors’ Prize, the AWP Prize for Undergrad Lit Mags is awarded annually to one outstanding undergraduate-led journal and two runners-up. The prize celebrates the work of undergraduate student writers and editors, including exceptional content, cohesive design, and innovation.

Submissions open February 1–28 annually.

Website: https://awpwriter.org/AWP/Contests/Prize-for-Undergrad-Lit-Mags/Overview.aspx

Find More Award Events For Publishers

CLMP has a page featuring various awards events from around the world for magazines and presses, with the month and fee amount, if any. But again, as they state, you should always visit the site for the most current guidelines, entry details, and deadlines because sometimes things change over time.

Website: https://www.clmp.org/programs-opportunities/awards-for-publishers/

Conclusion

Nomination and award events are a wonderful way to highlight some amazing writers and artists’ accepted work further. Some of these events have been around for a very long time. It’s always an extremely tough decision for editors on selecting work for these award events. Submitters do look at whether or not editors nominate work for some of these events, too. I’d say absolutely it’s worth it to enter, especially the free events. There are definitely more in existence out there; these are just some of the ones I am aware of, thanks to CLMP newsletters and Chill Subs.

You should always have a section on your own lit mag or press site to track nominations and share those on social media or through your mailing list. There are a number of events for emerging and debut poets and short stories, so it’s a good idea to have, e.g, in an acceptance agreement for submitters, a checkbox indicating if it’s the very first story, poem, etc., that they’ve had published.

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by pledging your support, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!

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Start Locally

Before looking at any of these, it is always recommended to look in your home state, within your city, or nearby places that print magazines and books; most places, however, will require rather hefty minimum order quantities that I’ll share at the very bottom, which can be tough to do, especially if you’re on a tight budget. Usually, those who run a publication cannot afford to do all of the printing, logistics, and distribution themselves, so they resort to print-on-demand (POD) instead, like a lot of self-publishers, and will typically purchase ISBNs for their publisher imprint—be sure to listen to EP#12. I decided not to use any local printers in Nevada. You could probably find more local printers through Yelp’s directory. I’ll share print examples in a separate article soon.

I personally recommend having more than one ordering option available as a backup in the event one is discontinued. I just want to point out that everyone has varied customer service interactions. I highly recommend you look at more customer service reviews online and complaints before choosing a POD place.

I found out recently, this year that back in my home state, Minnesota, there’s this cool place called Bookmobile that helps with printing, dropshipping, and distribution, but it’s not POD I believe you need to know the exact number of copies you’ll be printing, having them keep inventory-wise and they have services to facilitate an Amazon or online bookstore site listing. I haven’t tried them myself yet or any dropshipping options, as I have a few remaining questions, but I will share some PoD options I have used below as a publisher and writer myself:

Bookvault

I started using Bookvault in 2024 due to the number of formats offered—it looks like they’re going to start up eBooks in the near future.

PROS

• They’re based in the UK, but have expanded to printing in the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Because we have quite a few readers based in the UK, it made sense for us to leverage them and to use them as a backup option to cover international orders.

• Very low cost printing, out of the platforms I have seen, a much higher profit margin on average through the Great British Bookshop (GBBS) alone, compared to Blurb Bookstore, if you don’t distribute it further. You get payouts on the 14th from the GBBS

• A wide array of sizing and binding options, and it’s quite easy to use—you can upload a PDF of the interior, and then a separate PDF file for the cover and spine. I will share a video or side-by-side comparison of print quality against Blurb soon.

• There’s a fairly low or reasonable one-time listing fee calculated based on the number of pages, your publication’s exterior, color printing, etc., which has, on average for me has been less than $15-20 for each publication.

• After the listing fee to the GBBS, or after you’ve passed the setup process and need to make a revision, you can at any time—as of June 2025, still, there are no additional revision fees nor proof copy order requirements, but you should always order a sample of course to verify everything or to catch any grammatical and formatting errors.

• Custom sizing options are available beyond the standard ones—just toggle to U.S. measurements

CONS

• Shipping can take a bit longer sometimes and varies compared to one of the other U.S.-based options.

• It can be tough to price match exactly due to no control over the fluctuating GBP. I find myself using a conversion search from USD to GBP from time to time, outside of their platform, when setting up the price.

• Tough to instantly update your price in the GBBS shop, hasn’t been a few days or 24 to 48 hours for me, I usually have to email changes not reflecting, and they help address it.

• Starting out, I had to email about payouts not being received or missing a few times, but they have always responded promptly and addressed it every single time. Payouts outside of the U.K. are not yet as consistent, so you have to keep a close eye on your sales reports and dashboard each month.

• There is a minimum threshold payout amount—£100 for non-UK accounts.

• Sometimes I’ve had to refresh or go back in a couple of times to re-enter data, e.g., category, description, etc., and save it again after a minor change—they are ironing it out.

• They have global distribution options with an additional cost; however, those should not be used if you intend to remain the publisher.

• Quite a few options are not available for printing within the U.S. at the moment—you will see some greyed out or ineligible for some distribution options outside of the GBBS.

• Minimum page count requirements vary for each format, e.g., paperback, I recall in most cases needs to be a minimum of 50+ and saddle-stitch 30+ pages. You don’t see the minimum req. page count until you enter all the details about your publication formatting-wise.

• Modern 360 degree proof review and backend listing management dashboard that lets you save addresses, see detailed reports on orders, ec.

Mixam PrintLink

PROS

• They have PrintLink options for those located in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, and Germany. Germany and Australia have regional shipping, and Australia has under int. shipping, just New Zealand—this is subject to change in the future.

• The quality of printing has always been top-notch in my opinion, particularly over saddle-stitched binding compared to Bookvault—it feels more durable.

• I liked their photo quality paperback book options, but probably should’ve chosen a smaller size—I was unable to get it close to our series 5.5 x 8.5 for photobook printing

• Easy to upload your files and have them reviewed by the Mixam team—they help aid in adjusting to correct full bleed, or do a basic quality check or screening of your publication, which usually takes an average of 3-4 days.

• Much faster payouts than Blurb—typically occur in the second week of each following month.

• Allows for a dedicated store portal with bundle ordering options for the different print series you may create.

CONS

• If you’re a publisher in the U.S., their POD option, called PrintLink, does not support international shipping as of 2025, but their support told me that you can create a separate account on another dedicated country site portal via the flag toggle to facilitate PrintLink printing outside the U.S. The other country’s portal options last seen were not identical for selections in terms of size and format choices, e.g., on Mixam UK, at least.

  • Of course, you could order a large quantity in the U.S. and do the shipping yourself as an alternative, as needed, through their other batch order services, which have more variety over paper, size, and cover option combos.

• Limited gloss paper options in the PrintLink—you can do it with saddle-stitch and hardcover, but regular bound magazines or their other options tied to gloss paper, not part of PrintLink, would need to go through their minimum order, large batch order option.

• No ISBN or pre-provided options, you’d have to purchase your own ISBN and add it to your publications, but an ISBN is not required.

• You used to be able to see the names behind order numbers, but not anymore—unsure if this will ever change again, in regards to seeing who is placing them alongside the dedicated order number generated via email or within the dashboard.

  • Production costs can get quite high on publication projects with higher page counts, full color, paper types, and binding combos that allow higher page counts. 180 pages, for example, especially the photo quality paperback books would be approximately $38.50 or $29-$40 for photo books with more than 100 pages on 100lb satin text, making the end listing pricier.

• Saddle-stitch production is within a few dollars, e.g. $5-$8, typically not too bad for chapbooks unless Mixan’s production costs increase substantially, then you must adjust your prices accordingly; otherwise, you won’t see any return at times or very little to allocate towards future ones in your series if you’re using the sales to fund more projects.

Blurb

PROS

• Has had the fastest customer support response times

• You can have a paperback or a hardcover, a dust jacket publication, plus image-wrapped ones

• Print quality over photography is fairly good within their trade books on economy and standard paper—they probably have the best photobook POD printing too. Economy paper is just a tad lighter overall; some say it’s like a washed look, which I agree.

  • Note: You can see flip-through examples of issues #1-3 and #5 on the economy paper in our Dipity Lit Mag YouTube Shorts section and Facebook; we could not use the economy paper on #4

• A traditional 8.5 x 11” gloss magazine option is available

• Volume discounts, like most places listed on here, are possible

• Distribution through the Ingram network is available over paperback and hardcover trade books

• You can set up a private purchase link for contributors and those featured at a discounted rate

• Pre-provided ISBNs can be used, but if you would like your Publisher Imprint on the ISBN, you must purchase one through, e.g., Bowker—they are not the publisher, even if you do end up using the Blurb-provided ISBNs

• The UI is not complicated—PDF files are supported

CONS

• There are no other smaller sizes besides 8.5 x 11 in for magazines, which is why some resort to another company under their umbrella—MagCloud, which has mixed reviews.

• I feel the magazines look too flimsy unless you have a higher page count to make them thicker same applies to trade books that are lower in page count. Trade books have a minimum req. page count of 30, and photobooks and magazines have a minimum page count of 20

• Shipping is usually on the higher side, usually $10 for those in Canada or anyone outside the U.S., and slightly lower for those in the U.S—that’s what I noticed between 2022-2024.

• Super long payout wait times usually after 30 days or the week of the 4th of each month; some sales may take between 60-90 days.

• Pricing tends to be on the higher side overall on all publication types, especially if you wish to distribute a trade book or hardcover book via the Ingram network at a 40% or 50% bookstore discount, so you have to be mindful of your page count

• Lower profit margins outside of the Blurb Bookstore—when you do Ingram network distribution, but that’s the case with most PODs.

• You must have regular sales activity each year; otherwise, they will pull your publication from the Ingram network distribution and global online bookstore locations, and then it goes back to you, making it solely available on their bookstore server. I got a notice about my own publications a few months ago, and all were pulled out (which is why I recommend digitizing your work too).

• If you would like to revise your publication as of 6-7-2025 still, you have to delete it, reupload it again, and order a new copy each time to enable selling options—there is no built-in file revision or editing option.

• No eBook distribution, just a PDF digital file option at a fixed price of $5

• You can’t always choose economy paper, after you upload it, etc., and submit it, especially to the Ingram network—there have been times we we were told that we had to switch some issues to standard paper due to higher ink volume coverage, e.g., certain designs or those with more black ink—so it looked odd when one issue was $58 on standard paper ~178 pages but price cuts do occur overtime in online bookstores

IngramSpark

PROS

• Ingram offers global distribution options, which make it the go-to for those who wish to be available for physical bookstore location orders, or even libraries and educational institutions.

• Accepts PDF files

• Supports eBook creation

• Revision fees ($25 for updates) were discontinued in February 2026.
  

CONS

• I see time and time again issues reported about customer service online, and not a ton of positive reviews exist. But some do have good experiences with them, and I have purchased publications that used IngramSpark that turned out well

• The UI is not as friendly nor as easy to get the hang of

• There are much higher setup fees and revision fees

• No traditional magazine options—just paperback and hardcover standard book paper types—technically, a lot of lit mags have paperback issues, but if you’re looking for a more traditional magazine or zine look. They do have Ultra-Premium Color paper, though, which may be more appropriate for photography.

Lulu.com

Back in 2011, Lulu.com was one of the first places I published a book of my earliest middle school doodles, Salty Cartoons, and iDraw under my real name—my grandpa in NY was the only one who bought them. Since then, Lulu.com has evolved and grown—still going strong.

PROS

• Fairly quick and easy to use

• They have not just magazine POD options—you can do paperback and hardcover books, plus eBooks

• Has a B&W option for magazines

CONS

• Only 8.5 x 11 in and 8.27 x 11.69 in on 70 GSM paper for magazines

• There are no smaller sizes for magazine printing

• Magazines must remain on the Lulu.com bookstore—I believe only books are eligible for global distribution

• They discontinued saddle-stitched printing for distribution as well

MagCloud

PROS

• Diverse size and binding options

• You can offer digital version purchases and customize the price, unlike Blurb, which is nice

CONS

• I struggled with the margins on their upload system, and find Blurbs UI much easier than MagClouds

• I noticed a very high trend of customer service complaints and quality issues, so I never moved forward with them

• There are no distribution options—the publications remain in the MagCloud store

Peecho

Back in 2022, I switched from Peecho to Blurb—their website has changed quite a bit. I was disappointed in the quality checks—so it resulted in refunds, based on the upload, the margins looked ok in the flip-through, but it was tough to see in their UI any glaring issues. Also, they were going to continue to print and fulfill the orders after informing me of issues with the first one, and the cost was way too high back then. With our page count at 178 on 115 GSM, it would be about $35.00, including shipping. In my opinion, Blurb and Mixam have better human quality checks, and Bookvault’s UI is slowly improving.

PROS

• Akin to Mixam’s PrintLink option, you can get your own branded shop page space to centralize ordering.

• They do have fairly good quality printing overall—I think their POD magazine printing is better than Blurb and Lulu.com, but ended up doing trade book and paperback issues instead

• A lot more sizing options are available

CONS

• Their support is solely based in Europe, if I recall, in the Netherlands, which is difficult for the U.S.-based publishers

• Shipping can be much slower through them, typically

• For me, it was hard to really tackle and check the margins in their UI back in 2022—Mixam was easier for me, and the Mixam staff does a good job of having your publication undergo a margin warning check before going live; however, they don’t check page order. numbering, etc, that’s on you

Amazon KDP

PROS

• Amazon is widely used, and you can have more eyes sometimes there due to the massive amount of browsing traffic, not necessarily, but def larger than some of the other bookstore options above.

• It’s fairly easy to set up a B&W text-based book, paperback, and hardcover, and you can centrally make eBook versions

• Expanded distribution is an option if you’d like to try to be in more physical locations

• You can choose a pre-provided Amazon ISBN, or you can submit one you’ve purchased yourself for your publication’s imprint.

CONS

• They stopped at some point, permitting new magazine subscriptions, so it’s not friendly in terms of trying to create more traditional magazines.

• I tried uploading one of our photography-focused issues, and although I got past the preliminary system checks, it was still not permitted and declined due to margins—I tried three times, so the UI and process are tougher, more so with publications that have images, illustrations, photographs, etc.

• Most bookstores will not order books through Amazon and will primarily go through just the Ingram network or solely order publications with expanded and global distribution options

• I have seen mixed reviews on Amazon in terms of print quality overall

The Book Patch

PROS

• It looks like they just added a saddle-stitch option recently, which is cool. So there are perfect-bound, spiral-bound, and hardcover-case wrap options too.

• They print from the U.S. and do international shipping; however, I see mixed reviews and a pattern of complaints, which is a bit worrisome.

Other Ones

IMPORTANT: The below are NOT necessarily print-on-demand options but do have printing services and support a wide array of projects:

PrintNinja

(Has required minimum ordering quantities). I know quite a few in the community leverage them because the quality is very good

Jukebox Print

Canada-based (but allows for international use and shipping)

• Note: I think their book printing is pretty stellar, as good as Mixam’s, Fireball Print, and PrintNinja’s, based on what I saw sample-wise from others—wish they had a POD option though, as it’s very pricy with (required minimum order quantities), e.g., 50 showed nearly $350 on perfect bond excluding shipping. They have a wide array of sizing and interior paper options, too. P.S. I def think their sticker printing quality is wicked awesome.

Smartpress

(Has required minimum ordering quantities), They’re based out of my home state, Minnesota.

Doxzoo

(Allows for international use)—saddle-stitch is possible

Fireball Printing

Pennsylvania-based (has required minimum ordering quantities) and only ships within the U.S., but they offer solid-quality printing

Edition One Books

• I have heard good things about Edition One Books in terms of quality. You can do softcover, hardcover, and booklet projects through them. Haven’t used them myself; however, it looks like they have a high minimum order total of ~$1000.

In terms of offset printing, I’ve heard about Acutrak, 48 Hour Books, DiggyPOD, and Book Print Canada, but I don’t think I’ll ever use those. I doubt I’ll use MagCloud and The Book Patch just based on the concern over the large number of poor reviews on quality issues and customer service, but that doesn’t mean everyone will have the same experience with those two. In terms of self-publication platforms or POD, I have heard about Amazon’s competitor, Barnes & Noble’s (B&N Press), though again haven’t used that one either.

You really have to try and see what works best for you—which printer(s) you want to stick with long-term, especially for any series, if you cannot do all of the printing and shipping yourself, whether it be due to a lower budget or physical limitations, etc. Handmade chapbooks and zines have a more personal touch, but not everyone is able to facilitate printing themselves, nor the costs associated with doing so on an international scale, etc.

CONCLUSION

I personally like Bookvault, Mixam, and Blurb. We are probably going to use Blurb less going forward, though. I wish Mixam would add a few more paper types and sizing options to perfect binding on publications geared towards photography and paper-based photobooks, but still, the options are great. I only use Amazon at the moment for eBooks and have started using Draft2Digital (D2D) in 2025.

Again, non-PODs that are stellar, I’d say, are Jukebox, Fireball Printing, and PrintNinja—if I had a much larger budget, I wouldn’t mind using some of the minimum ordering quantity ones, especially other options outside of Mixam’s PrintLink. There are also quite a few California-based ones I almost tried too, but can’t recall the names. Each print provider typically has a calculator or quote estimation tool. Most magazines and journals using non-POD options typically do limited short runs of issues until they’re sold out.

If you’re part of the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) membership as a publisher, they have some discounts for Bookmobile and a list of other distribution services and printers, through their member-only Resource Library, probably way more than what I’ve listed here.

Any Others You’re Aware Of That I Didn’t Mention?

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by Dipity Lit Mag & dipity.press, founded by Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series by pledging your support or buying me a coffee or pizza below if you’d like, but not required to by any means. As always, keep writing and reading poetry. Have awesome days ahead!

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BACKGROUND:

I have used Submittable for about two years for Dipity Lit Mag for poetry, short stories, art, photography, video, and audio submissions. And after looking everything over, I have decided to migrate to Subfolio. It becomes much harder to leave a submission system, the longer you’re on it after several years, because of your submission archive, along with contact deets for notifying others about future series or publications you may be working on.

These are not all the pros and cons, just a few main key points, you can visit these submission management systems sites directly, and other intake form site options. I have put my rating of each one out of 5.

There are probably other awesome systems out there—just naming a few I’ve looked at or tried, and I did list other ones earlier in the podcast episode no. 15 and later on in episode no. 56. Most sub-systems allow you to create canned acceptance and decline letters or to customize each one with additional notes or feedback before sending it off, which can decrease typing on your side. Please remember that pricing plans and features of these systems are subject to change over time.

Subfolio RATING: 4.6 OUT OF 5

Website: https://subfol.io/

PROS

• Discount Available: The Unlimited Plan is about the same cost as Submittable’s basic plan, $29 a month if you’re on the CLMP Membership.

  • Unlimited team reader account seats

  • No restriction on the number of buckets each month—have as many open calls as you want each month!

  • A neat pop-out chat window feature that may remind you of Discord or Slack mentions for communication, centralizing scoring, and team communication on the submission being reviewed.

  • Tip jars without a fee

  • 3.9% + $0.65 fee on paid submissions

• There’s a lower plan, $10 a month

  • Cap of 100 free submissions a month

  • 3.9% + $0.65 fee on paid submissions

• Unlimited paid submissions

• A much lower cut is taken on paid submissions

• Much faster payments via Stripe—not waiting 30-35+ days

• A Discover Page exists for submission calls

• An anonymous review option exists, which is great for blind reads

• On the backend, you can drill down and customize permissions much further than Submittable for each individual reader or team member account.

• Has a round of review capability, e.g. 1,2,3, good for first-line readers, second, third setup, etc.

• Labeling is possible to organize submissions

• You can use a scoring system of 1-10

• Neat round robin option to evenly distribute submissions or customize how many each reader receives in auto-assignment

• You can archive older call categories

• There’s a Fee Waiver tracker option—like a link form URL, otherwise, you can also set up a checkbox in your intake form

• You can set up multiple checkbox options, including paid-enabled ones, separate from a required sub reader fee

• There are no form section creation restrictions, unlike Submittable

• While I have not used the integrations, there are additional Ingram Spark add-ons for $49-$250+ a month, and some other storefront options, e.g., Shopify.

• You can customize your submission page with your logo and banner, include a video, etc.

• Has a moderation section for blocking spam accounts, flagging plagiarism, tracking account harassment, and inappropriate submissions.

• If you have a Fast Track Response option 24hrs, 3 Days, or 1 Week, there’s a way via assignment rules to directly auto-assign those, so no manual checks for those expedited options—you could also create a distinct separate workflow if more team members need to be involved.

• Has a cool preview function, so when you build categories, aka projects or call buckets, you don’t have to navigate outside of that setup space, unlike Submittable.

• SSO for Submitters via Google

• You can edit decision letters before sending and do more personalized responses as needed, rather than solely canned messages.

• E-mail notifications or summary details on new submissions in the queue go out to the Editor-in-Chief—reading team members can individually be informed in their own e-mail inbox of new assignments, and also there are web-based notifications available too.

• Input custom e-mail templates regarding decision letters, meaning you can drop the template code in of your e-mail template and include a graphic banner, reminders, newsletter subscribe buttons, etc.

• Stats over acceptances and declines can be seen—the acceptance rate is calculated for you, and you filter by time and see each category clearly

• The ability to intake additional optional tips from those who submit to calls

  • Note: If you are not a registered non-profit, do not use the work donations; stick to “tips,” “tip jar,” or “support us by leaving a tip” on your submission landing page. Stripe will typically flag you or request that you change your wording

• You can pay contributors from within Subfolio through the Global Payouts Stripe integration, once you create a Stripe account or connect your preferred existing account.

• Create public tags for submitters to pick from, e.g., “SIMULTANEOUS SUB”

• Submitters can change their tips in their “My Submissions Page” and see their document files in full, plus have a private portfolio, etc.

  

CONS

• It would be neat if the UI had a dark mode feature.

• Solely uses Stripe for payouts, and it does allow for accepting PayPal use, I believe, for those submitting when there’s a reader fee (I don’t have an issue with this, but not everyone uses this or has a preference)

• I think visually, some elements in terms of UI design—the look-and-feel overall for team collaboration within it could definitely be bolstered a bit further, but it’s very easy to navigate and use, and I love the exterior customization options on the homepage/landing areas of your publication listing that submitters see.

Subfolio has a ton of flexibility for sure—there are a lot more pros than cons, and a bunch more new features are on the way as well. Overall, if you’re looking for a submission system that’s pretty close to the capabilities of Submittable, I’d highly recommend checking out Subfolio—the assignment round workflows and team permissions are much easier to customize and manage overall. I feel that the chat feature that connects to scoring in a panel that can be closed and opened as needed for each submission is pretty awesome.

It can take a bit to get used to any new system, but it honestly was not too bad setting things up to mirror what we had with Submittable—we did lose our typical submission traffic and volume which was to be expected when moving to a new platform, however, the move was worth it and as more publications others will find us via Subfolio’s Discover page too alongside other calls.

Submittable RATING: 4.5 OUT OF 5

Website: https://www.submittable.com/

I switched from Oleada to Submittable in 2022-2023. I joined the Community of Literary Magazine & Presses (CLMP) Membership about two years ago, the cost is $150 each year, excluding the $29 monthly Submittable discounted rate on the most basic plan, with a lot of features stripped back, but still, you’re able to easily organize incoming submissions, and it’s way better than using solely email. The CLMP membership calculated cost, I believe, is based on the annual revenue or size of the lit mag or journal, but I could be wrong. Without the CLMP membership, though, it would be far too expensive to utilize. Submittable is outside of pretty much everyone’s ballpark in terms of the lit mag and press world if you don’t join CLMP’s membership—you can hear more about this on the audio version of the series.

PROS

• Due to Submittable being widely used as of 2025 in the lit mag and press community, when your call is approaching a deadline or is created, it would be seen alongside several others in the Discover Page—a lot of traffic goes through there.

• Readers can leave private internal notes/comments in a column for the next reader to examine

• Easily preview submission document files, Word, and PDFs without downloading them

• You can have fixed caps on categories, e.g., 100 submissions

• Has a calendar window function on intake buckets, so you can set up deadlines in advance or extend dates

• Easy to set up, concealed reads

• Color-coded labeling on submissions

• You can set up Other canned responses and Follow-Up templates

• There’s a thumbs-up and down functionality, but we never used the workflows or built-in scoring—instead, we leveraged what’s called internal activity notes, so each reader saw and recorded their 0-10 score along with a brief reason, but the submitter does not see their score nor notes unless I edit their letter and add additional notes or a summary of reading team feedback e.g. the fave poem out of a group of three.

• Multiple team members can be assigned to a submission at once, as needed, manually

• Can do bulk queue actions, e.g., for assignments to readers

• I usually see a “Virus Scanning” feature in Submittable, so they do have some screening to help minimize malicious files and activity

• You are not restricted solely to Stripe for payouts; instead, there’s PayPal, Direct Deposit, and Check (so three options)

• I believe Submittable has AI assistant tool(s) for form creation, especially for those who are dealing with grant applications, but have only ever created forms and categories manually on the plan we had.

CONS

• On the basic plan via CLMP Membership, you’ll often encounter sections that state you’d have to upgrade or see features not available to you

  • Only 6 buckets open at a time

  • Up to 8 seats (you’d have to upgrade or be charged for requesting more seats, which can be quite costly), even with the CLMP Membership

  • 5 Fields per form behind each call bucket

  • Unrestricted paid submissions ($0.99 + 5% fee)

  • It says unrestricted submissions month in some places; however, there is a cap, I believe, on the number of free submissions. I believe it’s 500 free subs max still

• To disable concealed reads for a permission level, it takes a few [project and form clicks], and it’s not a simple toggle for the Editor-in-Chief

• Workflows can be quite confusing for assignment configuration—not as flexible nor simple as Subfolio.

• Audio files cannot be previewed inside Submittable without an upgrade

• Unable to easily archive categories, or that’s non-existent—you’d have to delete completed submissions in the call in order to remove the category bucket from view

• You cannot customize permission levels beyond just Level 1-5 checkboxes, nor drill into them as of 06-04-2025, which can make training a bit tough.

• Readers are not notified about a reassignment unless you put an internal note in or leave both on the submission before removing the previous reader

• Much slower payouts—you usually have to wait after 30 days or within the week of the following month for receiving tips, donations, reader sub fees, etc., to offset costs and maintenance fees.

Duosuma RATING: 4.4 OUT OF 5

Website: https://duotrope.com/duosuma/

I have not heavily used Duosuma for Dipity Lit Mag, but rather I have encountered it more so as a submitter and poet myself (it’s part of Duotrope). I have heard from multiple fellow friends and editors in the community who used it, nothing but good things, and have read some of the feature documentation, so I will share those notes. They seem to have a Gold Star Plan that gives you 25% off, but you have to qualify (details are on their site). I have interacted with the Duotrope staff a bit for directory listing updates, and they’re always responsive.

PROS

• Discount Available: *NEW as of June 11th, 2025, CLMP Members receive a 20% OFF Duosuma, which is $0.015 to $0.09 per submission based on submission volume for each month. Some CLMP Members may qualify for Duosuma’s Gold Star Program—it rewards fast responders, which bumps up the discount to 25% OFF

• Duosuma is tied to Duotrope (listing directory), so there is quite a bit of traffic through there

• You can have optional tip jars, still, or donations

• Seems to have a very diverse “Rating system (Accept/Decline, Yes/No/Maybe, 5-star, or letter grades A+ through F)”

• Bulk actions are easier than other submission managers

• Auto-assignment options are flexible, e.g., round robin

• They only charge you when your submission windows are open

• I heard there’s an option to manage or filter out spam addresses or a block list on plagiarist email addresses, whereas with other ones, you’d have to just submit a ticket with their support team or founder.

• AI/Bot prevention measures

• You do not pay more at all when your team size changes or grows, which is nice—all team members need a Duotrope account, but a subscription is not mandatory either.

CONS

• I can’t list any here because I haven’t used it personally for my reading team. You can’t change the language, though, I believe Duosuma’s UI is only available in English. However, Duosuma ( for publishers, agents, etc.) and Duotrope ( for writers) are both utilized by others around the world.

• They have a credit system.

• I personally prefer a set overall monthly fee or a fixed bill, but the fees are based on usage or the number of submissions received, I believe, each month.

Dapple RATING: 4.3 OUT OF 5

Website: https://www.dapplehq.com/

I briefly did a trial of it after this review article in mid-October 2025. You can toggle over on conversion rates to USD and GBP for the cost. They’re based out of London. You can watch episode no. 52 and listen to the update on 95 for my thoughts on it, or read the Q&A Interview above with Oz.

NOTE: Some features have changed a tad or may be different in this review at the time it was their beta launch, so I have updated my review rating based on that. If time allows, I’ll update the pros and cons lists in November 2025, and scoring further to reflect the most current features.

PROS

• They appear to offer a CLMP membership discount; you’d have to reach out to them or CLMP to find out about that, last I saw it was 20% off with additional sub credits. There is perhaps a lower rate for non-profit organizations and charities too, as of 2026 it’s now $49 instead so it would be $39 for approx. 500 subs a year on the Starter Plan—changes occurred there, you can see their older launch pricing back on the podcast series. Many of the submission systems covered tend to make changes to their discounts and pricing plans can change over time or often after their beta phase.

• SSO for accounts with Google Sign-In and Microsoft

• Drag and drop Kanban-style board for moving assignments across stages or rounds of review, with manual move click options available

• You get a dashboard and detailed stats, acceptance rate on projects/submissions going through stages, bars, pie charts, etc.

• Definitely quite modern, clean, and cool design

• They have unlimited customizable stages on their Starter Plan, and Submittable has caps on the amount of form fields, so that’s neat

• You can preview document files without having to download them

• Has 1-10 star scoring, comments, discussion/conversational features

• You’re able to easily customize the design of forms and set up submitter submitter-required fields

• There’s the ability to configure concealed reads

• Easily allow replies and send emails or messages off to submitter

• Color-coded dots with custom tagging options

• Read/Write access table for editing team permissions, so it’s much more than what Submittable has as of 2025.

• I think it’s nice that there is an ‘i’ or informational help button linking back to their knowledge base articles and help documentation on key features to refer to as you’re navigating.

• Has rating and scoring capabilities for readers, e.g., star rating

• A dark mode switch is available in the UI

• Visual submission cards—highlighting art or photography, great for lit mags and presses or organizations with a lot of visual art calls.

• Drag-and-drop submission form builder akin to Submittable

• You can accept optional tips

• Clean judging panel features exist for award events and contests

CONS

• It may be just because most submission management systems I’ve used have a lot of navigation items predominantly on the right-hand side like Submittable, but I found myself wishing that the vertical collapsible bar shortcut consisting of the dashboard, messages, etc., wasn’t on the left-hand side. As of February 2026, Subfolio has a left-hand side collapsible panel update as well that I have gotten used to though.

• The free plan is pretty limited—it would be nice if way more than 10 submissions were possible on it, so obviously most would be geared towards the other paid pricing plans–I think they discontinued this free option in 2026 as its no longer visible on the main plan page, however, free test-drive trials are possible of course.

• Their Starter plan has a cap on projects or categories—up to 20 projects.

• Up to 10 users, 5 teams and 5 reviewers on their Starter plan, so if you have a team that’s larger than 11-20+, you’d have to upgrade plans.

• $179 a month is their Growth plan cost in 2026, and they have a larger Enterprise or Pro $399 plan geared more towards unlimited options, and they have annual rates too.

• Solely uses Stripe for payouts to lit mags or organizations, not necessarily a con, but not everyone likes leveraging Stripe, perhaps—Stripe Connect to process [the] transactions, which charges a 3.9% + $0.65 fee. Subfolio and Duosuma use Stripe too.

• They do not appear to have a Discover Opportunities search page, but per the Q&A I did with one of the founders, they have an upcoming potential partnership announcement with a well-known database to address this.

I didn’t go over all of the features, nor have I used it extensively myself, but definitely check it out if you’d like, and look over the full list here: https://www.dapplehq.com/features

Dapple used to have an optional AI assistant tool called Ash turned off by default, but they listened to creator feedback and pulled the plug on it. They did keep the smart form generator though.

Ola RATING: 4.1 OUT OF 5

Established by the founder of Asterism Books, Joshua Rothes, Ola Submission Manager will replace what was previously known as Oleada (below). You can listen to EP94: Ola Submission Manager Overview: Built For the Small Press & Magazine Community

Website: https://olasubs.com/

PROS

• Super clean, modern, and simple design that’s easy to navigate

• Quite cost-friendly, you have three plan options: $20 one-time fee for one call up to 500 submissions and supports team member invites, or “Plan B”, $19.99 a month with up to 10 active submission calls, unlimited submissions, permits team voting and collaboration features, and “Plan C” is $39.99 a month which supports unlimited submission calls, tom workflow tags, submission forms and supports audio and video submissions.

• Has a Browse Calls page to see submission calls so submitters can discover what’s open at various lit mags and presses using the system.

• Clean in-app file previews

• Notifications received in the browser

• You’ll be able to customize the publications landing page, and submitters will have public profiles in the near future.

CONS

• This isn’t necessarily a disadvantage, as I don’t like submission fees either, unless your publication has submission fees, optional tips, or pays authors—adding this here is because presently, there is no way to include optional tips, sub fees for contests, or payment integrations, which some publications do implement, but this may be addressed someday.

• There are a number of features on the way and being added still, so I would say the rating would technically be higher than 4 out of 5

Galley RATING: UNAVAILABLE LOK

Website: https://galley.pub/

Early access: April 1st, 2026 and Launch date: June 1st, 2026

PROS:

• Has an editorial command center for seeing different statuses, e.g., In Review, Received, Shortlisted

• As of 2026, there’s no AI in their product and no AI in their marketing at all akin to a few others discussed on the series, however, it is disclosed that a large language model (LLM) is used to aid in writing code for Galley. They state that it is not a vibe-coded website—Anthropic’s Claude Code tool is leveraged and also that work submitted to Galley is not read into any LLMs within the product.

• There’s a $0 a month plan for 1 editor, 1 active call, 50 subs a year, most lit mags would be drawn to a step up from this, as many lit mags receive well over 50 submissions, sometimes several hundred a month.

• The Standard plan is pretty cost-friendly at $15 a month, 3 editors and 5 reviewers with unlimited calls and 2,000 submissions a year.

• Looks like another Department tier is coming or plans for supporting university-affiliated lit mags and journals will be available the near future

• There’s a Discover Page for finding calls, filtering by free or paid is possible.

CONS:

• Not necessarily a con for some at $60, for larger lit mags and journals, presses, etc. You can have 10 editors on that plan and 25 reviewers, unlimited calls and submissions, 100 GB storage, and a custom domain. But others may find $60 a bit high for the Professional plan, compared to other submission systems on this list.

Additional Notes: I am unaware at this time if there will be the ability to support payouts to both contributors and lit mags, or if editorial feedback, optional tips, other lit mag support services etc., will be supported one day. Many submission systems shared in 2025 are using Stripe-based connections to do so. Galley is still in the beta phase as of March 2026, very early final development testing stage, so I cannot rate it quite yet, but I’m sure more features will be added over time and am looking forward to seeing the anticipated summer launch.

Oleada RATING: 3.2 OUT OF 5

[WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE]

Website: https://oleada.io/

UPDATE: (Being Discontinued in Feb 2026, see the brand new Ola Submission Manager above instead)

After moving away from Google Forms and using email to send out decisions, I leveraged Oleada briefly sometime between 2022 and 2023, then switched to the CLMP Membership and started using Submittable.

PROS

• As of June 2025, it looks like it’s still 100% free to use.

• It’s pretty straightforward to use; you can preview docs without downloading them, no evident pricing plans at this time as of 2025.

• You can easily set up windows and deadlines for each category

• Are able to communicate with the submitter in one place for the most part, however, there were times I recall back in 2022, when I still had to email outside of Oleada sometimes after acceptance decisions for additional publication tasks

• You can conceal cover letter information, per their feature list, or anonymize—I don’t recall seeing that back in 2022.

• Have unlimited projects created—no category call caps.

CONS

• A lot of lit mags and journals with sub reading fees have to set up a link to PayPal or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-Fi, since there’s no built-in process fee feature or payout integration; however, this is because their design was intended for fee-free lit mags and presses

• There is no tip jar feature available

• Not as friendly for other submission file types outside of documents, e.g., no audio and video previews

• A bit limited feature-wise, but great if you want something very simple, easy to use, and low to no cost—I can’t remember if they stated back then that eventually they were looking at starting a monthly fee of less than $15 a month or some fixed usage rate once more lit mags and journals joined the system.

• Not enough flexibility in terms of the number of template letters tied to acceptances and rejections

• While you can have multiple editors or other team members review, it would be difficult for a reading team to use and collaborate—no round system, no auto-assignment workflows, nor customizable permission functions, if I recall.

• No alerts or reminders on submissions for team members

• No tagging, labeling, or color-coding options back when I last used it in 2022-2023

• Lacking in form and workflow customization, question/field options

• They’ve been in a beta phase for quite a while, and I haven’t seen updates to their roadmap as of June 2025.

Note: It’s def possible some features may have changed since I last used it almost two or three years ago, and it’s still a really good choice if you prefer not to use solely email to intake and keep track of submissions.

SubMgr RATING: UNAVAILABLE LOK

Website: https://one-story.com/connect/submission-manager/

Demo: https://www.submissionmanager.net/info/

PROS: It’s free to use for lit mags and presses

L.O.K stands for Lack of Knowledge again—meaning I never got an account or trial of it. I don’t know much about SubMgr, but I tried it once as a submitter myself and have just seen other journals use it, so I can’t give much insight on it at this time, so I will plug in a link above to its site page overview. I think you can click on Need Help? underneath the login, to perhaps reach out about it too.

• The UI looks a bit outdated, but functionality is the most important thing, and many publications are still using it; however, it’s unclear to me to what extent support exists around it, nor are there any public videos, just a live demo and the documentation.

Moksha RATING: 3.9 OUT OF 5

Website: https://moksha.io/

I don’t believe Moksha has a Discover page of any kind, but I came across a fairly long Open Publications list below in the second screenshot, consisting of those who use Moksha. There’s no doubt that it has a lot of awesome key features, but it’s kind of on the expensive side, which is reflected in my rating above; otherwise, it would receive a 4.1 or 4.2, and I would’ve probably picked it over Submittable back in 2022-2023 if it were much lower cost-wise each month. However, if Subfolio had existed back then as it stands feature-wise today, I would’ve still probably chosen it over all the others, including Moksha. Affordability and plan flexibility, along with features, were factored into the rating. If Moksha ever develops a plan or discount option way below $75 a month, one day or closer to $30-40 USD range, that would be awesome.

PROS

Each plan they state has:

• Custom workflows

• Unlimited submissions per month

• Unlimited user accounts

• A rating system that you can reset so you can do another round as needed

• Summary activity reports can be configured for each day

• Highlight and color-code incoming submissions and category calls

• Per their documentation, you can update tags in bulk

• A lot more bulk functions appear to exist overall

• Flagging features exist for addressing AI-generated submissions

• Hot-Key shortcuts, so if you like keyboard shortcuts, it’s possible

• Supports English (default), Spanish, Español, Arabic | عربى

CONS

• Again, plans are on the pricier side, $75 a month, $415 biannually, $750 annually

• Lowest plan caps at 6 submission types

Tally Forms RATING: UNAVAILABLE LOK

Website: https://tally.so/

I don’t have experience with this one, but I have heard that a few in the community are using it. I think it looks much better than Google Forms as of 2025. They have a free plan, but Tally branding can only be removed on a paid plan, and more unlimited options are available on the Pro and Business plans in terms of file upload size, the number of team members. It is also capable of accepting payments, signatures, and supports 45+ languages. You do get the ability to create unlimited forms, and it supports unlimited submissions on the free plan, it looks like, though.

Update: Here’s an awesome example I found from Strange Pilgrims on their Tally submission portal page and fields:

Fillout Forms 3.5 OUT OF 5

Website: https://www.fillout.com/

• No upfront costs

• Unlimited forms

• Cool payment integration—Pay What You Want (PWYW) card option

P.S. I used Fillout Forms for our Help Desk and set up a separate address to intake those and generate a YouTrak ticket that forwards a copy of the question to my email and can be seen in a mobile app. However, Fillout could be totally applied to intake literary arts submissions as well—I am unaware of the collaborative share features if you were to use solely Fillout, though. I plugged in an example of ours above. I almost went with JotForm because they have a neat PayPal integration, but I have seen a trend in customer support complaints, and their cap was too low on their basic or free plans.

Google Forms RATING: 2.8 OUT OF 5

Website: https://workspace.google.com/products/forms/

PROS:

• FREE to set up with a Gmail account, no money down

• Sites with built-in intake forms sometimes have a contact cap, where you must upgrade to a plan to sustain more, and Google Forms can be easily added as a linked button embed, or you can just share the link.

CONS:

• Hard to manage hundreds and thousands of submissions—you have to email submitters outside of the form system and use your inbox labels to organize everything still.

• It can be tough to keep track of everything, and you’ll def struggle keeping tabs on tons of submissions in a collective form, or you may need to juggle multiple forms.

• You’d have to set up a PayPal, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-Fi, etc., Patreon, or some other way to support submission and contest fees, as there is no fee processing, tip, or payout integration.

• Submitters can’t easily make changes or communicate with you unless you give them an email address to notify you about withdrawing, submission errors, etc.

• If you have several call categories or themes across the year, you’d most likely need different forms each time to separate out visual art and writing, for instance. You could end up going back and forth between multiple intake forms, which can be time-consuming.

• No live or status indicator capabilities e.g. In Progress, Accepted/Rejected

• It can be tough to have multiple team readers involved, and feedback, notes would have to be done elsewhere outside.

• Not as friendly for setting up concealed or anonymous reads

• If you want to have an archive, everything could go in a Google Drive; however, every account has storage caps along with emails, so you’d have to possibly use a paid storage plan to maintain files, etc. OneDrive, etc.

Other

Some lit mags and journals’ founding editors with extensive development knowledge have built their own submission management systems from scratch, too. What’s nice about that is that you can customize it to look however you want and meet your specific needs. Keep in mind that although this could eliminate hefty monthly or annual bills, it still requires continuous maintenance and a great deal of time to do so by yourself.

Conclusion

Again, you can listen to the condensed audio version of this and my thoughts on Subfolio in EP56: Which Submission Management Systems Would You Recommend For Literary Magazines & Presses? on Substack, Spotify, and elsewhere, and EP15: What Are Alternatives to Submittable & Some Other Submission Managers For Lit Mags?. I also have a few individual episodes going over some of these—what the submitter sees, along with my thoughts on the backend.

The longer you stick with one submission management system, e.g., 5, 10, 15 years, it becomes much harder to leave due to your archive and file retention with them for future publications or series, submitter acceptance records, etc, so you want to make a careful decision about which one to use long-term. I would say it was easier for Dipity Lit Mag to leave Submittable for Subfolio, again, because we were on Submittable for less than three years.

I didn’t cover all features of course nor all submission managers for lit mags and presses in existence, but I highly recommend doing a trial of the ones you’re interested in above and read through the documentation as well as watch some of the tutorial videos these submission managers have. Hands down again, I believe Subfolio is as close to Submittable as you’ll get as of 2025. I’m sure Subfolio’s UI, look, and design will change as time goes on, too. If you came across this, hopefully it helped you!

The Lit Mag Lab is brought to you by the founding editor of Dipity Lit Mag, Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur). You can support this series for submitters and publishers by pledging your support, resharing, or subscribing below if you’d like, but are not required to by any means. We have more rad interviews and topics on the way. Have awesome days ahead!

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