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Submittable: Too Expensive

Jay Dougherty

Jay Dougherty

Mangling Member
Editor
This year, Submittable raised its prices by over 100% to publications that previously received literary journal pricing. In our case, this price hike went from $187 to $444 annually. That's a bridge too far. We refuse to pass this cost along to writers and artists, and we refuse to pay it ourselves. So we are discontinuing our Submittable service.

Submitting work through the site's forum is free. The editors encourage you to use that method.
 
Clearly Submittable needs competition. As I see it, the company is exercising its near-monopoly status in this niche (but lucrative) market. Some enterprising individual(s) need to come along and take part of this pie.

The company has essentially forced many writers and artists today to pay submission fees, as publications attempt to offset the high cost of using Submittable by charging fees for submissions.

Time will tell how long these publications will continue to use Submittable. For us, the decision was easy. This place makes no money, and I was previously footing the bill of Submittable myself in order to give people more ways to submit material and to attract submissions from people who don't like the forum idea as a vehicle for submissions.

Our options are clearly fewer now, unfortunately.
 
Jay Dougherty said:
This year, Submittable raised its prices by over 100% to publications that previously received literary journal pricing. In our case, this price hike went from $187 to $444 annually. That's a bridge too far. We refuse to pass this cost along to writers and artists, and we refuse to pay it ourselves. So we are discontinuing our Submittable service.

Submitting work through the site's forum is free. The editors encourage you to use that method.
Click to expand...

start another forum with links to attractive sites: I nominate unlikelystories.org, of course . . .
cross-fertilization & word-of-mouth is the life-blood, now . . .
 
David E. Matthews said:
start another forum with links to attractive sites: I nominate unlikelystories.org, of course . . .
cross-fertilization & word-of-mouth is the life-blood, now . . .
Click to expand...

Funny you should mention that. On my to-do list here is to create a front page "page" for (other) good sites. I'll do it without reverse links. I don't care.

If you can think of other sites, please post them here. I'll add them.
 
Maria Mazzenga said:
So submissions will come through the forum or do you have a different setup, just so I can tell folks who ask....
Click to expand...

Right now we just have the forum and an email address I created (submissions@). No one has used the email method, though.

We've gotten some good material through Submittable, so I hate to see it go. But enough is enough.

Submittable has changed submissions in a big way. Whether you think it's good or bad, long term, is debatable. One thing it's not, however: inexpensive.

I also don't like dealing with Submittable from a customer (journal) standpoint. They have unfriendly business practices, so far as I'm concerned, and they've become increasingly corporate, with people called "account managers" running around, with a mouth full of marketing speak.
 
Jay Dougherty said:
Right now we just have the forum and an email address I created (submissions@). No one has used the email method, though.

We've gotten some good material through Submittable, so I hate to see it go. But enough is enough.

Submittable has changed submissions in a big way. Whether you think it's good or bad, long term, is debatable. One thing it's not, however: inexpensive.

I also don't like dealing with Submittable from a customer (journal) standpoint. They have unfriendly business practices, so far as I'm concerned, and they've become increasingly corporate, with people called "account managers" running around, with a mouth full of marketing speak.
Click to expand...
Business practice, corporate, account manager... I can't think of more unpoetic words!
 
Morgan Driscoll said:
Business practice, corporate, account manager-verse.
Something, something, something, something
rhymes with orange.

Am I doing it right?
Click to expand...

Yeah, though it's more like this:


Why has the price changed?
The platform and the company have both undergone significant upgrades in the past year.


Upgrades that require more than doubling the price? I don't see any changes at all, so what they're saying is that they've had to double the price because their costs went up. But they don't exactly say that, of course.

There's something called "talk straight" in the speed of trust behaviors we've been discussing at work. Submittable needs to study that.

Whatever. It's their business.
 
Here's the link to Submittable's new prices:

https://www.submittable.com/solutions/literary-journal-pricing-plans

That's more than 100 percent more expensive than last year, on an annual basis. And the company has the gall to add this bit of marketing duplicity at the top:

Special Pricing: For Literary Journals Only

It all started with you. Literary journals were our first customers and helped us get where we are today. To show our appreciation, we offer two discounted plans just for you.

Outrageous. Talk about redefining "discount"!

So if you use Submittable to submit to other places, expect to start paying more.
 
Submittable's latest pricing. It's clear who is making money off of writers and artists submitting through this service--the service itself.

submittable.png
 
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