PHV Interview Series: Krishan Coupland, Editor of Neon Literary Magazine
I’ve interviewed quite a few editors at Poetry Has Value so far, and though they’ve all been interesting and informative I think my favorites have been the editors of the small independent magazines. Their inventiveness and commitment in regard to payment is definitely inspiring. And they’re definitely realistic about the both the possibilities and limitations of a paying model in our particular literary moment.
Today I’ve talked with Krishan Coupland, editor of Neon Literary Magazine, a UK-based journal that focuses on slipstream and magical realism writing. His payment model takes a bit more work but is inventive and, in my opinion, a really realistic one for almost any magazine.
But as much as this interview is about paying writers, my favorite bit is actually about being a reader and lover of poetry. Krishna writes: “If everyone who submitted work to Neon also contributed the cost of a couple of stamps I’d never be short of funds, and could quadruple the rate of pay that I offer.” And that’s been my stance since I started this project. Yes, I’d love for poets to be paid. But I realize that in order for that to happen we have to monetarily support the journals and the literature we love to read. And I’ll keep saying it until I’m out of breath.
Read Krishan’s wonderful interview below. And keep on sharing and posting about this project. Let’s start the conversation. Let’s change the culture.
STATS:
Magazine: Neon Literary Magazine
Interviewee: Krishan Coupland, Editor
Payment for Poetry: Depends on subscriptions; generally between £5 - £10
Submission Fee: None
Funding Source: Subscriptions, purchases, donations
Advice On Paying Writers: “It helps to think of it in the same context as your other expenses. You might spend £50 or more each year on web hosting. If you can afford that much for a website, surely you can afford at least a little to pay the people who fill that website with words?” / “Be realistic about the amount you can offer, and think about how you plan to make money.”
INTERVIEW:
Youname(s), your journal, your positionwith the journal:
I’m Krishan, and I’ve run and edited Neon Literary Magazine since 2006, in which time I’ve put together almost forty issues. I’ve also recently started publishing chapbooks.
Tell us a little bit about your literary journal:
Neon is a completely independent literary magazine; no support from a university, no funding from the Arts Council. It publishes slipstream and magical realist fiction and poetry – essentially weird and dream-like writing that tends towards the dark. It also publishes photography, and quite often features odd little pamphlets tucked in between the pages.
In a world where literary markets don’t often pay poets, why did you decide to do so?:
I’m a writer myself, and being paid for my work has always been quite a cool experience. It means a lot to me when someone is willing to offer money in exchange for something that I’ve created. Not only is the money useful, but it also reassures me that the magazine or journal is actually read, and that I’m not contributing my work to a publication that will only ever be seen by the people whose work it features.
Since I want to be paid for my work, I’ve always been keen to pay the people whose work I publish in Neon. After several years of working on the magazine and growing its readership I found myself in the fortunate position of being able to do so.
What are the funding sources for your magazine?
Neon’s funding comes entirely from subscriptions, purchases and donations. I also run Google adverts on the website, but these have yet to pay out a single penny.
What does your journal pay for accepted poems?
The amount that I pay is determined by how many subscriptions are taken out and how many donations are made during the time that an issue is current. Generally this comes to something around £5 - £10. Though the amount fluctuates, it’s gradually been creeping higher as Neon’s readership grows. Part of the reason I use this system (which, after all, requires quite a bit of admin) is because it’s scalable. One day I hope that Neon will be well-read enough to pay something close to professional rates.
What is your acceptance rate for poetry? Do you think that your acceptance rate or number of submissions you receive is affected by your pay model?
I recently added up all the submissions received, rejected, withdrawn and accepted over the course of the last year. It turns out that Neon’s overall acceptance rate is around 1.3% - but that includes fiction as well as poetry.
I wasn’t always able to pay for accepted pieces, so I can say with some certainty that the number of submissions received is affected by the offer of compensation. There was a noticeable jump in the number of submissions when Neon moved from an online-only format into print, and another much larger jump when I started being able to offer money.
Does your journal charge submission fees?
Neon doesn’t charge submission fees, and I’d like to keep it that way. Although it would be lovely to have the additional income, it doesn’t feel quite right. Surely a magazine should generate funds from its readers rather than its writers? To profit from the people who help make the magazine possible seems a little like a scam, to be honest.
I can, however, see why some magazines do opt to charge a submission fee. If everyone who submitted work to Neon also contributed the cost of a couple of stamps I’d never be short of funds, and could quadruple the rate of pay that I offer. Not only that, but I suspect that I’d receive more targeted submissions, and fewer of the type that are sent out to twenty different editors at the same time.
Do the staff and editors of the journal receive any compensation? If not, how did the decision come about to pay writers and not those who work at the magazine?:
Most of the money the magazine makes gets ploughed back into it, which has allowed me to increase the pagecount of the magazine, as well as start publishing chapbooks and pamphlets. If it’s been a good month there’s often some money left over at the end to pay myself – but given the amount of time the magazine takes up this tends to work out at less than £1 per hour. Seeing the magazine grow is much more of a reward than money for me.
What advice can you offer editors who would like to switch their journal from a non-paying model to a paying one?
If you want to start paying people, just go ahead and do it. Even if you can only afford a small amount, it’s better to pay people a little rather than nothing at all. You can always increase the amount you pay later on, when the hard work of setting up a system and working out how to actually make payments has been done.
As far as being able to afford to pay contributors goes, it helps to think of it in the same context as your other expenses. You might spend £50 or more each year on web hosting. If you can afford that much for a website, surely you can afford at least a little to pay the people who fill that website with words?
What advice would you give to those starting a literary magazine who don’t plan to pay writers? Those who do plan on it?
It’s a lot of hard work to run any kind of literary magazine, but I still think it’s important to go the extra distance to offer writers something of real value. If you can’t afford to pay, that’s fine, but perhaps you could offer them audio or video recordings of their work, free copies of the magazine, feedback on rejected submissions or detailed editing of accepted ones? These things are all ways to show that the work you’re publishing is in some way valuable, without expending any actual funds.
If you are planning to pay writers... great. The only advice I can offer is to be realistic about the amount you can offer, and think about how you plan to make money. Literary magazines are tough to sell, and sometimes committing to paying your writers might mean that you make a loss overall. Just remember that you’re doing this for reasons other than profit, and know that your efforts (both as far as putting together a publication, and as far as paying the writers you feature) are greatly appreciated.
Many poets say that exposure to their work is a form of compensation. How do you feel about exposure as payment? And, along those lines, what is your journal's readership?
As far as I can tell, each issue of Neon is read by about two thousand people. Two hundred or so in print, and the rest online. I think exposure can be a legitimate way of compensating poets. In order for that to work, however, the exposure that’s offered needs to be worth something. A poem that appears on a new or obscure website might end up being read by one or two people at most – how much is that exposure really worth?
The Poetry Has Value project was created to spark conversation about poetry, money and worth, since it seems taboo to consider poetry in terms of financial compensation. Why do you think this taboo exists?
I think there is perhaps a perception that money and art don’t mix; that someone who writes for profit must be someone who sticks to easy, digestible, savoury subjects; and that forms of art which earn money are to be considered crass and popular and not worthy of serious consideration. Bands that achieve any kind of success are often accused of “selling out”, and I believe the worries about the monetisation of poetry are rooted in a similar area. Perhaps they are legitimate worries, perhaps not – but it’s worth considering that making art takes time and energy, and that the people who make it do need to be able to support themselves somehow.
Any last thoughts on the Poetry Has Value project or the topics it investigates?:
I often publish my work in magazines and on websites that do not offer financial compensation. I think that doing so is an important part of my practice. I want my work to be read. I could hold out for a decent fee for each and every piece of writing I produce, but to do so would often mean that my work would go unseen, or that it wouldn’t be very widely available at all. Money is not the main drive for me, and I don’t think it should be. It is, however, an excellent starting point when it comes to discussing the value of art, and writing in particular.
Would you like to highlight a piece from your journal that you’ve especially loved lately?
I really enjoyed reading “The Big One” by Debra McQueen. I’ve always had a thing for apocalyptic poems and stories, and this one ticks that box spectacularly. I’d also like to point to Erric Emerson’s “Red Limbs”, which is an example of the kind of formally-innovative poetry I really love, but receive far too little of.
What, if anything, do you think could help change the system in place now?
Buy poetry. That, I think, is the number one thing that people can do to ensure that magazines and journals can move towards paying their contributors. The only reason I can afford to pay the poets I publish is because of all the people who buy, subscribe and donate. If nobody was willing to pay for Neon, there would be no money to pay the people who feature in it. Conversely, if we lived in a world where a decent lit mag sold as well as a glossy celebrity magazine, maybe it would be rather more possible to make a living from poetry.
Krishan Coupland is on the Creative Writing PhD programme at the University of East Anglia. His writing has appeared in Ambit, Aesthetica, Litro and Fractured West. He won the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2011, and in his spare time he runs and edits a literary magazine. His website is www.krishancoupland.co.uk.
