Running A Literary Magazine
I started The Y2K Quarterly last year as a little side project because when you hit 40 you go insane. One year later and it's still going strong so I think I'm doing something right. I've watched a few other folks try and start a magazine and run into major road blocks and issues, so I took that information and adjusted it to keep chaos from uprooting the project.
Tips for Running a Lit Mag
Pick A Niche
So, if you are like me, and running the whole thing on your own you are going to want to limit the types of submissions you get. The easiest way is to pick a theme for the magazine. Every piece needs to be on theme or else rejected regardless of quality. If you don't you will be flooded with entries from a wide variety of styles and content that can overwhelm you as a solo editor. My magazine is Y2K themed which narrows the content down considerably. That does not stop people from submitting off topic work but makes it easier for you to give them a good reason for passing on the work.
Limit Entries
If you have ever sent work to a big magazine you'll know they have narrow submission windows and strict guidelines. It can take them months to respond to your entry and even then it's a few sentences saying "Sorry we have to pass on this." Trust me, it's not your fault. These places get thousands of submissions at a time and have very small teams of volunteers reading through them. You can't take rejections personally. (Unless they specifically say so in the letter.) 9 times out of 10 they just don't have room and are flooded with high quality work.
Some magazines will open for specific windows of time. Have Has Had is so hard to get into, they have to do drop sub windows via twitter and they hit their limit in less than 3 minutes. It's easier to scalp Pokémon cards than get your submission into that magazine. But, it works for them. They have to limit it or else they would be overrun with entries.
Submission Fees
I totally understand submission fees for magazines these days. Submittable subscriptions are not cheap. Web hosting for the magazine is not cheap. Printing and distribution is not cheap. Paying readers and editors for their time is not cheap. School run magazines make use of undergrads to get through their slush piles. The rest of us have to pay with our own time. Gone are the days when you could get by on reader subscriptions and back page ads.
I don't charge fees to submit, and pay for the web hosting and contributor copies myself. I design the site and issue artwork myself. Each submission window has a link for writers to donate if they choose to. The goal is to eventually pay the writers who make it into the magazine as well but I'm not that big yet, 100% of the donations go to hosting the site at this point.
Watch Your Budget
You can run a literary magazine on an absolute shoestring. You can accept submissions via email for free. You can host the entire thing on a free Wordpress site, github page, or Substack. You can set up print-on-demand merch and physical copies to bring in revenue. However, at some point you might want to upgrade. I wouldn't jump in too deep your first year. Your team of buddies helping you with editing and such might have to drop out of the project. You might want to pay the contributors. Your English dept might run out of funding. So much stuff can happen. It's best to start small and build up slowly.
Have Fun With It
I started my magazine to let people share their memories of the past. You can have yours do whatever you want. You can publish once a year. You can make your own rules. The goal is to uplift other writers and showcase their work, to boost creativity and share experiences.