| How are contributors currently compensated? A few years ago, The Rumpus established a monthly contributor pool that we’ve gradually increased to $400. After we accept a piece, we ask authors whether they’d like to opt-in to payment. Depending on the number of people who opt-in each month, current payments usually range anywhere from $18–36/piece. We know establishing a minimum payment is a more equitable and transparent system for potential future contributors deciding on where they submit their work. It’s an acknowledgment that writing is labor, and we want to be a part of a creative community that compensates writers to the best of our abilities.
How will reaching this goal help authors? We’ll be real here: a $50 minimum payment is unlikely to change someone’s life. It is a token honorarium and ideally should be closer to $100 or more. However, this would be significant progress. We know many other indie literary magazines (those not associated with a university, larger publishing group, and without the backing of a wealthy benefactor) are also volunteer-run and absolutely exhausted trying to get by. Raising funds through donations allows us to continue publishing at the same pace and keeps us from exploring options like submission reading fees or a drastic decrease to the amount of work we publish.
How does The Rumpus support contributors beyond monetary compensation? Every piece that comes through our regular no-fee open reading periods is read by at least two or three staff editors, who provide feedback and edits. We work with each contributor to help them present a version of their work that we all feel good about presenting to our audience; sometimes an accepted piece just needs a quick copy edit, and sometimes it goes through multiple revisions with developmental edits provided by our editors.
The Rumpus is highly visible and has a relatively large readership, with roughly 80k unique visitors to the site every month and over 1 million a year. Every piece we publish is highlighted at least once in our weekly newsletter (which reaches 20k subscribers) and all work is promoted on our social media channels.
We also regularly nominate the pieces we publish for awards and prizes such as the Best American anthologies, Best of the Net, and others.
All of our contributors retain the rights to their work, so they’re able to publish their pieces again without any contractual hurdles (or fees to us) if they land a book deal or other opportunity.
We love to celebrate the success of the authors and artists we publish! Often we’re someone’s first major byline, helping them find an audience, and making connections in the community is the whole point of the work we do.
Why do you need donations? Can’t you bring in funds another way? Over 90 percent of the magazine’s funding—including our monthly contributor pool—comes from reader support. Since we received fiscal sponsorship in 2022, fundraising is now part of our funding model. We have a Membership program, a couple of subscription programs (including Letters in the Mail from Authors), host online events, and sell merch, and we make a very small amount of money through advertising. These currently have us almost breaking even on our very basic expenses. While The Rumpus’s revenue improved in 2023 from previous years, fundraising and donor support are a new important part of our model. There’s still a large gap between the funds we bring in and the amount needed to run a magazine we’re proud of. | 