How to Run a Successful Literary Magazine

let's pretend we're lost in the woods

I have this idea for a writing retreat in the woods, but nobody writes because we’re actually lost. No, really, maybe we should panic guys, it’s getting dark, and all we have are these useless notebooks and pens because we went on this janky Taco Bell Quarterly Writing Retreat for Serious Writers and No One Was Serious! What are we supposed to do now? Carefully craft the metaphor of our deaths in letters we leave behind on our bodies? Can anyone build a fire? Where do we find a source of water? Does anyone know how to survive?

This is what also running a literary magazine feels like in 2023. The literary world is closing up and keeling over around us. Our platforms threaten to crumble and the algorithms conspire to keep us apart. We might not make it out alive. We don’t have time to agonize over the craft of literature. What other talents and skills does everyone bring to the table? Does anyone know anything about raising money? Is anyone good at screaming on social media? Who knows how to design merch?

My talents include drawing attention to myself and embarrassing myself in front of everyone. Self-conscious distress isn’t just an emotional response, it is my lived reality. I’m good at noticing patterns in social circles and cliques because I got made fun of a lot as a kid. I also have a MA in Fiction, if anyone thinks it will help. I had certainly hoped it would help strengthen my nonfiction writing with its attention to voice and narrative!

It couldn’t even help me get a proofreading job at the local paper. Sometimes volunteers and submitters send cover letters that read like job applications full of bylines, experience, and education. They are more probably qualified to run TBQ than me. I didn’t know what I was doing when I started this thing. I had zero experience with literary magazines except for a single college course, which I only took because it didn’t meet weekly. I had never sold writing or worked with an editor professionally. I was not even qualified to work at a literary magazine for free.

Taco Bell Quarterly started as a joke. And I maintain I was still joking when I wrote the entire submission call and threw together the website, although now I admit maybe it had escalated to flirting. Now me and the bit are in some kind of committed relationship. We have six beautiful chidren. Our most recent, TBQ6 arrived this spring, and we’re planning for our seventh this fall. We open for submissions again on 4/20.

We attended AWP, the fancy literary conference in Seattle, and told thousands of writers that we are a real literary magazine. We threw a reading with our friends at CLASH Books that was so buzzy, the venue sent us panicked emails about their capacity. I also read at the 10th Annual Rock & Roll Reading alongside many writers I admire, on a stage that Nirvana once played to a crowd of less than ten. We played to a full house.

The dream of being a writer is alive and well, even if all the fake obituaries are proclaiming everything dead. Literature isn’t dead. Calm down. I assure you novels and poetry are marked safe from the literary apocalypse. The English major is doing fine. Literary magazines will always sprout up through the impossibly dense soil of the lit world like gnarled weeds. Some will even manage to bear tiny fruits. Maybe we can forage and gather enough to stay alive.

Taco Bell Quarterly, a free literary magazine that publishes online and totally run by voluteers, costs around $3,000 per issue to put out. We pay contributors $100, funded by donations, newsletter subscriptions, and merch sales. 2 to 5% of every donation, sale, and sub gets shaved off the top in fees, and then I get taxed on top of it, too. Setting up a nonprofit is even more expensive and time-consuming. Addtional costs include the CLMP membership, Submittable, website maintenance, and attending AWP add up to more than $1k. Who’s got another $11 for the blue check?

At the moment, we have enough cash for two more issues, which sounds grim, but in the literary world, grim and close to death are good enough. Surely, there must be some kind of middle ground between wealthy benefactors and galas, and labors of love that slowly burn out in front of everyone. Surely, there must be some way out of these woods.

We need to start recruiting each other. The literary world needs all the warm bodies with the slightest bit of enthusiasm it can get. What talents does everyone bring? What connections? What ideas? Let’s make a new literary world and become famous writers anyway. Finish the novel. Start the lit mag. Become a prestigious editor. Fuck your life, you were never going to be a marine biologist, you would have killed all the dolphins. You’re a poet.

Keep posting into the oblivion. Keeping sending your work out even though there is a 99% chance it’s going to come back and break your heart. Try to make it out of this cursed fucking forest of literary writing. It won’t be a haunted letter found on your body. It’s going to be a whole book and it’s going to be so fucking good. Try not to die! Recruit! Gather! Scream!