Thank you for your note, and I understand your concerns about submission fees. Fiction Attic pays every writer. Though payment is small, Fiction Attic has no paid staff whatsoever and receives no funding. Submission fees offset the cost of paying writers and using Submittable. The fee includes a complimentary 3-month paid subscription to Fiction Attic.

Regarding fees: most literary journals use Submittable, a platform for which the publisher is charged a monthly fee. Fiction Attic would not be able to afford to use Submittable without charging small fees. If we couldn't use Submittable, we wouldn't be able to accept submissions. Not only would we not be able to pay writers; we wouldn't be able to publish them.

According to Writers Digest, many literary journals charge a submission fee of $3-$5 for a short story, more for contests. For context, many of us remember the days when stories had to be submitted by mail. When I first started submitting my work, I spent hundreds of dollars per year making photocopies, mailing my stories in manila envelopes, and sending every magazine a self-addressed stamped envelope. I made minimum wage, so this wasn't easy, but submitting work was important to me, and I simply considered it part of the cost of my chosen career path.

Major magazines that charge submission fees include The Missouri Reivew, The Kenyon Review, Ploughsares, and many more. Most magazines also have contests that charge much higher fees. It's true that major for-profit publishers do not charge submission fees, nor do literary agents. However, small presses that do not turn a profit or that operate in the red, as well as literary magazines housed at universities, often do. Of course, it is up to each writer to choose which magazines to submit to. There are no shortage of submission opportunities for writers in every genre.

You can read the Writer's Digest article here. https://www.writersdigest.com/getting-published/should-writers-pay-submission-fees