CONTRIBUTING TO MEANJIN

Submitting Your Work | Style

Authors and author fees
Meanjin will consider unsolicited manuscripts from Australian and overseas writers. Contributors are paid minimum fees of $50 for poetry and $100 for prose.

Types of contribution
We are interested in material in diverse genres including:

• poetry
• fiction
• reflective and scholarly essays
• memoirs
• commentary
• review essays, setting in context rather than simply reviewing new books, films, exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances
• graphic novels

Submitting Your Work

Submissions should be sent in hard copy with a covering letter including full contact details and a brief biographical note.

Feel free to send more than one example of your work, but be aware that we may not be able to read long or multiple submissions with the same care and attention as shorter selections. We do not impose word limits on submissions, but note that we rarely publish work over 5,000 words and may not continue to read lengthy submissions that do not engage our interest in their opening pages.

A stamped, self-addressed envelope or international reply coupon must be included with all submissions. We cannot undertake to return manuscripts or advise about unsuccessful submissions unless this is provided. If we choose to publish your work, we will request a copy sent by email as an attachment or, where that is not possible, on disk.

Contributions are refereed when writers identify themselves as academics with an affiliation to a tertiary education institution and make a written request in advance for the services of a referee. Where the referee demands a fee for their service, this will be deducted from the contributor's payment, as will any related administrative or postal expenses.

Submissions should be sent to:

Meanjin
187 Grattan Street
Carlton, Victoria 3053
Australia

Allow three to four months for a response to unsolicited manuscripts.

Style

We strongly encourage writers to look at recent issues of Meanjin for guidance as to house style and to the range of subjects and genres the magazine encompasses. We use endnotes, not footnotes, for any documentation accompanying non-fiction articles, and request that these notes be kept to a minimum. Where used, they must include full publication details, including author's full name, publisher, and date and place of publication. Sufficient information should be provided either in the text or in the endnotes to allow readers to identify the source of direct quotations and to locate key works and passages discussed.

Please think carefully before submitting an unrevised conference paper or chapter from a thesis or novel. Meanjin has sometimes published work that has originated in this way, but such writing often requires substantial revision to be publishable as a stand-alone contribution. It may be in your interests to revise before submission.

Contributor Payments and Fees

Contributors are paid minimum fees of $50 for poetry and $100 for prose. The total fee will be determined by the number of pages the article fills in published form, so we can’t give any precise sum until we have final proofs. The average fee paid is about $50 (Australian) per printed page; higher fees are sometimes paid to specially commissioned authors. Each author owns the copyright to his or her work, and their fee will incorporate an additional 5% in order to provide in advance for any copyright entitlements their contribution may attract through the offices of the Copyright Agency Ltd. CAL should send registered authors documentation of any such entitlements and, on receipt of a claim sent to the Meanjin office, we shall remunerate authors for these entitlements to a limit of 50% of the total sum if and when they exceed our own  initial 5% top-up rate. The other 50% of the CAL fee will be retained by Meanjin for its editorial and administrative services to authors.  

Meanjin currently licenses selected online publication through CAL. Authors have the right to request in writing that their contributions be partially or fully withdrawn from online data bases, and this request will be passed on to the service providers concerned, but Meanjin can accept no further responsibility in the matter.