What a deep dive! Thanks Ben for the thorough analysis and putting this together. Very helpful! It also gives me hope for an acceptance from Rattle someday. :)
Thank you. Yeah I knew of Rattle but didn't know all of this. After researching so many bad actors, it was so nice to research someone who seemed to be working toward improving what they are doing rather than getting up to anything sneaky.
This was exactly the information I was looking for and I’m so glad to have stumbled across it today! Thank you for sharing; I loved every detail and how thorough you’ve been.
I think Rattle’s EIC has donated quite a bit. Tim gave this background in one of their podcasts, I believe. At least (IIRC) he paid Tim for his editing work, and gave him a mission and let him do it. That was the sense I got.
I wondered about that. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere so I didn't want to assume. But simply considering that he seems fairly wealthy, I could see it. Do you know where I could find that podcast?
Wish I could, but I am a very occasional podcast listener. I believe it was somewhere in the Rattlecast (their own podcast), but this was a year or more ago.
Well done. Interesting. Do the editors from Rattle, Tim Green and colleague, get paid? That's a Herculean task, 110k poems to read. Your analysis to how and why journal can work without charging gees and paying contributors is very insightful. It does come down to very dedicated, invested-for-the-long-term leaders, who still don't make that much. Thanks for this.
If I had to guess, since their listed expenses are north of $300,000 on Guidestar and they have a whole separate category for paying prize winners (~$50,000). Under the expenses for the $300,000 it says "The rattle foundation published four issues of rattle magazine; four individual chapbooks; livestreamed 150 hours of literary programming and podcasts; and maintained the rattle.com website, which received over two million page views in 2021." And since on the technical side, none of that costs anywhere near $300,000, I would assume a good chunk of that is paying salaries of the editors Tim and Megan. On top of this, Tim often refers to his work as an editor as his job. And, well, I'm extra nosy and wouldn't put this in the article but nonprofits have to file paperwork every year. If you look at Rattle Foundation's 990, you can see that around $110,000 is going toward salaries. Plus they have pension plans. The foundation's total asset value is north of 7 mil. It's not...small. But also not near something like Poets & Writers which is valued 10 mil plus, maybe more?
Just piggy backing on that last comment. A lot of the money that flows through the lit world tends to happen through nonprofits which get huge grants then disperse them to magazines (rather than teaching magazine how to get the grants themselves). I think it's problematic, but it is what it is. For example, CLMP got $150,000 in Pandemic aid money that they turned around and distributed to magazines (can't tell how much)? Who pay $125 membership fees? Idk. It's so hard to really pin all of this stuff down and it's all speculation especially since, if you want really detailed info about nonprofits, Guidestar charges $400 per month and I don't have that kind of money. Plus, I think a lot of these nonprofits are mostly well intentioned and do good things in other ways. Also the way America spends money on the literary arts is pretty fucked compared to a lot of other countries when you break it all down. Lots of money just gets funneled into the long-term players who play gate keeper with it.
Agree with all your points. And again thanks for all the work and research put into this. I don't begrudge Tim and his colleague a decent salary and pension, well deserved and still modest in comparison to the business/tech or any other sector, likely. One comment re Submittable for journal subs or contests, the outlet doesn't get the full fee. Cleaver reports that they get $3.76 out of $5 fee. I don't know how Submittable structures their contracts, I think some journals pay a flat fee then cut per submission. You probably know more. One journal I admire for its transparency is Tahoma Review--they include their profit and loss statement on the website. You see line edits for each bit of revenue and expense, and they zero out. However, their budget is very, very modest in comparison to a Rattle. This sort of transparency by journals could address questions but might also raise others. Should all writers and publishers be required to have their income numbers made public?
Came for the info but stayed for the voice: “Having me tell you, ‘spend decades building a household brand with your loads of famous friends throughout a time period with 1% of the competition you have,’ would just be a dick move.”
This was cool to read, thanks! I hope when I finally get my “ButtStuff” themed litmag going, after befriending a prince or winning the lotto, you’ll submit!
What a deep dive! Thanks Ben for the thorough analysis and putting this together. Very helpful! It also gives me hope for an acceptance from Rattle someday. :)
Wow, Ben, well done! Thanks for sharing your homework. I'm personally a big fan of Rattle and see Tim's work as inpirational.
Thank you. Yeah I knew of Rattle but didn't know all of this. After researching so many bad actors, it was so nice to research someone who seemed to be working toward improving what they are doing rather than getting up to anything sneaky.
If you haven't seen already, I recently had a conversation with Tim :)
https://markdanowsky.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-timothy-green
This was exactly the information I was looking for and I’m so glad to have stumbled across it today! Thank you for sharing; I loved every detail and how thorough you’ve been.
Aw thank you. I'm very glad to hear it
I think Rattle’s EIC has donated quite a bit. Tim gave this background in one of their podcasts, I believe. At least (IIRC) he paid Tim for his editing work, and gave him a mission and let him do it. That was the sense I got.
I wondered about that. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere so I didn't want to assume. But simply considering that he seems fairly wealthy, I could see it. Do you know where I could find that podcast?
Wish I could, but I am a very occasional podcast listener. I believe it was somewhere in the Rattlecast (their own podcast), but this was a year or more ago.
Well done. Interesting. Do the editors from Rattle, Tim Green and colleague, get paid? That's a Herculean task, 110k poems to read. Your analysis to how and why journal can work without charging gees and paying contributors is very insightful. It does come down to very dedicated, invested-for-the-long-term leaders, who still don't make that much. Thanks for this.
If I had to guess, since their listed expenses are north of $300,000 on Guidestar and they have a whole separate category for paying prize winners (~$50,000). Under the expenses for the $300,000 it says "The rattle foundation published four issues of rattle magazine; four individual chapbooks; livestreamed 150 hours of literary programming and podcasts; and maintained the rattle.com website, which received over two million page views in 2021." And since on the technical side, none of that costs anywhere near $300,000, I would assume a good chunk of that is paying salaries of the editors Tim and Megan. On top of this, Tim often refers to his work as an editor as his job. And, well, I'm extra nosy and wouldn't put this in the article but nonprofits have to file paperwork every year. If you look at Rattle Foundation's 990, you can see that around $110,000 is going toward salaries. Plus they have pension plans. The foundation's total asset value is north of 7 mil. It's not...small. But also not near something like Poets & Writers which is valued 10 mil plus, maybe more?
Just piggy backing on that last comment. A lot of the money that flows through the lit world tends to happen through nonprofits which get huge grants then disperse them to magazines (rather than teaching magazine how to get the grants themselves). I think it's problematic, but it is what it is. For example, CLMP got $150,000 in Pandemic aid money that they turned around and distributed to magazines (can't tell how much)? Who pay $125 membership fees? Idk. It's so hard to really pin all of this stuff down and it's all speculation especially since, if you want really detailed info about nonprofits, Guidestar charges $400 per month and I don't have that kind of money. Plus, I think a lot of these nonprofits are mostly well intentioned and do good things in other ways. Also the way America spends money on the literary arts is pretty fucked compared to a lot of other countries when you break it all down. Lots of money just gets funneled into the long-term players who play gate keeper with it.
Now that's a labour of love for the lit community if there ever was one. Well done, Benjamin.
Thank you. It was fascinating to research.
Agree with all your points. And again thanks for all the work and research put into this. I don't begrudge Tim and his colleague a decent salary and pension, well deserved and still modest in comparison to the business/tech or any other sector, likely. One comment re Submittable for journal subs or contests, the outlet doesn't get the full fee. Cleaver reports that they get $3.76 out of $5 fee. I don't know how Submittable structures their contracts, I think some journals pay a flat fee then cut per submission. You probably know more. One journal I admire for its transparency is Tahoma Review--they include their profit and loss statement on the website. You see line edits for each bit of revenue and expense, and they zero out. However, their budget is very, very modest in comparison to a Rattle. This sort of transparency by journals could address questions but might also raise others. Should all writers and publishers be required to have their income numbers made public?
Came for the info but stayed for the voice: “Having me tell you, ‘spend decades building a household brand with your loads of famous friends throughout a time period with 1% of the competition you have,’ would just be a dick move.”
This was cool to read, thanks! I hope when I finally get my “ButtStuff” themed litmag going, after befriending a prince or winning the lotto, you’ll submit!