Background
Haiku Journal features both new and established poets. We publish haiku in the strict 5 / 7 / 5 form — three lines with five, seven, and five syllables.
It's still free to submit
Many excellent journals charge fees for online or offline submissions (or both). We all understand those funds are needed to send contributors copies or otherwise generate income — more than 70% of journals today do not pay anything. These practices are understandable, but frustrating to writers. Fortunately, Haiku Journal submissions are still free.
Payments
All journals have some financial strategy to stay afloat, and those decisions are often difficult trade-offs. What are ours?
Pros
- We don't require writers to pay anything to submit.
- We are in the minority of journals that do actually pay cash (via PayPal, because it's easy and popular).
- Issues are free to read online.
Cons
- We cannot afford to send free paperback issues to contributors.
- Token payments are small.
Submission Guidelines
By submitting, you are acknowledging these terms:
- By submitting, you are asserting your work is available to print and has not been previously printed elsewhere. You may exploit your haiku in any way you wish without contacting us in the future.*
- You affirm your submission is your own creation and no part of your submission is in the public domain.
- You may submit up to 3 haiku each issue.
- Haiku must follow the strict 5 / 7 / 5 syllable pattern. Our submission form will count syllables for you and reject anything outside the form. (If you prefer looser haiku forms, please visit our sister journal 50Haikus.com.)
- Lines cannot exceed 40 characters per line. Our books are printed in short lines, so please check your line lengths before submitting.
- Issues are free to read online. Paperback copies are an optional purchase through Prolific Press. Publishing poets is hard work and costs money — we are not a university press, and we cannot afford to give away free paperback issues to contributors. We support you by providing all our services for free, including reading and publishing.
- We do offer cash payments (a token payment) to contributors, paid shortly after paperback publication.
- You may withdraw any submission automatically prior to acceptance by logging into the submission manager. Once accepted, you will need to contact us to withdraw a submission.
Notes
- We do not charge you to submit your work.
- We do not charge a reading fee for general submissions.
- Please limit your submissions to 3 per issue.
- Remember to separate your submissions.
- Simultaneous submissions are fine — please notify us if a haiku is accepted elsewhere.
- One token payment is allowed per issue.
- Token payments are currently $1.50 for everyone, and $10.00 for submissions marked as Editor's Choice.
- Cash payments are paid by PayPal to any address you designate.
Submit by Mail
We no longer accept submissions by mail. Please use the online submission manager.
* Haiku Journal is an online journal utilizing dynamic content pages. This means that every website visitor to our online issues is essentially spawning a fresh view of the haiku in that issue. This kind of modern technology complicates the publishing language found in contracts and guidelines that date back over a hundred years. What constitutes "publishing"? For this reason, we simply share (with the poets) the rights to the haiku published here. If you submit a haiku and it is accepted for publication, you still retain the right to exploit your haiku in any way you wish, including reprinting it or even self-publishing. You can sell the non-exclusive right to publish your haiku to someone else, like another publisher or journal. You don't need to ask us in advance.