It’s time for our 2nd annual Lit Mag Incubator Project! For those who don’t know, The Chill Subs Lit Mag Incubator Project is our initiative to empower innovation in the literary space. In 2025, we awarded five magazines $1,000 each to help them make their magazine financially sustainable within a year. The winners were Dreamworldgirl Zine, Folly, Notch, NWF Journal, and Space and Time.
This year, we will fund experiments that take on one of the many problems independent magazines face. Examples might include, but are not limited to:
- How do lit mags find more readers?
- How do they identify AI-generated submissions?
- How do they compensate writers fairly?
- How do they improve the quality of submissions?
Experiments are time-limited projects that seek to solve a specific problem in an innovative way. For a recent example, you can read about our Backlist Experiment with The Georgia Review in Lit Hub:
What Happens When You Mail 30 Writers Free Lit Mags?
Experiments should be completed within 10 months of the award. After the experiments have concluded, Chill Subs will publish a report on the successes and failures, and participating magazines will present their findings to CLMP.
Selected magazines receive:
- Up to $1,000 from Chill Subs per experiment
- Consultation with Chill Subs and CLMP on how to execute the proposed experiment
- Promotion through the Chill Subs and CLMP networks
- A free one-year membership to CLMP. View benefits here.
Chill Subs will award $5,000 total, and the number of recipients will depend on the budgets outlined in the submitted proposals. Applicants may request funds of any amount up to $1,000.
Magazines are invited to submit brief proposals by September 15. Please reach out to support@chillsubs.com with questions about the application process.