Reading Fees and the Plight of Literary Magazines

Speaking of fiction writing, John Farrell has an interesting post up over on his blog at Forbes.com about how increasing numbers of high profile literary magazines are looking at charging reading fees in order to review unsolicited manuscripts. I can certainly see why this would drive writers up the wall -- and goodness knows unpublished fiction authors are not the most flush-with-capital group of people in the world. But John outlines a real problem that magazines face as fewer people subscribe to print magazines and yet authors find it easier than ever to flood their manuscripts into the surviving literary mags via online submission.