The 2025 Best Lit Mag Awards: By the Numbers

Our 2025 Best Lit Mags Awards are over! Last year, we had around 3,000 writers with roughly 6,500 total votes. This year, we blew past that within the first week! Below, you’ll find all the stats, plus some additional insights, and a fun alternate-universe experiment.

You can find the winners of this year's best lit mags here.

And now, for the insights.

The stats

• 8,160 writers cast votes over 27 days
• 2,299 different literary magazines got nominated
• That's 13,884 total nominations
• 36,173 tags were given
• Voters averaged 2.6 tags per magazine
• 630 voters (7.7%) used all 5 magazine slots
• Average voter nominated 1.7 magazines
• 75% of voters used all 3 available tags
• 1,078 magazines got exactly one vote
• Only 267 magazines were mentioned 10+ times (11.7% of all magazines mentioned)
• Top 5 magazines captured 10.1% of all votes
• Top 10 magazines captured only 15% of votes
• 'Great Editor(s)' was most popular tag with 7,067 votes
• 'Career Builder' was least popular with 1,762 votes
• 'Hidden Gem' had 378 magazines claim it as their primary identity
• Most popular two tag combo: 'A Damn Good Read + Great Editor(s)' (2,595 times)
• Most popular three tag combo: 'A Damn Good Read + Great Editor(s) + I Just Love Them!' (609 times)
• Busiest day: November 17th with 940 votes (11.5% of all votes)
• We averaged 302 votes per day
• Votes came from all time zones around the world
• We caught and removed around 200 fraudulent ballot-stuffing votes from 4 magazines owned by the same person

Alternative universe: If we'd used the percentage method

We toyed with several ideas for methodologies to select winners. Our second favorite was the percentage method, where the winner for each tag would be the magazine where the highest percentage of their voters gave them that specific tag (with minimum 20 nominations). Here is what that would have looked like:

• A Damn Good Read: The Sun (82.4%)
• Actually Inclusive: The Writing Fae (95.2%)
• Beautiful Design: Antler Velvet (89.3%)
• Bold and Weird: Rat Bag Lit (89.4%)
• Career Builder: Ploughshares Literary Journal (46.7%)
• Great Editor(s): Consequence (88.2%)
• Hidden Gem: Abundance Literary Magazine (88.2%)
• I Just Love Them!: the serendipity archives (77.9%)
• New Writer Friendly: Hey! Young Writer (74.2%)

Discoveries from the comments

270 voters left comments (!), so we combed through them for little gems about what makes these magazines special:

• Susurrus: "always give detailed, encouraging feedback, even in rejection"
• Sky Island Journal: "provides feedback on accepted pieces and they send a handwritten postcard prior to your piece coming out"
• JADE&COMPASS: "didn't hesitate to give me feedback on my work and encourage me in the future"
• Thin Skin: "Fast response (3 weeks)"
• Penstricken: "offers helpful, individualised critique with fast response"
• SmokeLong Quarterly: "special because of the community the editors have built around the magazine...supportive of writers at all skill levels and offer great workshops"
• Dreamworldgirl Zine: "fuse print with in-person events, merch, and real community"
• fourteen poems: "creating a vital IRL community of queer writers in London and beyond"
• WAYE Small Press: "founded on the idea that 'print ain't dead'"
• LEAN: "[is a] Magazine devoted to non-protagonist-centered fiction"
• Red Flag Poetry: "[has a] poetry postcard project"
• HAWKEYE: "support their writers beyond publication, especially on social media"
• In a Flash: "The editors then compose a thoughtful interview with the featured writer"
• Exist Otherwise: "wonderfully trans/nonbinary inclusive with fab queer content"
• QuillMark: "features writing from new writers under Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Translations and Poetry"
• Hippocampus Magazine: "run great contests, host a wonderful craft weekend every year"
• Conchas y Cafe: "offer mentoring/free workshops & help people fall in love with writing"
• Okay Donkey: "it's also abundantly clear that they love celebrating their contributors"
• After Happy Hour Review: "most transparent magazine when it comes to how they finance the magazine, pay their writers, and what they do with contest fees"
• Apricus Literary: "supports young writers, understanding and recognising their work"
• Blackbird: "genuinely values building a supportive literary community -- their media presence and support of previous contributors proves that"
• Bloodletter Magazine: "go above and beyond to make their writers feel special and seen"
• Cutleaf: "gave me feedback, and LIT magazine even gave me another chance by letting me resubmit after I took their editorial advice"
• Flash Fiction Magazine: "classes they put on for free are absolutely stellar"
• HAD: "I truly look forward to reading HAD every day"
• Ink In Thirds: "editor is sensitive, responsive, and committed to offering payment to contributors"
• Iron Horse: "offer feedback at no additional charge above their regular submission fee AND they have free submission windows"
• ONLY POEMS: "Karan and Shannan at OP are, like, a dream team. The best."
• Micromance Magazine: "publish nothing but romance and love stories that brighten the days"
• New Ohio Review: "publish in print and then release the issue online so you get the best of both worlds"
• Rat Bag Lit: "friendly and chill and actually makes me feel relaxed submitting, they provide quality feedback even when rejection and pay while asking for no submission fees"
• SICK Magazine: "always been committed to paying artists, and truly believes in equity"
• Trash Cat Lit: "Editor really cares about the author's work and is keen to promote it within the mag and beyond"

Thank you so much to everyone who has made this possible. Every year, we see more and more people recognizing how important indie publishing is. It’s our favorite way to end the year.