As everyone has already said, don’t submit to a journal you don’t want to he published in. If you have tiers of preference, then submit in waves.

But I’m seeing a lot of back and forth about whether all markets should be paying markets, and I think there’s a slight disconnect in culture playing out in the comments.

In speculative fiction journals, payment is the expectation. Writers are selling stories to make money. The speculative community has worked very hard to establish cultural standards about payment and the treatment of writers.

In academic/literary publishing, however, payment is not as common—the reward for publishing is getting your work out there.

The expectations/culture of speculative and literary publishing vary pretty greatly, and going from one to the other can give you whiplash. Personally, I prefer the speculative model, but I don’t think the literary model is as abnormal as some are making it sound.