I've been really fascinated by the cultural differences in submission fees since I have recently started submitting to open gallery calls for visual artists. In that world, it seems completely normal to charge a $25-$50 submission fee fees for any call for submission. The submission fees are more in line with what I expect from contests with cash prizes in the literary world… and it seems like everyone in that world is very upfront that this is how galleries pay their bills, through subsidy from artists who want to be considered for exhibitions. As an outsider, I'm a bit boggled - fees that high feel like a scammy red flag to me. But I think both submission fees for literary journals and submission fees for art galleries must in part be informed by the pre-internet norms for those communities. Before the internet, writers would always have to pay a small amount of money to mail their physical submissions - a stamp and SASE. And before the internet, artists would have to pay a much larger amount to create slides or to physically mail their entire artworks. So I guess that community is just used to shelling out to even be considered.