Goodbye Oleada, Hello Ola, Subfolio, & Dapple

Posted byKendall DunkelbergPosted inpublishing, submissions, TechnologyTags:, , , , , , , , , , ,

Over at Lit Mag Labs, they’ve been reporting on the demise of one alternative submission platform and the rise of three new ones this year.

Oleada, a quirky little submission manager that I wrote about awhile ago and even used once or twice, is soon to be no more, at least according to Lit Mag Labs. On the Oleada website, I didn’t see an announcement, but Lit Mag Labs says it will be phased out in February 2026 to be replaced by Ola.

So far, at Ola, I can only see information about the features publishers will have and the pricing publishers pay to host calls for submission there. So far, it’s a little unclear to me how writers will submit work on Ola and how they’ll track their submissions. From their Roadmap page, it looks like it will be six months or more before the site is fully functional, though maybe they’ll have some early adopters up and running before then.

Another new submission platform that is getting some attention is Subfolio, where users can login and where there are several actuve calls for submission, including from magazines like Agni, River Styx, and One Art. A few other publishers have created landing pages but currently don’t have open calls. Lit Mag Labs has a recent interview with the creator, which is especially enlightening for magazine editors. Of course, it is early days, but Subfolio appears to be based on a stable, working prototype and seems to be gaining traction. Publishers can get full details on pricing and features here.

Finally, Lit Mag Labs turned me on to Dapple. Read the Lit Mag Labs interview here. As with Ola, I can see how things are supposed to work for publishers, though I haven’t explored that fully yet, but I can’t see open calls for submission or tell whether those will be hosted at dapple.com or whether magazines will have their calls listed on their website. Will there be a discover feature, as there is on Submittable and Subfolio? Or will writers find calls. Will writers need to set up an account at Dapple to submit? Or will that happen through the publisher’s call. I haven’t had time to explore their site too much yet, so I’m curious how it will work from the writer’s perspective.

Published by Kendall Dunkelberg

I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors.

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