Reciprocal altruism is the fancy-schmancy phrase evolutionary biologists use to describe the I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine dynamic of various relationships in nature.

Ecostamps adapted this principle to tackle two important issues and create a win-win scenario for editors and authors.

Literary magazines need funds to operate. Most literary journals are labors-of-love, run on shoestring budgets, and largely supported by volunteers, grants, donations, and all too often dollars from editors' pockets.

Constructive feedback is essential to writers' development. Most editors would love to provide feedback on submissions but cannot. With a job or school and family and friends and a plethora of other commitments and obligations, it's barely possible to open, sort, and read all of the submissions received, let alone find the time to provide substantive feedback.

Like many things in life, these issues boil down to time and money. Editors have limited time and need money for operations and, ideally, to pay authors for their work.

Enter Ecostamps! Ecostamps...

• creates time for editors by eliminating the administrative dross of the review process.
• puts tools in the hands of editors to easily provide substantive feedback to writers.
• provides an important financial incentive to use the tools.

With online submissions, Ecostamps eliminates the mail bags, the piles and piles of paper, the SASEs, and all those nasty paper cuts.

Ecostamps Report Cards provide an easy-to-use and exceptionally efficient way to provide constructive criticism to authors.

For no more than the cost of paper, envelopes, printing, and postage for a typical short story submission, Ecostamps offers writers two invaluable benefits: the flexibility of real-time editing and feedback directly from editors.

Most importantly, Ecostamps completes the virtuous circle by capturing the resources that otherwise would have filled the coffers of the U.S. Postal Service and putting it to work by providing direct financial support to literary journals.

Ecostamps is a win-win for editors and writers, but there is a third winner: readers.

100% of Ecostamps "profits" (submission fees after operating expenses) directly supports reading and literacy programs.

Illiteracy is a chronic crisis that imposes massive costs and creates a permanent underclass in society. Studies by the National Institute for Literacy found the following:

• 43% of the people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty
• 70% of state and federal prisoners can be classified as illiterate
• 85% of all juvenile offenders may be classified as functionally or marginally illiterate

Ecostamps is a market solution that increases the productivity of editors, provides direct financial support to literary journals, enables editors to efficiently provide substantive feedback to writers, and, most importantly, helps tackle the crisis in literacy.