An Announcement from Spelt Magazine

Issue 11 has gone to print, and it will be our last print issue

Any writer, or reader of literary magazines cannot help to notice that the world of the lit. mag. has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. As we dragged issue 11 together, moved money from account to account, begged and borrowed to get the issue produced I began to realise that we had come to the end with print. Brexit made it impossible to send issues to the EU without the risk of huge charges both to us and the recipient, rising paper and production costs meant that to produce the magazine was becoming more expensive, and raised postage costs made it almost impossible to make enough of a profit on sales to ensure production of the next issue. I could have raised the price of the magazine, but I would have needed to raise it significantly, making accessibility to the magazine for those on lower incomes a challenge.

I have been thinking about this conundrum constantly for months. In all honesty, eventually I found myself beginning to resent the constant grind of trying to get the magazine to print. The contributors and readers deserve better than resentment. They deserve celebration. Something has to change. It is, therefore, with a heavy heart that I announce that issue eleven will be the last print issue of Spelt magazine. This is not to say that this is the end of Spelt; we will continue in a new format, but it is the end of this part of the Spelt journey; the one of white envelopes dropping heavily onto your doormat, of the smell of fresh ink on fresh pages, of the utter delight of an unboxing at every issue. This part of the journey is over. And I am immensely sad about it.

What next? You might ask. We will return in a new format. Rather than simply transfer the magazine as was onto a website or PDF version, we want to see the end of print Spelt as the beginning of digital Spelt, and to do this properly takes research and time. We will be utilising this, the Spelt substack page more fully from now on, alongside the Spelt podcast and some other ideas, but first, we: Steve Nash, Helen Dewbery and I, will take a break while we consider our options, and formulate a plan, and we will return in 2025 with something different, something that continues the ethos of the magazine – to celebrate and validate the rural experience – accessibility, quality and beauty.

I am immensely excited about future Spelt.

If you have an active subscription to the print magazine with us, I will be in touch personally to discuss what happens next.

I hope you’ll join us for the next leg of the journey. Thank you to everyone who has supported, bought, signed up for, shared and helped fund this celebration of the rural. I am so proud of what we have achieved. I hope every contributor enjoys the feeling of knowing that their work is forever in the British Library now, sat snug and safe between the pages of something that was utterly beautiful. I leave you with this issue, full of wonderful writing, including the Shepton Snowdrops competition winners, photo and poetry categories. It seems right that we should end with such beautiful images. Spelt 11 will be available for sale soon.

Until we meet again

Wendy Pratt

Founder and editor in chief of Spelt magazine