Gather round the fire for a new digital format…
Firewords is the magazine of fiery fiction & poetry brought to life with visual flair. Campfire is our digital serialised offshoot that drops regular bitesized content into your inbox. Every fortnight, come get cosy with us while we toast some marshmallows and tell stories into the night. Each piece will be accompanied by the ‘usual’ amazing, unique and colourful illustrations.
Like the sound of it? You can sign up below…
Why the change of format?
As everyone is well aware, the cost of doing anything nowadays is going up and up, and publishing (especially a small, self-funded press like ours) has not escaped the struggles. In the 9 years we’ve been running Firewords, it has never made a profit but we’ve been proud that it’s always been self-sustaining - the sales of each issue covering the cost of printing the next, and so on. However, now that the cost of printing, distribution, storage and myriad other factors are all increasing means that continuing as we have been was not going to be sustainable. The cost benefits of stepping away from print are twofold: we won’t have a huge print bill to cover each time and we’ll also (hopefully) have some recurring money coming in via the subscriptions.
Though cost is the biggest factor in this decision, it’s not the only one. We’ve been keen to try something different for a while. This new gradual way of publishing Firewords means each piece gets its own moment in the spotlight. Instead of being buried deep in the pages and having to fight for attention (or getting missed completely), they’ll now get all our readers’ attention straight away as they drop into their inboxes.
We’ve always produced Firewords in our spare time, in between our day jobs. Reading all the submissions, selecting the final line up, commissioning all the artwork and putting it all together in one publication is always a bit of a scramble and we never have as much time as we’d like on each of these steps. Going forwards, we’ll have more time to focus on getting each piece beautifully illustrated and in front of your eyes one by one, rather than all at once with a tight deadline.
Will there still be compiled issues?
Yes, even though we’re publishing a very small number of stories and poetry at a time, we’re still putting together a complete issue and we’ll compile them all into a digital version of the magazine as before. This will then be available to optionally purchase from our website. Paid subscribers will get a 50% discount on this or, if you don’t want to subscribe to the newsletter, you can wait and buy the digital version at the end to have all the stories and poems in one place. We will send a complimentary copy to all our contributors.
Will Firewords ever be in print again?
We hope so but cannot say for certain. The team loves holding a final physical version of the magazine in its hands and we do hope to be able to get back there in some form. This could be back to each issue as before, or some kind of anthology of previous digital issues.