Apparition Lit will be closing at the end of 2024.
We want to thank all of our staff for the generosity of their time and their interest. Working with so many talented people has changed us deeply. Thank you to all our Guest Editors, our Guest Essayists, our contributors, and our subscribers.
Important Notes
Our website will remain up for as long as possible. We have so much pride in our writers and deeply love what we’ve published. We want others to discover and enjoy these works as much as we have.
Our final issue will be Issue 28: Harbinger (publishing October 2024). After that we will work publishing reprints with Issue 29: Editor’s Picks of Apparition Lit and Issue 30: The Best of Apparition‘s Flash Fiction. Our Monthly Flash Fiction challenge will continue to the end of the year.
We will not be taking any more subscribers for the year and our Patreon will shut down at the end of 2024.
This isn’t about money. Yes, our subscribership and Patreon income has declined. However, between the four of our Senior Editors, we are lucky enough to be able to maintain Apparition Lit’s funding. It comes down to this: we’re tired and most of all, we miss writing for ourselves.
In the beginning…
Seven years ago, our writers group sketched out an idea for a literary magazine. We wanted gorgeous artwork, a modern website, and most of all, professionalism. Keeping to submission schedules, on-time payments, and open, honest communication with our writers.
Apparition Lit was our dream and we saw it into fruition. Seven years is a long time. We only actually met in person, all together, in 2022. Many people don’t see the behind-the-scenes of running a magazine, and we tried our best to only show the highlights and never the muddy bottom. We never stopped planning. If we weren’t open for submission, we were editing or promoting.
The literary landscape has changed so much from when we started, we’ve seen many good places open and/or close. Combine the pandemic, the loss of Twitter, and several personal challenges/health problems, the zest we had for marketing and promotion steadily declined. We had so many meetings about how to increase our funding and how to get more subscribers. There was more work we could have done, but we were already so tired.
Frankly, we can’t compete for attention. We’ve never been skilled at self-promotion and relying on Kickstarters or crowdfunding just isn’t our thing. 2023 was the first year we operated at a loss and that’s when we knew it was time to close. We don’t have that hustle in us anymore; the best thing we can do is stand aside and leave it to someone else.
A respectable middle-ground
We loved being a semi-pro magazine. We have discovered new writers, published some first-ever submissions, and were lucky enough to work with people we saw as Industry Greats. We hope there are many more semi-pro mags out in the world.
But being semi-pro always felt like being a wallflower at a grand ball. Never respectable enough to be noticed, but never able to fade away completely. We’ve seen posts about deigning to submit to a semi-pro venue, the quantification of our work down to the cent.
It’s hard to pour your collective hearts into something and never see it recognized. Just nodded in passing.
We never really achieved the recognition we wanted for our magazine. Yes, it’s prideful and hubristic. It’s been a lesson in humility for sure. We wanted so deeply to see our writers and our artists recognized–not only by awards, but just seen. It always felt that, because we were never able to hit that $0.08 funding mark, we were never going to be noticed. Even though we opened consistently for submissions, never solicited short stories or poetry, and both published and paid on-time (take from that whatever you wish). The literary world can very much feel like you need a secret password to enter into success. We just never found that password.
It took a long time to soothe that wound. It’s a good lesson to learn: you don’t get everything. You will succeed, just not how you envisioned. We’re telling you this because maybe you are a semi-pro magazine that feels unseen and unsung. We see you, we hear you. We wish it was different, too.
Apparition Lit was a stable magazine, with a talented staff, and was carried through by the friendships we made.
We did what we could. We hope we’re remembered as a kind magazine, one that championed writers and put out good work.
We hope you continue to donate and support small presses.
