It’s always exciting when a new project pops up, and Tincture Journal is no exception.
Under the guidance of Sydney-based editor Daniel Young, Tincture is a digital publication looking to publish quality short fiction, poetry and non-fiction. It promises to be a publication that takes itself, and the business of lit-journal-ing, seriously. Published writers will be paid (a token amount to start with, but this is a generous gesture). The e-book format of the journal presumably makes it both an affordable publication to produce and a friendly one to read on your device of choice. The publication will be sold for a small amount, which I think is yet to be decided.
From their website:
“E-books are not a lower-class of book, and Tincture endeavours to publish high quality writing in high quality electronic formats” – I have a whole lot of respect for Tincture‘s valuing electronic publishing in this way; it’s something I feel is really important.
It’s impossible to tell what a publication will be before its first issue. But the attitude of the people producing Tincture, and the kinds of people I’ve so far seen engaging with it via Facebook and Twitter (lit people, whose work I like, shan’t name-drop), bode well for this new lit journal, whose first issue will be out in the next month or two.
Tincture are currently taking submissions. Poetry submissions have been closed due to a flood of interest, but they’re still taking submissions (through the brilliant Submittable portal) of short stories and non-fiction.
So take a punt. These guys have their head screwed on straight, and if you send them good work, they’ll be publishing good work!
Sam van Zweden 
12/02/2013 at 11:50 am
Thanks for such a nice write-up, Sam! Certainly it’s hard to judge at this stage exactly what Issue One will be like, and I’ve made things even more difficult by giving very little guidance to writers on themes or styles of writing that will be accepted. The usual lit journal advice of “read our previous issues” doesn’t apply, and I’m loathe to reference other journals that I like, as we don’t want to be a copy 🙂
My hope is that quality writing of all types can speak for itself and find an audience in a single e-book journal, perhaps helping to fill the gaps left by the departure of some print journals. I also feel that the easy distribution of e-books can attract a more global audience – so far, Issue One is looking to be around 60/40 Australian to international writers.
Issue One submissions only opened last weekend, and are already likely to close quite soon – a good sign of the amount of interesting writing out there. Editing has begun, and you are correct that pricing and distribution are still fairly unplanned. This will be my next focus.
Once the content of Issue One is fully decided, I will be leaving the Submittable portal open and re-opening poetry submissions for planning of Issue Two – but another undecided element is the frequency of the publication. I would like 4 per year but it may not be feasible.
A lot depends on how well Issue One is received, so I can only echo your sentiment: if writers trust us with their best work, we will publish great work and can only grow from that!
12/02/2013 at 10:31 pm
Great news!