Fireside to Close

Fireside Magazine will close later this year, primarily due to financial concerns, according to publisher Brian J. White:

When I launched the first Fireside Kickstarter 10 years ago, it was an experiment in online publishing and crowdfunding, and an attempt o hike the standard of pay for writers up much higher than was considered the norm at the time. I wasn’t sure that first campaign would succeed, and back then I would never have guessed that we’d be where we are today, 100 issues into a run of amazing fiction, poetry, essays, art, editing, and more.

But nothing lasts forever, and sadly it’s time to draw things to a close. When I stepped back in as owner last year, I had big hopes of taking Fireside forward for years to come. But unfortunately life had other ideas, between major increases last fall to my responsibilities at my day job and a series of difficult life events that have made it impossible for me to continue Fireside while maintaining any semblance of mental and physical health. Compounding that, even though we made progress in adding subscribers, Fireside is still losing a lot of money each month, and the circumstances described above also got in the way of implementing additional plans to bring in more funds.

They have enough content to continue publishing into September. “Our publisher, L. D. Lewis, and managing editor, Chelle Parker, are both staying on through June to help wrap up our publishing commitments.” Annual subscribers will be refunded for issues that won’t be published.

For more, see White’s announcement.

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