Epistol

Epistol is a collaboration between Epineer (Malmö, SW), Meta Design Work (Brighton, UK/Copenhagen, DK), Oil Internet (London, UK) and Glen Sheppard (Montréal, CA).

Prior to its launch in Spring/Summer 2011, it carried the names Content, King Lire and Grenade. The process has found us wracking our brains from London to Thessaloniki, Malmö to Antakya, Abu Dhabi to Peru.

A great deal of consideration went into the current expectation of a "community-based platform". We flirted with this and eventually modified. Conversations are great, but what we were after was the cream of the crop, not the compromises of demos. By positioning Epistol exquisitely towards the overlooked, considerations of agents and managers became moot; in fact, most consideration of the industry in its current state proved moot. We were interested in a dream state.

At a time when the sole criterion for publication seems to be Mammon, we wondered if we couldn't involve other interesting factors. Quality, perhaps? Variety? Originality?

With these oft-forgotten concepts in mind, we started to think at length about readers and writers, dissemination, loyalty, royalties and fascination.

The model we came up with was fairly simple:

• Seek new and original online submissions via our website. 
• Curate these works independently to avoid overhead costs, thereby giving the majority of sales profits to the people who deserve it: the authors (authors will receive 55% of gross). 
• In curating independently, avoid the horror show of vanity publishing and the popularity contest of community-driven publishing. 
• Disseminate curated works digitally, again ensuring lower overheads and enabling a larger readership to discover previously unheard voices. 
• Produce a curated collection of the most engaging publications submitted to Epistol every season. 
• Make one exclusive short publication available, free of charge, every month. 
• Begin with English language readers and writers, but satisfy other reader- and writerships as soon as possible.

Click on the names to the right for a little bit about us and what excites most about Epistol.