On Spec Suspends Print Edition

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For the second consecutive year On Spec’s application for funding from the Canada Council for the Arts has been denied. The magazine already made cost reductions and made appeals for support through Patreon, so the next thing to go is printing copies for subscribers.

Some hard choices had to be made, and the first is that, starting with our Spring 2015 issue (delayed due to several family emergencies among the members of our senior editorial staff), On Spec will temporarily suspend print production, and be available as a digital magazine only. We trust that, as soon as funds become available, On Spec will be printed for our subscribers, and we appreciate their support. As soon as the issue is available, our subscribers will be informed by email or by letter, and given a means to freely access the digital issue in their preferred format.

In times to come, our marketing and fundraising efforts will increase to the best of our abilities, and we look forward to publishing more excellent fiction and poetry for many years to come.

Paradoxically, the staff combined the above news with an announcement they will launch this month Sleuth Magazine, a new Canadian digital journal of mystery and suspense.

The first issue of Sleuth will be presented at When Words Collide in Calgary.

[Via Sean Wallace.]

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6 thoughts on “On Spec Suspends Print Edition”

  1. That’s 2 years in a row that On Spec has been screwed over by the Fascist Bastard government of Der Fuhrer Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada. “The Conservative Party of Canada” is NOT the Progressive Conservative Party, but was taken over by the Fascists of the Canadian Alliance (the former Reform Party). Think of them as a very slightly saner version of the Tea Party in the U.S., minus the stupid rhetoric. Naturally On Spec is looked upon as having “leftist / Commie” leanings by these lunatics.

  2. At least we’ve got an election coming up this year; hopefully things will change next year.

    (I’m still annoyed at them for not noticing the huge goatse-sized plot hole in their 1993 “Kissing Hitler”, though. That piece of idiocy somehow got nominated for an Aurora, AND included in their Best of the First Five Years anthology!)

    (Ask me about the plot hole.)

  3. Decades ago I applied for a grant from the CCLM, the Co-ordinating Council of Literary Magazines, and after lengthy consideration, they told me that science fiction, and magazines about it, weren’t literary.

    For more about magazines being refused funding, remember (Google it!) Michael Moorcock’s adventures with the UK’s Arts Council.

  4. It’s not that the Harper government in Ottawa is biases against science fiction … I doubt the bureaucrats who make the Canada Council grants even got that far in their thinking. It’s more that the government in Ottawa probably doesn’t believe in supporting any of the arts. In their view, that should be done by private philanthropy — the Molson Grant for the Performing Arts, or the Bank of Montreal Science Fiction Award. The later has a catchy sound to it, right? Also, our Prime Minister doesn’t really believe in nation-states. They get in the way of Corporations, so why would you celebrate or support “Canadian” writers when they should compete in the market place with American, French, Russian, and Chinese writers? To Steven Harper there is no “Canada,” just some property inhabited by employees who kick-back some of their wages to the boss in the form of “taxes.”

  5. Last year, I think the Council made snide comments about the literary quality of the magazine. I don’t agree (not just because they printed a story of mine and have another on tap), but this could be a case of Lit vs SpecFic – or maybe they are just idiots.

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