Today we are launching a funding drive. It’s not quite a last throw of the dice, but we are eager to ensure that Pellicle remains financially stable for the next few years, giving us the space to invest in our team, our contributors, and the content we produce. To do this, we need your help.

Our target is to hit 500 Patreon subscribers and become profitable by May 1st, 2023—our fourth birthday. This might not sound like much, in fact the reality is that it’s a few hundred quid extra a month, but that’s how slim the margins are between us making a loss, and building up a small reserve of cash to spend on things like more commissioned work, merchandise, events, and making sure our editorial team is fairly remunerated for their work behind the scenes.

Put simply: if you enjoy reading or listening to Pellicle, and you can afford to do so, you should subscribe. Everything we produce costs money, and we believe in a modern, almost completely ad-free, reader-supporter model. If we’ve already done enough to convince you, click here to set up your subscription via Patreon (it starts from as little as £1/$1.50 a month for individuals, and £40/$50 a month for businesses.) If you’d like to know a little bit more about our goals, please read on.

When Jonny and I founded Pellicle in 2019 our goal was simple: to publish joyful, uplifting stories about beer, wine and cider that are accessible, and spark curiosity. In addition to this, we wanted to create a platform that worked with freelance writers, illustrators and photographers and ensured they were paid a fair rate for their work. We also aim to be transparent about how we operate as a publication and what way pay, which you can read here.

In those early months we were fortunate enough to have some investment, meaning we were cash-based and debt free from the off. We were also lucky enough to take on independent UK bottle shop Hop Burns & Black as a sponsor, and we’re pleased to say they’re still supporting us almost four years since our launch. Thank you, as ever, for your support folks.

Using the Patreon platform we quickly built up a following of paid subscribers. The majority of these subscribers are individuals, but we also offer what we call “pro” subscriptions, aimed at businesses within the industries we cover. Unlike traditional advertising, this is an opportunity for a business to support the mag while we maintain editorial independence—basically it’s for folks who understand what we’re trying to do and have the means to chuck us some cash. A single pro subscription gives us a massive boost, and we couldn’t survive without them.

When the pandemic and lockdown hit in early 2020, we initially feared that people would stop supporting us, but we were wrong about this, and the magazine thrived. During this period our audience slowly and organically grew with each published feature, and our subscriptions hit a level that meant we weren’t losing money (but we weren’t making any profit either.)

In 2022 when life started to feel a semblance closer to normal, we had a look at our model from top to bottom, and decided the best thing we could do was to increase the amount we paid our contributors. We’re freelancers too, with each of our team making the majority of their income through work outside of Pellicle. Our aim is to be the kind of publication we’d want to work for, so despite knowing it would make us loss-making again, on our third birthday we increased our rates across the board.

Our hope was that people who’d been sitting on the fence about subscribing would see this, and opt to support us. However, what we didn’t bank on is how challenging the cost of living would become over the following months. While we’ve more or less managed to maintain our level of subscribers, our income stayed the same, and as such our resources have slowly become depleted.

This was compounded with us commissioning a lot of work over the spring and summer—work we’re only just catching up with now. We haven’t been in a financially strong enough position to open commissions since August 2022, and part of ensuring the magazine becomes sustainable is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. There is little point being transparent about our processes if we don’t have the funds to engage in them, after all.

You may have also noticed that we’ve changed our rhetoric around subscribing. We used to consciously use the term “supporters” and our target was to become “break even.” We’ve intentionally moved away from these terms, as firstly we feel “subscriber” is a better way of describing someone who pays for Pellicle, and secondly because after running a publishing business for almost four years we’re no longer shy of the need to make some money.

Imagine, if you will, we were successful in our goal. The first thing we plan to do is to invest in our team of Lily Waite, Katie Mather, Jonny Hamilton and myself. We want to spend more time working on the mag, and writing features of our own, which we don’t want to be limited by not being able to afford it, and instead pursuing paid work elsewhere.

With this in place, we want to make sure we have the room to commission new features, and make sure there are processes in place so that they can go through an editorial process where at least two people (a copy editor and sub editor) work on the feature with a writer before it gets laid out on the site. After that we want the resource to invest even more in our art direction. We’ve considered photography and illustration as editorial since day one, and if we can give this more time, and pay better rates, we can see this improve as well.

It would also be cool if we could afford to pay expenses. Say, for example, a writer and a photographer have the chance to travel to a location to cover a brilliant story, but it’s going to cost a few hundred quid in transport and accommodation to do so. To have the ability to finance that would add immense depth to the kind of stories we can cover.

The best part about this is that none of it is unrealistic. Popular food publications and newsletters we love have thousands of paid subscribers, so we think it’s more than feasible to reach 500, and potentially even beyond that. Most importantly, what we want you to remember is that the aim of making more money is to spend it, and the majority will go to the freelance writers, photographers and illustrators who create the award-winning content we publish.

We also respect that not everyone will be in a position to pay for a subscription, so Pellicle will remain free to read for as long as we can afford to pay our website host and the annual cost of our URL. All we want you to understand is that our operating costs are no different to a paywalled publication. We just think paywalls suck.

Lastly, if you have the time please consider filling in our short reader survey, which is completely anonymous, so be as honest as you like. And if you’re ready to sign up and become a subscriber, head on over to our Patreon now and pick the tier that best suits you. There’s more info there about how the system works, and there’s also an option for a yearly subscription, which nets you a 10% discount.

Thanks for reading, and here’s to the continuing success of our little publication over the coming months and (fingers crossed) years.

Matt, Jonny, Katie and Lily x