Hello, we’re Pellicle
We’re your favourite drinks magazine and podcast, all about beer, cider, wine, pubs and more. Reader supported, proudly free to read.
We’re your favourite drinks magazine and podcast, all about beer, cider, wine, pubs and more. Reader supported, proudly free to read.
We are now at capacity and have closed commissioning for the remainder of 2024. You are still welcome to send your pitch but we will not be commissioning again until January 2025 at the earliest.
At Pellicle our objective has always been to produce joyful, uplifting, narrative-driven stories that celebrate the drinks, food and places we love. But as we’ve grown and our focus has evolved our needs have changed slightly. This updated version of our pitching guide is a reflection of this.
We’ve also moved to a more streamlined set of rates, working to fixed fees based on the type of feature we commission, rather than a specific amount per word. Our aim is to make the pitching process as simple as possible so that you can understand what kind of features we’re seeking to produce. The best advice we can give you if you’re hoping to write for us is to spend as much time reading through our back catalogue of features as possible. We’ve linked to some of our favourite stories below.
Pellicle is primarily (but not exclusively) a UK-based, consumer drinks publication. Our main focus is on beer and pubs, and the majority of what we commission will reflect this. But we are also interested in cider, wine, spirits, sake, coffee, soft and non-alcoholic drinks and more besides. Basically, if you have a drinks-based story that we think our audience will love we could well provide a home for it. We also, to a more limited extent, cover food, especially those that connect to drink in some way, but we are not interested in travel stories that are in no way connected to food or drink.
We are interested in stories about the people, places, history and culture of our favourite drinks, from the joyful, to the critical, to the curious. Above all though, we are interested in what people are drinking, and why they are drinking it. Successful pitches will be a reflection of this.
As we are based in the UK, so are the majority of our readers. Due to this we are mainly interested in stories that focus on UK drinks and hospitality culture. We do take on stories with an international focus—in particular from the US, which is home to our second-largest audience—but they must have an angle that ensures they’re relevant to our core UK audience.
We are not interested in stories based on press releases or any press trips that you are lucky enough to have been sent on. We don’t publish guides, listicles or anything that is, or feels like advertorial, and we are not interested in ideas or topics that have been covered extensively by other publications. We also expect pitches to be fully fleshed out, and include details of your angle, your sources, and why you think your idea is relevant to our audience specifically. A quick “are you interested in this” or a collection of rough ideas will not earn a commission.
If you have not pitched us before we require examples of previous work, either for other publications, or self-published via a platform such as a blog or newsletter. If you are looking to start out as a writer, we strongly encourage you to start by self-publishing before you reach out to us with a pitch. Our editorial process is stringent, and while we are open to working with first-time writers, we hold every draft to the same standards—those of our readers, who expect a quality feature every week, and the amount of time and effort we expect our writers to put into a piece is a reflection of this.
Please note that we only accept pitches sent via the email contact listed below. We politely ask that you don’t send them via DM, by phone call, in the back of a taxi, or down the pub when we’re not on duty. Please respect our editors boundaries and save that idea for when you’re back at your desk.
Lastly a reminder that we are a very small publication, and receive far more pitches than we have the resources to commission. We ask that you don’t feel too disappointed if you get a rejection, but also would like to encourage you to send that pitch, because if you don’t send it, well, you’ll never know!
Stories about beer, brewing and pubs are our bread and butter, and profiles have formed the cornerstone of this since we established Pellicle in 2019. Stories about exceptional people, producers, pubs and even individual beers with a fascinating story all of their own have resulted in some of the most popular features we’ve ever published.
As we’ve grown we’ve also expanded our remit, publishing pieces that challenge the status quo, or think a little more outside the box than a more typical beer feature. For example they might examine/expose racism in beer and pubs, challenge cultural stereotypes such as women breastfeeding in pubs, or dig into the forgotten history of someone who influenced beer as we know it. Our beer stories can be as complicated as a heavily reported long-read that requires multiple sources and boots on the ground reporting, or they can be as simple as a short write up of a beer or that makes you feel happy. Finding the balance between these is where we’re at now, and these are some of our favourite examples:
I Want To See Mountains Again — The Banked Beers of Teesside, North East England — Reece Hugill
Everything in its Right Place — The Brewery of St. Mars of the Desert, Sheffield — Matthew Curtis
The Spice of Life — How Bundobust Emerged from Bradford’s Rich Cultural Heritage — Will Hawkes
Go To The Place Where You've Finally Found — The Laurieston Bar, Glasgow — Robbie Armstrong
Please Don’t Take Me Home — How Black Country Desi Pub Culture Made Football More Diverse — David Jesudason
When we sought to establish ourselves we commissioned several profiles of well-known (or those that should be well-known) cider and wine producers, but we are now looking to move away from this to some extent. Primarily we are looking for wine and cider stories that examine the culture of both beverages within the context of drinkers and drinking within the UK. This could be about a mainstream wine or cider product and its place in British drinking culture as much as it could be about an exceptional bar, or small producer doing things differently that deserves to be known. Basically, we are looking for a stories outside of the (bag in) box, and here are a few of our recent favourites:
Young and Beautiful — The Rise and Fall of the Babycham Girl — Rachel Hendry
Such Great Heights — Ascension Cider in Etchingham, East Sussex — Mark Dredge
You Can’t Help Noticing — On Wine & Succession — Rachel Hendry
We are a drinks publication, not a food one, but we sometimes find a home for food stories that might not fit with other publications, especially if the food in question is connected to drink (especially so if it’s connected to beer or pubs.) We are also, tentatively, expanding our remit to other beverages, with spirits and other brewed beverages like sake and mead now being of interest to us. Non-alcoholic drinks, including soft drinks, tea and coffee are also of interest to us. It is important to note that we have limited capacity for stories outside of beer, pubs, wine and cider, and so they must be particularly unique or exceptional ideas for us to take them on. Here’s a few of our favourites so far:
Bun! A Taxonomy of the British Bread Roll — Katie Mather
Kōji, Culture, and Community, Part 2 — Sake, Storytelling, and Japanese Aesthetics — Tim Anderson
Cut To The Feeling — The Anatomy of Smith’s Scampi Fries — Rachel Hendry
At Pellicle we consider that the images we commission for a piece are as important as the written element, and at every opportunity we look to commission original illustrations or photography for our features. We have a small stable of regular visual contributors we like to work with, but if you think your work would be a good fit for Pellicle please email your portfolio to one of our editorial team.
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Lastly, please bear in mind that a single, well thought out pitch is likely to be more successful than sending us several ideas at the same time. The key thing is that we are looking for ideas that are Pellicle and we’ll reiterate that the best way to understand that is to familiarise yourselves with our existing content as well as you can.
Please send pitches directly to our editor-in-chief, Matthew Curtis, via: matthew@pelliclemag.com. We endeavour to reply to every pitch within 2-3 working days, but please note that we don’t work on weekends (and neither should you.)
Pellicle is a small publication that works on a cash-basis. Whenever we commission a feature we do so by allocating a fixed-fee, agreed between ourselves and the contributor at the point of commissioning. This will be agreed in writing, via email, and by accepting a commission the agreement and the terms listed below are legally binding.
Our rates are presently as follows, and are based on a rough working rate of £0.25 per word.
Features (approximately 1500 words): £375
Long Reads (2000 words and over): £525
Photography (typically 30-40 stills): £250
Illustration (one header and two spots): £250
By accepting a commission from Pellicle you agree to the following terms and conditions:
When a commission is offered, a word count and subsequent rate will be agreed by the commissioning editor on submission of the brief. Our house style is intended to be snappy and engaging, as such excessively long drafts in excess of the agreed upon word count may be rejected by the editor on submission. Copy must be properly proofed and spell checked, and will be rejected if they contain multiple typos and/or grammatical errors.
Drafts will typically be subject to two or three rounds of edits. You will work with an individual member of our editorial team who is typically assigned on submission. If you would really like to work with a specific member of our team, please request this when turning in your draft.
The rate agreed at the point of commissioning includes any rounds of edits and any subsequent increase to the final word count, within reason, deemed necessary by your editor. We won’t ask you to add whole new sections, but you may be asked to expand on paragraphs, add new ones, include further quotes, or otherwise add to your piece for greater context.
All invoices are paid in UK pounds sterling (£) following the submission of your first draft. International invoices are processed using a service called Wise, which will pay you in your native currency based on the current exchange rate.
We reserve the right to reject drafts we don’t feel meet our readers standards. If a draft is completed, but then subsequently rejected (for example if it does not stick closely enough to the initial brief, or does not meet our editorial standards) contributors will be paid a kill fee at 50% of the initially agreed rate.
A commission may be subject to cancellation if it is not turned in within a reasonable frame of time from the point it is commissioned. This is typically six months, but we accept that life and other extraneous circumstances can get in the way. Please contact your commissioning editor immediately if your work is expected to be delayed.
All invoices, and related queries should be sent to matthew@pelliclemag.com. You are responsible for your own invoicing and tax affairs, and we will not contact you to ask for your invoice once your work has been submitted. We typically process invoices on a weekly basis where possible.
While we believe our rates are fair and competitive (based on the UK market) it is our ambition to increase these as we grow. The majority of our income is through pay-monthly donations via Patreon. You can sign up here if you would like to contribute towards supporting our network of writers, photographers and illustrators.
Written content should be formatted to AP grammatical standards (bar exceptions stated below) and submitted as a Google Doc, with access set to “anyone with the link.” Copy should showcase brevity and strong narrative flow. Paragraphs should be broken up by a line break. Consider that 75% of our readers do so on their phones, and try to tailor your copy with this in mind.
Drafts should be submitted in British English. Sources framed in the present tense should be referred to by their full names in the first instance, and their first names thereafter, as we consider this makes our features more personable. Surnames should be used for quoted literary or historical sources, or if there are multiple sources with the same first name.
Quotes should be separated from body text wherever possible, unless that quote provides specific context to the paragraph it sits within. Longer quotes should be broken in the middle for flow, and sources should be named first, with the verb describing their action second, eg:
“I really like beer,” Matthew says. “Especially cask ale pulled through a tight sparkler.”
Longer sentences with tangents should be broken up with either em-dashes (—) or parentheses although please be wary of overuse. There should be no spaces either side of the em-dash. (For Mac users that’s shift+alt+_ and for Windows users hold alt and type 0151.)
We use one-word denominations like cidermaker/winemaker instead of cider maker and wine maker. Similar goes for homebrewing, and so on.
We use a denotation of three asterisks (***) in place of subheadings, please use these to break up chapters/sections within your feature.
Please aim to submit your copy with a suggested title, and highlight pull quotes from sources where possible.
At Pellicle we take the use of generative AI very seriously, and consider its use in the generation of copy or images to be theft, and in breach of UK copyright law. Contributors found to be using generative AI in submitted work will have that work rejected and will forfeit their right to a kill fee. Contributors found in breach of these rules will also forfeit the opportunity to work with Pellicle again.
We accept that AI-based software may be used in some forms, such as automated transcription services like Otter. However, we consider generative AI to be highly detrimental to our industry, and are making a conscious effort not to contribute to the damage it is causing for creators now, and in the future. We ask that our contributors hold themselves to the same standards as we do.
This Pitching Guide Was Last Updated November 2024
