404 Ink receives Creative Scotland funding

It’s been an exciting time of late. We’ve been busy editing Issue 1 of 404 Ink and finally this week we send it off to print, and we’ve even booked our launch event in Edinburgh (we’d keep December 9th free, if we were you. And get some jazzy Christmas jumpers ready).

But we have another exciting piece of news to start the week: we received Creative Scotland funding! You can read more about it here.

When we started 404, we had a few things that were top priority: one was paying authors. We also wanted to publish writing in Scottish Gaelic and showcase the work to new readers in English, and publish them in print rather than just digitally. That’s why upon launch we set up Patreon to help make this happen, a crowdfunding platform where you can subscribe to us. We’ve already spoken a lot about why we use Patreon, and you can read more here if you’d like to know.

We don’t see that money until the magazine is ready to publish, but the principle is that you can see what we’ll be receiving and what we have to work with from others when making the magazine.

We have both worked as freelancers for the last few years and saved up with a view to launching a publisher, combining our skills and doing everything ourselves to showcase new writing. Though the magazine is mostly put together by us, we also wanted to ensure those involved in helping us are paid properly for their work. The hopes to continue to publish two a year and move onto books meant the chances of it being sustainable beyond a first issue were ultimately uncertain, but it was important for us to set right many of the wrongs we’ve seen in regards to payment in the creative industries.

Creative Scotland funding allows us to at least start off on a more certain footing, and have sights on what comes next, like Issue 2, and opening for manuscript submissions.

So what specifically is the £2,885 of Creative Scotland funding covering? Printing and distribution costs, Gaelic translation and editing, design and, of course, author payment.

With authors paid, Gaelic submissions translated into English, the magazine designed, edited and currently winging its way to print, Creative Scotland is an incredibly supportive body that allows us to make the magazine we want, and showcase excellent new writing and comics in a way that we hope does them justice.

Learn more about Issue 1 over here. You can pre-order your digital or print copy here, and if you’d like to subscribe to the magazine, you can do so over on Patreon.