Greetings readers, contributors, and general supporters of Spindle House.
For the past few months, we’ve been fairly transparent about some of the struggles Spindle House has faced this year as a result of multiple factors. Along those lines, we’ve also been teasing the fact that Spindle House is overdue for much-needed changes, and that those changes will be announced as soon as we iron them out.
Today is that day. Thank you for your patience as we’ve gotten some things in order.
Spindle House will be undergoing some changes in the coming months leading up to 2025. These changes are designed to help us a) reduce costs, b) rebalance where we spend our time and energy, and ultimately c) help Spindle House survive (and hopefully thrive) long into the future.
There are three main changes we’ll be making, each with its own ripple effects:
As of January 1, the Spindle House website will shift away from Squarespace to a new hosting service that better fits our budget. This means that our independent store will cease to exist at that time. (Purchases can continue to be made through Amazon, etc.) Additionally, page URLs may change during the transition, which may cause links to our current site to break. We’ll communicate directly with our contributors about any URL changes that affect pages containing their content.
Beginning in 2025, Dark Tales from the Tarot will drop down to only one submission window per year, which will be in autumn. Accordingly, we will be increasing the prize for that contest from $10 to $50. These changes will be formally announced in further detail closer to the start of the year. Our hope is that this will liberate the rest of the year to do more with the press—we want to publish something in print again. It’s been too long.
Effective immediately, we’re reducing our social media presences on Facebook and Threads, where we’ve seen the least engagement. Threads will continue to clone our Instagram posts, but otherwise neither account will receive our direct attention on any type of regular basis. Our primary focus will be our Substack newsletter and our social accounts on Twitter/X and Instagram.
We’d like to note that we make these changes in the spirit of optimism. We are trimming the fat so that we can continue to deliver quality horror to our readers, and to do so sustainably. We thank you for your continued support of Spindle House as we draw nearer to balancing our operations to achieve this goal.
Ben Vandersluis & Dori Lumpkin
Editors, Spindle House