Incwriters: Update on Closure of Website

I have spent the entire day in face to face meetings, on the phone and emailing other members of the Incwriters Council. For those of you who don’t understand how Incwriters works, Incwriters was formed as a Society two years after Inc. was created. This was the founding blocks Incwriters was based on. Inc. was created by me back in 2002 and in 2004 The Society was created, thanks in part to several other poets, publishers and writers. This meant that Incwriters needed a constitution and a Council of 10-13 people drawn from varying walks of life, with links, or interests in publishing and reading. This Council has been very fluid over the last seven years, with many names, faces and willing hands working to promote many publishers, writers and organisations. I am proud that I can say that I have had a hand in taking poets to the USA, around the UK, over the waters to Europe and to areas of the world I have never heard of. I am even prouder to say that we have worked with some fantastic publishers, promoters, poets and writers from across the globe and always at the heart of it all was a real love of reading. For without reading there are no writers, no poets, no publishers and no need for Incwriters. Sadly, after many phone calls, emails and sit down meetings it has come to light that our funds have reached critical levels. Incwriters web provider sounded the death knell last week when they told us they would bill us for the space we use (and we use alot of space), we queried these sudden changes, and before we could talk this out, they pulled the website, deleted the content and shut us down on Thursday 27th January 2011. Even if we could scrape together the money needed, it would amount to nothing, only a suspension of the inevitable. The content is lost. We are sorry that this has happened. We are sorry that this is the end for Incwriters. It is a sad end for an organisation that supported so many.

That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news. The Council have decided, due to the incurred costs by myself over the years, and my past contributions to plug gaps in their budget that they will sell me all the Incwriters imprints, this includes Red, Red Ink and Incorporating Writing. I am working with Incwriters to see how these can be made available via Kindle. More of this over the coming months. All parties involved hope by the next financial year that I will salvage as much as possible from Incwriters. What I won’t be able to carry across is the OCL(M) Award – this award was for magazines – it belongs with Incwriters and needs the network they created to administrate it. I do not have that network or access to it. That would breach the Data Protection Act. I will try to bring the Definitions Project over to this website. I will endeavour to develop the Magazine Listings Section of the website into continuous reviews. This website will change alot over the coming months. More on that later. Those scheduled to guest blog on Incwriters will be given the opportunity to blog on my website but they will not have continuous access to this website – something they had at Incwriters. This is for security reasons and Data Protection. I am working very hard to bring as much as I can to this website under a new banner, a new name but with a different ethos from Incwriters. It is impossible to replicate that ethos when the very portal that drove is now gone. I am very frustrated that seven years of work can end so abruptly, and that so many great voices, great opinions are lost. I hope some of them find a home here under my banner.