Contributors
For writers
Every contributor to SohoPage is handed the same thing on the day the invitation is accepted: a column of their own, set in type we chose with long essays in mind, and an audience that can find it without asking anyone’s permission. What follows is the inventory.
Your column
A standing place in the magazine, under your own name.
A handle, and a home under it
Each contributor’s work is gathered at /your-handle/ on SohoPage. It is an address you can print on a business card, cite in a footnote or send to an editor elsewhere.
The contributor’s note
Readers meet you through a portrait, a few lines of biography and, should you want one, a link to your own website. The note sits alongside the stories, where readers actually look.
Sections of your devising
Sort your pieces into categories you name yourself, and attach topics so that a reader of one essay can find its relations elsewhere in the magazine.
A cover, or a typographic plate
Open a piece with a photograph if you have one. If not, a plate bearing the title’s initial takes its place. Pictures set inside a story are kept on the site together with the text.
The setting
Composed for the reader who intends to finish.
A considered pairing
Body text is set in Newsreader, a serif made for long stretches of reading; Hanken Grotesk handles captions, dates and other small matter. Line length, leading and spacing were adjusted until a long essay read as lightly as a letter.
Nothing in the margins
There are no widget columns, no banners and nothing that pops up. Prose runs in one even column, and photographs, block quotations and tables are given space of their own beside it.
A contents list for longer work
When a story runs long, its own headings become a table of contents at the top, so the reader can survey the argument first and return to the right place afterwards.
Accents set properly
Vietnamese and other languages with diacritics are fully supported, stacked tone marks and the letter đ included, in headlines no less than in the body.
Your readers
They arrive at the first line, not at a gate.
Open to anyone
No story asks a reader to register. There is no subscription wall, no prompt to join a newsletter and no meter counting down free articles.
Responses, edited
A reader may answer a piece with a name and a few sentences. Moderators read each response before it is printed, which keeps the discussion beneath your work worthy of it.
Feeds in the classic manner
Your work has its own RSS feed at /handle/feed.xml, and the magazine as a whole publishes one at /feed.xml. Readers subscribe in whatever reader they prefer.
The press room
Machinery kept small and out of sight.
Pages printed on the server
Each page leaves the server as plain HTML and CSS. It arrives quickly over a weak connection and holds its shape from a narrow phone to a wide monitor.
No one taking notes
SohoPage runs no analytics, carries no advertising, embeds no tracking pixels and gives readers no cookies. Reading here leaves nothing behind in the reader’s browser.
Links that behave as links
A link in your story is a plain link. Credit a source, send readers to your own site, or point them wherever the argument goes next.
Becoming a contributor
SohoPage does not take open sign-ups: every column begins with an invitation from us. To be considered, introduce yourself and your writing on the contact page under the topic An invitation to write. If you already hold an invitation, sign in here.