Dear Reader,

It’s me, Manasa. This update is going to start out a bit different than usual, because I have an announcement to make. A transition has been afoot for a few months now at Snipette, and we’re finally at the place where I will be taking a step back from editing here at Snipette.

It’s been a happy, sad, and sometimes scary process for me. Now that it’s all winding down, I wanted to hop on here and say goodbye in the proper Snipette fashion—by writing about it, of course.

But first, I’d like to introduce some of the new members who have joined our team. They’ve been working with us behind the scenes for a few months, and you may recognise some of them from the Editors' Bookshelf, but they are now ready to properly say hello.

Introducing the new staff!

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Rhea Suresh is a student at Abacus Montessori School. Now, she’s also Assistant Editor at Snipette. I can already see her starting to pick up a penchant for varying up sentence structures with a vengeance—and she comes up with some really awesome watercolour illustrations to boot.

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Diya Raj is in the 11th grade, and she’ll be working on many of the design elements and typesetting for Analogs: basically overseeing the online articles move onto the page. In fact, though you didn’t see her, she’s already played a large part behind the scenes in bringing out the previous issue of Analog. If you aren’t a subscriber, sign up now to see her handiwork.

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Dee Lan is our new Lead Artist, working with largely digital media to produce cover illustrations for our articles as well as our social media.

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Anjali Anand, Assistant Editor, is also ready to take on much of the planning and execution for our social media! Best of all, this means I’ve finally lost my status as “the only person in Snipette with a working Instagram-able smartphone”.

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Neel Krishna has been conquering our inbox and author recruitment process, bringing in a good deal of organisation.

Some other updates

Along with new people, we’ve also been able to try out some new things! This quarter has been pretty ordinary, but we do have some highlights.

New website—with comments

As you’ve probably noticed, we updated our website and newsletter at the beginning of the year. It’s now directly powered by Ghost, the simple but powerful publishing platform.

What you may not notice is that we also have an option for comments! That’s right, if you have something interesting to say about an article, or a question to ask, you can start a discussion right under the article. We’ll respond to you, and, where possible, ask our authors to do the same 💬

Crowdfunding

Our crowdfunding campaign has started and we’ve raised over ₹30,000 already! We still have a long way to go though, so if you’re willing to subscribe to the print version of Snipette at a lower cost in future, please add your name and ask you friends as well.

Of course, if our current rates are fine, you can also subscribe now 📚

Social media and publicity

As part of spreading the word about Snipette, we’ve been stepping up our social media game. If you follow us on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll see interesting reels, fun facts, and links related to Snipette and its articles.

Meanwhile, we’ve also listed ourselves on various newsletter directories, including one we think you’ll like. The Sample is a newsletter of newsletters: every week, you get forwarded a different random newsletter, and you can decide whether to subscribe to it or not. Check it out now, and who knows, maybe one day you’ll receive a Snipette piece as well 😉

Game Nights

Thanks to our author Thuan Sarzynski, we’ve started a tradition of “game nights”, where editors and authors get on a call to hang out, chat, and play some fun games. Included in the agenda: GeoGuessr, Gartic Phone, Boom Party from Around, and our favourite—Skribbl!

We haven’t yet had a game night with readers, but if you’re interested, hit reply on this email and we can chat 🙂

And, a live event!

As part of our crowdfunding and awareness campaign, we had a small in-person event at GoodEarth in Bengaluru. For this, we had printed some extra Analog copies which were all but sold out!

We are hoping to have a few similar events in future, so if you’re based in India, keep an eye out on our social media handles 👀

Taking a step back

I was just 14 when we started started Snipette, on the back of a handwritten magazine. For a long time, Badri and I wrote articles ourselves, sometimes as late as midnight on Saturday night to be able to publish on Sunday. First came the authors we scoured Medium for, and then much later, more editors. Today, the team has nine people on it, including me. Eight without.

Which brings me to the point of this— to let everyone know that I’m no longer going to be a part of the day-to-day at Snipette.

I’m choosing to take a step back now because it feels like the right time. Other things in my life are changing, as I move into college, and hopefully when COVID allows, move to a different city. Akil and Nia, who joined us back in 2020, will go on to the helm with Badri, joined by the five newer people with an awesome amount of talent and passion. I’m already excited about what their ideas will mean for the future of Snipette, and confident that it will continue to grow.

I’m not gone, not really. I won’t be editing articles or working with authors—but I’ll still be around for the big things, and lurking in our endless text chains about inconsequential but nonetheless incredibly important discussions, like the appropriate style of sleeve cuff to use for the illustration of an article about Dracula.

I’ve learned a lot from my time at Snipette. From playing editor to older, arguably more accomplished people, to helping train our new slew of team members; from designing and organising our databases to writing formal emails. I’m looking forward to taking those skills with me into the next things that I do.

Snipette has been such a feature of my everyday life for so long that I’m sure it will be strange to not have the next article or author or social post on my mind. But I’m hoping to go on and learn even more new things even as I carry the spirit of Snipette with me.

All this to say, that while I won’t be around as much anymore I do still consider myself to be a part of Snipette. After all, Snipette will never stop being a part of me.

Until next time!
Manasa (on behalf of the Snipette Team)