Final Gravity Pitching Guide

Thanks for your interest in writing for Final Gravity, A Beer Zine. Despite being a DIY, self-printed publication—because of this, in fact—we take the quality of what we commission and publish very seriously. We believe there are still amazing stories to be told from the world of beer, and we’re excited you want to help us find and share those stories.

First, it’s important to understand the publication you’re writing for. Final Gravity is a zine, and that’s different from a magazine. Zines were born out of the countercultures of the 1980s and 1990s (with roots tracing back much further than that), and represent an alternative to traditional commercial publishing. Final Gravity is a staple-bound, 8.5” x 5.5” paper zine printed, folded, and stapled in our home office. This format keeps our production costs down and gives us total editorial freedom. Despite this grassroots approach, we pay our writers and artists and feature professional editing and clean and attractive formatting. 

We have no desire to turn this publication into a high-gloss magazine. We sat down and talked to our office inkjet printer about full bleed pages and it started coughing, and when we told our long-arm stapler about glued perfect bindings, it cried a little. It was tough to watch. Because of this, Final Gravity isn’t found (yet) in conventional outlets. We sell primarily online direct-to-consumer, with some copies making it to a collection of zine shops and brewery taprooms around the country. We hope this network will expand.

Final Gravity tells intimate, human-centric stories about beer. We publish writing focused on people, places, ingredients, sensory experiences, cultural intersections, and the holistic ways we interact with and around beer. We also feature writing of all types—including poetry and flash fiction—from folks working in the beer industry in any capacity. More info on that farther down.

Just as the subject matter of the stories we publish is focused on people and our personal and cultural interactions with beer, we want the writing in these stories to be personal and intimate. Feel free to insert yourself into the story, write in the first person, and share your own observations. We want writing that is beautiful to read while still being efficient and focused. Be poetic without being “purple.” Stretch your legs a little. You can read one of our issues to get a sense of the types of stories we tell and the types of voices employed in doing so. If the cost of doing so is a barrier for you, we can send you a PDF of an individual story to read upon request.

One final note: we are committed to the vision of a beautifully diverse, equitable, and inclusive beer scene that is welcoming, safe, and inviting for all, and the work that must be done to achieve that. We welcome pitches from individuals of all identities, but are especially excited when we receive pitches from persons of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and writers from other typically underrepresented communities. We want the pages of Final Gravity to be as diverse as the world of people who enjoy beer.

Stories we’re looking for from freelance writers

- Essays about how we (or just you) interact with beer and how we interact with each other in light of it.

This is our primary type of article, and that description above is intentionally vague and general. This is pretty wide open. You can write about cultural intersections of beer, how we enjoy or experience beer, some aspect of your own relationship to beer or drinking…we’re reluctant to list options because we don’t want to limit potential ideas. In our existing issues, one writer talked about the role of beer in her immigrant family’s July 4th celebrations, one talked about how and why we use beer to remember the people we’ve lost, one shared her relationship to the iconic lager of her land of origin and how it ties in with her family history, and another talked about how joining a roller derby team allows her to let off steam from her day job owning and managing a brewery. If there’s a theme around your (or our) relationship to beer you’ve been tripping over in your mind for a while but haven’t been able to think of a venue for, sharpen it into a pitch and send it our way.

*Note: We receive a lot of pitches along the lines of “beer helped me reconnect with my parent/grandparent/estranged uncle”. We think it’s beautiful beer has played that role for you and your loved ones, but because of how common such stories are, there needs to be something truly unique about your angle to make us consider a pitch with this theme.

- Immersive stories about a particular brewery, bar, beer destination, or ingredient producer. 

The places beer is brewed and enjoyed are the heartbeat of modern beer culture. That said, existing is not, in and of itself, a story. We’re not looking for “this cool place exists” pitches. Why does this place matter? If this cool place exists, what are the stories that led to its existence, the stories lived and told by the people behind it? Take us there. Introduce us to the cast. Help us experience it with all of our senses through all of yours. While we aren’t opposed to broad profiles per se, we are much more interested in stories that zero in on a particular aspect of the business—something unique they do, something they’re particularly good at, something we did not see coming. While these will generally be feature-length articles, we’re open to shorter vignettes as well.

- Nerdy and curious explorations of ingredients.

We’re not really interested in technical pieces or how-to guides here, but rather curiosity-driven articles that explore what makes an ingredient so cool. Think less How to Brew and more The Drunken Botanist. This can include but also go well beyond the foundational ingredients of beer to more esoteric brewing additions. Want to geek out about mushrooms or licorice root? Make us care as much as you do. While we’d love for you to dig into some of the cool science behind the ingredient you’re geeked about, we need that to be presented in an approachable way that won’t require insider vocabulary you can’t provide in the course of telling the story.

- Profiles of individuals in the beer industry, especially folks who aren’t brewers or founders.

Brewers and founders are cool, and there’s a possibility we’ll greenlight a profile on one, but we’d be even more excited about a kickass taproom bartender who also makes and sells pottery in their spare time, or a cellarperson who’s obsessed with growing orchids, or a packaging line employee who got introduced to beer by her grandmother and now leads informal beer tastings for senior citizens. There are tens of thousands of brewery employees around the country, and they all have unique stories. If one has stood out to you, tell us why you think it should stand out to us.

- Beer travel stories that aren’t travel guides.

Seriously, do not pitch us on why we need to travel to a particular place and the things we have to do while we’re there. We’re interested in travel stories. As in, narratives. You lived a thing while you were traveling, and beer was a part of it, and this experience was so interesting you think other people will want to read about it, even if they’re never going to travel to the place you’re talking about.

- Short essays about your own relationship to a specific beer.

These are snappy essays in the 500-800 word range that serve as love letters to a particular beer. This might be entirely personal, or might be partially reported. These are not reviews.

Beyond this, if you have a story that you think we’d dig but we haven’t categorized it above, you can still pitch it to us. We love being surprised.

Information on exactly how to pitch us is found farther down in these guidelines.

Here is our current schedule for pitch deadlines to be considered for each issue, filing deadlines for assigned stories, and publication of each issue:

Issue 04:
Pitch deadline: 11/15/2023
Contents finalized: 11/28/2023
Filing deadline: 1/26/2024
Publish: 4/2/2024

Issue 05:
Pitch deadline: 2/16/2024
Contents finalized: 2/23/2024
Filing deadline: 4/19/2024
Publish: 7/9/2024

Issue 06:
Pitch deadline: 5/31/2024
Contents finalized: 6/12/2024
Filing deadline: 8/2/2024
Publish: 10/15/2024

Stories we’re looking for from folks in the beer industry

If you work in beer in any position, we’d love to hear pitches from you. Here’s what we’re looking for:

- Writing in any of the categories above in the freelance section.

- Essays and reflections on your own experience in the industry, particularly aspects of your job or experiences that outsiders might not think about or be aware of. Unusual and unexpected job tasks that are unique to your brewery. Etcetera.

- Short fiction, poetry, or short creative non-fiction, even if it has nothing to do with beer. We want to showcase the broad creativity of folks within craft beer. 

Art & photography features

In every issue, we highlight one artist or photographer with a four-page spread of their work, along with a brief artist’s statement. These can be beer-related pieces from an artist or photographer, or any manner of art from someone within the beer industry. 

Printable area for this artwork is 8” tall by 5” wide, and can either include portrait-orientation artwork that fills (or nearly fills) this space vertically, or landscape-orientation images that could fit two on a page. Artwork is printed on matte photo paper at a high quality. 

Email davidnilsenbeer at gmail with further questions about these art features, or send samples or submissions to that email and melinda.a.guerra at gmail, along with some information about yourself.

There is some flexibility on whether the artwork or photography must be previously unpublished. 

What we aren’t looking for at all

- News or trend coverage, industry and business coverage, etc. 

There are a lot of outlets who already do this and do it very well. 

- How-to guides, homebrewing recipes, technical explainers, etc. 

Same as above. This kind of writing can be very interesting, but it’s not a good fit for us. 

- Any story positively representing a business or individual with a known record of bad behavior. 

This should be obvious. 

What to include in your pitch

There are lots of guides out there on how to format pitches, and we encourage you to check those out. That said, we hate having to essentially write (and stress out about) a stand-alone short article just to present our story idea to an editor. You don’t need to be super formal. The pitch shouldn’t amount to unpaid labor. 

Tell us about the story you’d like to write, a little bit about yourself, and how and why you’d like to write the story. If you have a writer’s website or homebase of some sort (even if it’s just a social media platform), please link to that. If you aren’t a professional writer, we may request a writing sample of some sort. We are not at all opposed to publishing new or first-time writers, just be honest with us about your experience level.

If you can handle your own photography for your article, let us know that as well (we can pay a small amount extra for this. See rates below.) 

If you’re a brewery employee and you’re submitting poetry, flash fiction, or creative non-fiction, please send these as completed submissions to the emails below. Share them as Google Docs rather than attached documents if possible.

All pitches are handled through this Google Form. Please read it before filling it out, and fill it out in its entirety.

Send any questions to davidnilsenbeer at gmail or melinda.a.guerra at gmail. 

Pay rates

We agree upon a flat rate for the entire contribution when we commission it rather than paying per word in the finished copy. Our payment roughly works out to about $.15-$.20 per word.
For short pieces (500-700 words), we generally pay $100-$150.
For short features (800-1,400 words) we generally pay $150-$225.
For longer features (>1,400 words) we generally pay $200-$300.
Art features currently pay $75.
Poetry pays $50 per poem.
If a writer is able to take their own new photos for an article, we pay an extra $25.

We have plans to raise all of these rates as soon as financially possible. Final Gravity has no investors, so we are dependent on sales and very limited advertising to drive our revenue.

All contributors also receive one contributor’s copy of the issue in which their work appears.

(If you’re a brewery owner, we also offer as an option partial or full compensation in way of complementary copies of the issue you can sell in your taproom. The value of these copies when sold is higher than what we’d be able to pay you outright, but the choice is 100% up to you. There is no pressure to choose this option. This is ONLY available as an option for business owners, and never to employees.)

After you’ve pitched us

We’ll respond to acknowledge receipt of your pitch within one week, though a final answer on acceptance might take longer. We’ll keep you updated. If for some reason you haven’t heard back from us at all within three weeks, feel free to follow up, though it probably means we’re trapped under a heavy object and can’t reach our laptops. Hopefully help arrives in time. 

To fit Final Gravity’s needs in relation to length and subject, there will likely be some discussion between the editors (us) and the writer (you) to fine tune the story idea. We’ll then offer you the payment we can budget for the piece. Upon mutual acceptance, we’ll send you a contributor’s agreement that outlines the scope and length of the story, the deadline, agreed-upon fee, and some general expectations on both sides. All standard stuff. Then you’ll write us an awesome story and file it by the deadline. There will be a collaborative editing process, and then we wait till release day for that issue!

If you have any questions, please ask. 

We can’t wait to read your pitches!