Happy Wednesday, readers, writers, and shark fans! To get you through the rest of the week, or to answer that looming question of what you will read this weekend, we’re excited to announce that Issue 5 of Lit Shark Magazine is now live! We’re so excited about this issue, we had such a wonderful time putting it together, and we were as floored as ever about how our writers confronted tough topics like grief and identity while fusing those discussions with gorgeous imagery, nature scenes, and of course, marine life. We’re so pleased to share Issue 5 with you and hope you love it as much as we do.

Welcome to Issue 5: The Spring Edition!

A Special Thank You to Our Contributors and All Who Submitted!

Available to All Readers, Writers, and Shark Fans

We believe literature of all kinds should be accessible to everyone, no matter their financial situations, educational affiliations, etc. So we’re offering each of our issues as a free PDF that you can download and read. You can then read it on your phone, computer, or e-reader, or you could even print out a copy! (If you’re new here, welcome! You can read all of our previous issues here.)

Choose Your Edition

Depending on your preferences, we’re offering two-page spread and one-page spread editions. The two-page spread will feel more like a book with facing pages. The one-page spread will display one page at a time, which may be friendlier for those who want to read on an e-reader (though I prefer the book-like feeling of the two-page spread, and it’s been okay to read on my Kindle Paperwhite; the display is simply smaller!).    

The Paperback Edition Is Now Live! Paperback Edition on the Way

EDIT: We’re excited to share that the paperback edition is now live on Amazon and available to purchase! You can do that here. Thank you endlessly for your support!

We will also be offering a paperback edition via Amazon, which will be available this week for purchase. It will contain the same content, but we wanted to offer this for those of you (like me) who enjoy reading physical copies, need more time physically away from screens, or want to financially support Lit Shark’s future. The cover will be a beautiful matte, and the spine of each issue, when you place them next to each other, will create a surprise image. We’ve officially reached the point where we’ve published enough issues that readers can start to guess what the spines will reveal!

More Ways to Support on the Way!

We’ve received quite a few really kind messages in the past weeks about two requests: first, to offer an e-book version to purchase, and second, to offer more ways to purchase our books. Now that Issue 5 of Lit Shark Magazine is out and we have a little time before Issue 6 of Lit Shark Magazine: The SHARK DOG Edition’s submission window closes, we’re going to take some time to convert our paperback edition files to proper e-book files, as well. We will still keep the free PDFs on our site, we always want our content to be available to everyone, but we hope offering the e-book edition will be helpful to some readers out there and may even help more people find out about us! As for more ways to purchase books, we are looking into what we could do so readers can order directly from us if they so wish, instead of Amazon, but we will get back to you on that as soon as possible!

Thank You.

Thank you to all of you for the incredible support and excitement you’ve shown to Lit Shark. This issue came together so beautifully, and we’re excited to see where the rest of 2024 will take us. I can’t wait to continue on this journey with you. Thank you so much for being here. Also, if you’d like to be more involved in our journey, there is still time to submit to our remaining issues for the year, participate in our Poem of the Month contest, or even become a contributor on our team. However you decide to be involved, we’re grateful to have you in our community!