NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
TIGHTENING THE BELT
This spring, an editorial in the
New York Times caught my attention. It concerned an upcoming postal
increase, not only for letters but also for periodicals. “Postal rate
increases are an unwelcome fact of life for every magazine publisher. But it
seems the steep new increases for periodicals, scheduled to begin on July
15, will inflict undue hardship on small magazines that do much to inform
the national discourse on politics and culture.” At the time I wondered how
this would affect Wolf Moon Journal, and when I mailed the
July/August issues, I found out. Earlier in the year, we had absorbed an
increase in printing costs, but with the new postal fees, our slim margin of
profit had vanished, and we were now losing money on every subscription.
Those “undue hardships” had indeed been inflicted on us.
What to do? If we
were Bill and Melinda Gates, we could just shrug and absorb the cost,
figuring that at some point our ever-rising subscriptions would eventually
reach the point where printing costs could be lowered, advertising would be
a real option, and we would regain a financial edge. Needless to say, my
husband Clif and I are not Bill and Melinda Gates, and we can’t afford to
lose money on every subscription. Our immediate options were either to
discontinue the print journal and focus solely on the web magazine or
tighten our belts. We have chosen to carry on with the print journal and
tighten our belts. Instead of being a bimonthly magazine, Wolf Moon
Journal, beginning with this issue, will now be a quarterly. Our new
publishing schedule will be winter, spring, summer, and fall. Current
subscribers, of course, will receive the full number of issues they have
paid for. Samples from the print journal will continue to be published in
the web magazine.
While the actual
cost of each journal will stay the same, going quarterly will reduce by
quite a bit our yearly expenditure on the journal. In addition, going
quarterly will give us some breathing room. It will give us time to work on
fund-raising, on perhaps becoming a nonprofit, and other nitty-gritty
business matters that there just isn’t time for now with a bimonthly
publication schedule. We also haven't given up on the idea of doing a
Wolf Moon book, but until finances are settled, this is on the back
burner.
On a happier note,
subscriptions are steadily rising, our renewal rate is fantastic, and our
web readership continues to explode. We just have to figure out a way to
keep it all going until subscriptions rise to the point where we can get a
real break on printing cost. We are still convinced that there is a place
and a need for a publication that focuses on “voices from the hinterlands,”
voices that are often overlooked not only by the larger world of publishing
but by the academic world as well. Those off-center voices can sometimes
arrive at insights that those in the center are unable to see. Yes, we need
those larger voices, the mainstream, but we are absolutely convinced we need
the smaller voices, too.
So onward into our
fifth year we go. We are a little smaller, a little leaner, but we are as
plucky and as committed as ever.
Laurie Meunier
Graves
