What happened?

   There have been lots of rumors going around concerning 2600 and the
   financial problems that have hit us pretty hard. It's time we set
   things straight once and for all. These are the facts: We've been put
   in a very difficult position by our biggest distributor, Fine Print of
   Austin, Texas. Over the years they helped get our magazine into some
   very large chains which increased our circulation as well as our
   costs. Naturally, we expected to cover the expense with our sales,
   which we did.

   At least in theory. Unbeknownst to us, people at Fine Print were
   embezzling money and otherwise mismanaging their business, screwing
   small publishers out of their hard-earned money. Shortly after we
   became aware of the problems, Fine Print declared bankruptcy while
   owing us nearly $100,000 - money that was needed to print at least
   three issues. Since early 1997 we've been trying to deal with this
   situation and it's become increasingly difficult due to a number of
   things. Under court order, we can't do a thing about the money that's
   owed us. Almost nobody expects us to ever see a penny of it. Because
   it takes more than half a year to get paid for an issue, we were
   forced to continue doing business with the "new" Fine Print, who made
   arrangements to pay us in advance so we would stick with them. That
   worked for a few months until they once again stopped paying us.

   This, combined with another misfortune - losing more than $10,000 at
   Beyond Hope thanks to last minute greed from the building management
   and the network provider, was enough to nearly do us in. We were
   advised to file for bankruptcy protection ourselves. And on paper that
   may have looked like the right thing to do. But 2600 has never been a
   typical business. And one thing we don't want to do is screw over
   other people just because we got screwed over. So, no matter what,
   we're going to pull through this even though we will have to get by
   for a while with virtually no income. It's just another challenge. We
   have to ask for your patience during this transition period. Our
   issues will be late - in fact, the Autumn issue will be known as
   Number Three since anything with "Autumn" on the cover would be taken
   off store shelves in the winter, which is when the Autumn issue will
   be out.

   We will tighten up our schedule so that we will get the issues back on
   track but this will take some time. We are not asking for money
   because we don't want to be thought of as a charity. We can get
   through this, and we will. What would help us out quite a bit would be
   people ordering things that we've already paid for and that we have in
   stock - t-shirts, back issues, cd-roms, videos, etc. Look in the
   merchandise section of this site for particulars. We have every
   intention of getting through this thing and getting better at the same
   time. We're moving ahead with plans to improve our website even though
   we don't have a penny to spend on it. It's called hacker spirit. If we
   can spend endless hours playing with computers and phone systems with
   absolutely no payoff whatsoever, we can pull this off too. For the
   record, we bear no animosity towards the people at Fine Print, at
   least not the ones who are there right now.

   They inherited a very bad situation and we hope they're able to fix it
   in the months and years ahead. Unfortunately the publishing industry
   puts publishers at a tremendous disadvantage - ironic but true. But
   without distributors, there would be no way for us to get out there at
   all. We're not the only ones affected by these circumstances. Other
   zines have been crippled, some have gone under. This is a great loss
   to us all. But by supporting zines, and alternative ideas, we will be
   taking an important step in the recovery process.