Inconvenient Truths
These last few years have been difficult for all of us on so many levels. And we keep thinking we're almost at the end of it when more bad stuff happens. Sometimes it's directly related to the pandemic; other times it's something entirely new. What helps to get us through is support from those around us and fresh ideas on how to tackle these challenges.
As we approach our 40th year, things look especially daunting for us. We've been through hard times before, whether it was another distributor making off with half a year's income, lawsuits from some of the most powerful entities on Earth, or unjust and inhumane government prosecutions of those close to us. But what we're facing now is probably the biggest threat we've ever had to our continued existence.
Being a printed magazine has been especially difficult for a couple of decades now. Being one that takes no advertising made that challenge even greater. We saw independent bookstores forced out of business by big chains. And then those big chains went out of business, leaving nothing in their place.
COVID-19 made all of this even worse since lots of the issues we had already printed never made it to the newsstands because they weren't open. And many of them never reopened. Even though people were looking for our magazine, there were significantly less places to find it.
In 2022, things got even worse as the price of paper skyrocketed, which made our profit margin practically nonexistent while inflation drove prices for almost everything else upwards. It hasn't exactly been a cheery time.
One bright spot in all of this has been our Kindle edition, where sales were significant since its launch in 2010. This digital platform offered another way to get 2600 into subscriber hands without the cost of printing. But as we go to press with this issue, we've been informed that Amazon has decided to discontinue magazine subscriptions on the Kindle, except for the biggest mainstream publications. We can't say we're surprised - we always warn our readers about letting big companies call the shots. But this was a case where we were able to reach a great number of people in a convenient manner and it really helped offset the printing expenses, even after Amazon took their cut. This loss couldn't have come at a worse time.
But there is hope. Literally. The last few HOPE conferences have been able to help support the magazine and keep things from becoming too dire. Of course, COVID threw a monkey wrench into that as well when we weren't able to hold an in-person conference in 2020 and were forced to limit attendance in 2022 due to health concerns. Ironically, in 2019 we had thought our biggest challenge would be finding a new home after losing the Hotel Pennsylvania. We had no idea what we were all in for.
Happily, the most recent conference at St. John's University went better than we had ever hoped. We are extremely fortunate to be able to continue and build future conferences in such a venue. But, because of the fact that we had to make things smaller due to the pandemic, we didn't wind up where we needed to be in order to help support 2600. The timing was just really bad, which seems to be a recurring theme lately.
So how bad are things? They're bad, no question. Those of us who can afford not to get paid haven't been for the past few months. We love what we do and we will make many personal sacrifices if it means that we get to stick around and do this for longer. We may have to make difficult decisions down the road, but we're really hoping to stave that off with the help of the community.
Here's where things can turn around.
We have a great biennial event with the HOPE conference. If we're able to get 1500 in-person attendees and 1000 online attendees each time, most of these problems will vanish. Note that the in-person number is actually less than what it was in past years because we don't want to recreate the overcrowding that occurred back then, even though we have much more space now. Offsetting that decrease with paid online attendees who participate digitally could add a great deal to the conference, with more participation from all over the world. (We're also not opposed to growing into a bigger in-person crowd in future years as we use more facilities.)
There has even been talk of making the conference an annual event due to how smoothly it went this last time. We won't know if that's doable until we see how the next one goes, but if we are able to reach that stage without overworking ourselves to death, then we will be on very solid ground indefinitely.
But we're more than a year away from knowing if this will be sustainable. 2023 is going to be a pivotal year and we need to come up with more immediate solutions to help get us through all of the challenges that are being flung at us.
Ideally, 2600 should be self-sustaining. While this has become quite difficult with the cost of printing and the shrinking number of retail outlets, it's not impossible. The one thing readers seem to be most adamant about is the continuation of the printed edition. We believe following the trend of many magazines and only having digital editions would be a big mistake for us. People value the physical copies and those tend to live forever. It's a true gift to be able to do this year after year and we really don't want to give it up. But we need to make some serious progress if that's going to happen.
We don't see a way to get 2600 into more retail outlets if there simply aren't any more of them. We experimented with supermarkets during the pandemic and it was a disaster. (Apparently, grocery shoppers aren't interested in magazines about hacking. We know this now.) The loss of so many bookstores, especially the independents but also the chains, has hurt our entire society and we're now living through yet another consequence of that.
More physical subscribers would certainly be a good thing, but due to the volatile costs of printing, packaging, and shipping, it's not really an economic boon for us. What really would make a difference at this point is a dramatic upturn in digital sales. We would need around 3500 digital subscribers to offset the losses from Amazon alone. And since Amazon won't share the subscriber info with us, the only way for us to reach our current Kindle subscribers is through the words in the magazine itself. We hope they're all able to see this and to act upon it. But again, that only addresses the Amazon problem. We still need to add more subscribers to help address the shortfalls brought about by everything else described above.
We believe this is doable, as there are so many people who react with amazement and enthusiasm when discovering that we are in fact still around. Since we don't advertise and since so many establishments where we were displayed have disappeared, it's very easy to lose track of our existence. The entire zine community has been hit with this reality and we're one of the few survivors, which is a painful reality for us. Assuming we make it through this latest crisis, we intend to do everything we can to help other independent publications find new visibility.
At press time, we're still trying to put together a digital subscription option that works the way we want it to. We've actually been trying to do this for years, but have run into software that insists on using DRM (copy control which we do not want) or that doesn't know how to generate unique URLs for subscribers. It's annoying, but we're determined to solve this. Hopefully, by the time you read this, we will have.
But what really comforts us is knowing that hacker ingenuity is on our side. There are people reading this now who have ideas that we've never thought of which will prove immensely helpful. The power of the hacker mind, determined to accomplish that which they have been told is impossible, is our greatest ally here and one which we believe will help us solve problems and get the word out.
We've accomplished so much over the past four decades. It's always been a bit of a struggle. But we truly believe we're the right people in the right place at the right time to take on this challenge. While the reality at the moment isn't what we'd prefer, we're convinced we have the power, ability, and intelligence to change that reality into something a little better.
We're ready for the next chapter.