August/September 1978 As you can see from the numbers on RAIN's finances ovcr the la t year, the magazine is not yet self-supporting. Subsidies from a grant the first year, unpaid staff time, and more recently income from publications that RAIN did not pay to have produced have kept us afloat over these four years. Our present financial situation is more serious than the numbers here show. We started the year with a cash balance of $5 ,6I2- due largely to a royalty advance on Rainbook. That has vanished rapidly. Over the last six months our income has fallen short of our expenses by an average of $240 per month, due largely to lowcr income from publications as the first flush of Rainbook sales tapered off and other publications became more dated. We hoped last year to make a big push to increase RAIN's subs ription base, feeling that we fell far short of reaching people who could use RAIN well. Unexpected personal losses have kept us from having the extra time needed to get that rolling. But most important, we haven't been able to figure out how to do it. We don't want to go the typical route of mass mailings, advertisements and media promotion. From what we've seen of other publications, it just makes you run faster on the treadmill- more subscribers, more income, more expenses, and more attention focused on the treadmill than where we're going. Almost all magazines are a borderline operation. Circulation base doesn't seem to matter- almost all the income from a bigger circulation goes to pay the promotion budget, and we don't intend to become a shill for an ad agency. We, like most magazines, have tried most everything we know-sample mailings, promotion at conferences, standing on our heads- you name it! Few things have a noticeable effect. The best are: 1) Reviews of RAIN in other magazines, etc., by people who value what we're doing. 2) Reviews in other magazines of special publications we do which result in both publication sales and subscriptions (this feels like the most honest "promotion" we knowgetting on with our work and letting that bring in support!) 3) RAIN readers turning other people on to us. Not so strongly, ads don't do much-no one (rightfully) trusts them, and you can't tell snakeoil from holy water in an ad. ItilE ILIP :~ At our present circulation, it now costs us $1.40 per issue per paid subscriber to do the magazine. There's not much fat in that budget. The total for salaries paid to the six of us over the year equals $16,800, just about one average all-American income. And presumably we don't have to tell you about inflation and postage and all that. We can't afford to subsidize the magazine any further ourselves. It will have to become self-supporting ovq the next five or six months or go the way of all good memories. Which may not be bad-it may have served its purpose, we may better be freed to do other things, and the new regional newsletters may be a satisfactory replacement. It's up to you. What we'd like most is your help in figuring out how to reach more people with RAIN and to figure out and share more appropriate ways for magazines such as ours to find and reach your audience. Who do you know that would know "appropriate" ways to proceed? What other networks could we be useful to? What could you do to connect us up with new people? We dream of getting our circulation up to about IO,OOO- not a big dream, but one that would allow us to continue to explore and share some exciting new paths with you that we're trying to sniff out. With this issue we're raising the subscription price of RAIN to $15 for one year ($7.50 if you're living lightly). People have been urging us to do it for a couple of years, and we just can't afford any longer not to, as you will see below. We hope you value us enough to stay with us. If you subscribe, or renew, or get someone else to subscribe before November 1, we'll honor the old rates of $IO/year ($5 if living lightly). Assets at beginning of year $5612 Assets at end of year 2050 Current paid subscribers 2268 Exchanges 470 Average number of magazines sold through bookstores each month 305 Estimated current cirulation $3043
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