The tags on your last reblog (about how the zine is a bit of a money sink) made me think -- is there a place we could donate to help it? You mention the stamp fund in your pinned, but if there's a donation link somewhere, I am blind to it.
I'd happily kick in like, $5-10 month for the zine. I know that isn't a lot but ideally it wouldn't just be me 😅
For the uninitiated, since January I've been publishing a monthly zine, The Some Times, mailing out free physical copies to subscribers on the 13th of each month. I was motivated by my nostalgia for magazine subscriptions in the early 2000s, so I've made a concerted effort to keep the project as offline as possible. I prioritize snail mail over email (digital copies are available upon request, but very few people have opted for that so far), I post the issues on my blog with a one month delay so subscribers get to read them first, and I have not set up any digital payment methods. The stamp fund is an informal thing; several people have sent me donations in the mail (some cash, but most have been postage stamps), and I give each of them a shoutout in the following issue's Letters to the Editor article.
I don't want to charge for the Some Times because it reaches way more people when its free. But that also means that readership has grown WAY beyond my wildest expectations; 108 subscribers and counting after only 6 issues. I thought I'd reach maybe 20 people all year, mostly mutuals or family members if I begged them, but this project has really taken off!
Last week I broke down the cost to produce a single physical copy of the zine and mail it out
Toner: about 6.667 cents per page or 13.333 cents per sheet (usually 6 pages/3 sheets per issue, so that's 40 cents)
Paper: I print on purple paper instead of white, so it's 2.4 cents per sheet (7.2 cents per issue)
Envelopes: about 8 cents a pop
Address labels: about 30 cents a sheet, but I can fit more than 30 names on each one, so it's less than 1 cent per subscriber (call it 1 cent exactly when accounting for 1/30th of a page worth of toner)
Stamps: 78 cents domestic, $1.70 international (postage goes up to 82 cents and $1.79 respectively after July 12th)
Total: $1.34 domestic ($1.38 next month), $2.26 international ($2.35 next month) for raw materials. Accounting for labor and PO Box rent, let's call it $3 domestic, $4 international total (the cost of labor/rent is fixed each month so the cost-per-issue goes down the more people subscribe)
Is it worth $3 - $4 per person per month? I don't think I'd have gotten anywhere near 108 subscribers if I had paywalled it from the start, and I'd feel bad charging for it now after it's been free for so long. I've considered setting up a Patreon as a tip jar, but even that makes me feel iffy because then it becomes an obligation rather than a hobby. If people are paying for it, then I gotta provide, come hell or high water. I don't know... That route just doesn't seem right to me, at least not yet.
The best way anyone can help out is by contributing to the stamp fund. My PO Box is always open, not just for donations but for submissions too; pet photos, drawings, recipes, entire articles, you name it. We've built a really nice community this year, and I'm truly humbled that this project has resonated so far and wide (38 states, 4 Canadian provinces, and 6 other countries).
My entire backlog is available on my pinned post, and the window to subscribe for Issue 6 is open until July 6th (after that, you'll be signed up for Issue 7 instead). There are articles about astronomy, cartography, library science, book and movie reviews, cryptids, linguistics, fantasy worldbuilding, and even personal ads to start a reader-to-reader penpal network.
