First, a Few Announcements
We’re having a subscriber giveaway this Friday! If you’re a paid subscriber, look for an email this Friday (the reminder invite for our release party on March 27). Be the first to respond, and you’ll get two tickets to EXPOSED Storytelling on March 26. That’s two free shows in one week for being a subscriber!
Our latest Readers’ Choice Design Awards are now live! Click here to vote for the next winner. Which graphic designer did the best job?
It’s Not Every Day You Get Your Name in the Paper
If Baudelaire was right and boredom is the root of all evil, I can count myself untempted. My brain is tired and webby. Another issue has been sent to the printer for final checks, and by now I’m used to this cycle of doubt, exhaustion, euphoria, and arrogance. Today I’m at stage II, but a couple of weeks ago as the war reared up and the economy took yet another dip, I found myself once again fretting over the mag.
This is the first business I’ve ever run, but I’d imagine this is how it goes for most people. You grind it out, work yourself half to death, endure mishaps, but then you’ll experience some boon, manna from heaven. And it comes in a similar cycle, feast and famine, you’re hot, then you’re not. You can get bitter about it, but if the fun never stopped, things would get, well, boring.
Last Sunday, I woke up to find that we had gotten 25 new subscribers, all over the course of a few hours that morning. After two relatively dry weeks, they were pouring in. Turns out, we got some pretty powerful press, and in good old print no less. That’s right. Denverse was in the Sunday paper!
“The magazine deserves every member of its fast-growing audience, particularly as news media retreats from arts and culture journalism, and working artists and creatives are priced out of every aspect of their practice,” writes Denver Post journalist John Wenzel, a celebrated pen in the scene who has previously published in Esquire, The Atlantic and Rolling Stone. “With its wry cartoons, poetry and art, it comes off like a Colorado version of The New Yorker,” he later notes.
It’s incredibly high praise, of course–scary at the same time because it’s something we’ll have to keep earning. The New Yorker is a pretty high bar, especially for our ragtag team. All of us, including yours truly, still have full-time day jobs, but that’s always been our advantage. This endeavor is entirely self-funded, and none of us are rich, which, as it turns out, is a great asset. If you have no benefactors, funders, etc., you can be independent. And if you’re not rich, the business has to basically work from the get-go. You don’t have much latitude for working in the red, so you have to design something that won’t put you there.
I’m happy to report that we’re still breaking even two years in, which is extremely rare for a bootstrap business, much less independent media these days, and our audience continues to grow rapidly (thank you!). Of course, it’ll be from peak to valley, but I know the ride well enough now, and I enjoy it! It’s a great privilege to do something that will always challenge you. How many of us have worked jobs that turn us into vegetables after just six months? There’s certainly no danger of that in Denverse, let me tell you.
Keep up the good fight, everybody. Do your own thing and love it. And thanks to all of our readers for your support! Read your local paper and the independent press. It’s more important than ever to know who’s writing what you’re reading. Oh, and we’ve got a new issue coming out next Friday, I should say! We hope you enjoy it. Come party with us, subscribers! :)
Till next time,
Paul M. French, Editor