Dear Loyal Readers

Okay, so I guess it’s time to come clean.
I’ve been stalling on this for as long as I could.
Forgive the length of this post, there are quite a few things I need to cover and I’ve decided to do them all in one go.
Where to start? With the end of course.

Publishing Something Wicked has always been a labour of love for me and managing editor, Vianne. Neither one of us has ever been paid for the three years of work we’ve put in to Something Wicked but this has never really been a problem as we both love the product and are immensely proud of it. As unpaid freelancers, however, what that means is that whenever there is paid work on offer, we really have no choice but to take it. This has meant having to stretch ourselves increasingly thin to be able to keep up with the magazine.

Which brings us to the crux of this post.

The current distribution and marketing model is not working anymore. My ability to fund Something Wicked has come to an end. The fact is Something Wicked has over its entire existence not made a penny of profit. In fact, we posted losses of over R46,000 (+/- $4500) for the 2008 tax year. The financial constraints have also meant that we have never been in a position to bring on extra staff to handle marketing, distribution and sales. As a result, Something Wicked has remained a full-time one-and-a-half-man job, except without the income.

Last year we received partial funding from the National Arts Council (NAC), which helped just enough to keep the mag going a little longer. This has unfortunately not yet been renewed. In addition, the global economic f@*k Storm (as Jon Stewart put it) has hit the print industry hard. Printing costs have risen hugely in the past year and 2008 saw over 500 publications close down in the USA alone. Many of our international counterparts have halved the number of issues they’re printing this year. Our print costs have gone up by 33% in the last twelve months alone and more than doubled in the three years we’ve been going. That means SW10 will cost 220% what SW01 cost in 2006.

What am I trying to say? In its current form, Something Wicked is not a financially sustainable project. It’s been a very hard decision and I’ve put it off for as long as I could, but there is a very real possibility that Something Wicked Issue #10 will be our last printed copy.

What I have decided to do is to make Something Wicked an online-only magazine.

Now I can hear some of you complaining already. I get it, I do. I love paper and it kills me to have to make SW an online magazine, but the fact of the matter is it is simply not possible to pay for printing anymore.

What I am proposing is a do-it-yourself magazine sold for a fraction of the price (we still need to pay our artists and writers). The magazine will have exactly the same look as the current print editions – the only difference will be that you will have to print it yourself. You’ll be able to download the pdf and print out as many copies as you want - just don’t sell them please.

Though we’ll continue quarterly for now, the hope is to become bi-monthly (or even monthly) at a later stage. If we are able to maintain our sales through the online version we will also print an annual paperback anthology of all the stories published in the magazine for that year, plus a few extras.

It’s a win/win situation.

By selling directly to our readers we can bypass printing and distribution costs (easily the lion’s share of our current overheads) and therefore drop the cover price significantly and hopefully raise our pay rate for writers.

I realise that a great many of you are going to annoyed by this, I know I am, but hopefully you will continue to support us in this new phase of our evolution.

Hopefully we can, at some point, afford to bring back the print versions but for now this is the only way I can see Something Wicked continuing.

We still have great plans for the Something Wicked brand and we’d love you to stick around and enjoy the journey with us.

  1. So what happens now?

Firstly, SW10 will be printed, though there will be a delay in our printing schedule. As mentioned earlier our printing costs have gone up 33% in the last year, what that means in real numbers is that what cost us R16,600 in April last year, now costs R23 000. Currently we have just under R10k in the Something Wicked bank account. There is still some money coming from outstanding invoices but until that money arrives we are unable to go to print.

  2. When will Issue 10 come out?

Honestly? No idea. Hopefully within the next 6 to 8 weeks (June/July 2009), in time for Icon Games Con. In the meantime, what we’re going to do is publish some of the stories from Issue 10 online, as a printable, downloadable pdf. This pdf will be a DIY booklet and will be available free from the Something Wicked website.

   3. AN IMPORTANT NOTE TO CURRENT SUBSCRIBERS:

   Subscribers with outstanding issues on their subscriptions will automatically receive the pdf issues directly to their email, free of charge, for as long as Something Wicked remains an online publication and until such time as we return to print, at which point their subscriptions will continue from where they left off.


  4. I’m not interested in an online version – I want my money back.

Fair enough. Any subscribers who wish to request refunds for their unused subscriptions are welcome to send us an email to refunds@somethingwick

http://www.gamerzines.com/

Here is another electronic publication I got today. Also electronic but viewable online - It got some nice features as well.

http://eweekdigital.eweek.com/publication/?i=17407

Hi 8Ball

We will definitely keep the fictionwise formats going.
So MSReader, Mobi, Kindle etc.. will all still be available.

The graphical pdf versions will mostly be for the South Africans who still want to have a paper magazine that they can download and print out but can't afford the $4.50 price tag on Fictionwise.

We're hoping to sell the pdf's for around $1.50.
Because they will be laid out like the magazine the pdf version will be impossible to read on a mobile device and will be designed specifically to be printed out.

As I mentioned above, the fictionwiseversions will continue as normal.

Thanks for you ongoing support.