A Goodbye
Hi there.
So…it’s been a while. There has been an awful lot going on in my life this year, and as a result, I’ve given 400 Words much shorter shrift than I had wanted to.
It’s gotten to the point, in fact, where instead of just letting it fade away, I’m thinking of gently packing 400 Words onto its ice floe and pushing it, sadly but with reverence, into the glistening sea. It’s been a grand project. It seems to have resonated with people. But the web isn’t what it was in 2005, and then again, neither am I. The time pressures of running my own career haven’t allowed for enough leftover energy to design, print, bankroll and distribute a zine.
It’s possible that I’ll continue to post some stories here on the website, and I’ll keep the archives up and running as long as I have sixty bucks a year to cover the hosting costs. But I don’t think there will be any more print editions of Four Hundo. It’s sad, because Work was just about ready to go (okay, I hadn’t braved InDesign yet, but I had cover art, and the contents were picked out, Eloise had designed some awesome logos for the flyleaf).
What can I say? When I started 400 Words, I had no idea what would happen. I was a small-town graduate student looking for a way to feel more creative, and to indulge a lifetime’s interest in zines, publishing, storytelling, and other peoples’ secret inner lives. Realizing that I could get people to entrust me with their stories was unbelievably cool. That the stories themselves were so interesting was wonderful. A little bit of media attention for the project felt great.
Being picked up for distribution by Microcosm was a great coup. The handful of times that I ran into someone who already knew about 400 Words from elsewhere was such a kick. On the other side…the article in Newsweek led to being approached by Ingram, the biggest periodical distributor. Could this be 400 Words’ leap into the big time?! Unfortunately, the small trim size of the books (they are six inches tall or whatever) meant that they would literally disappear into standard magazine racks, which led to Four Hundo’s rejection by Borders and Barnes & Noble. I thought briefly about changing the format of the magazine in hopes of being picked up by the big chains, but decided against it for a handful of reasons. More limited distribution by Ingram didn’t go so well. I spent several hundred dollars on a proprietary code that all periodicals need to have in order to be distro’d by Ingram, and another several hundred to initiate my account with Ingram. They ordered a few hundred copies of Issue 2, and I sent them off. Because the bar codes on the front cover were non-functional, the books needed to be specially stickered, at a cost of 25 cents per; I haven’t seen a stickered book but I suspect it made them look unappealing. The only thing I’ve received back from Ingram is a ream of printouts detailing a copy returned here, two copies returned there. I haven’t gotten a dime, and at this point I don’t expect to. We were a bad fit, and I probably should have gone with SPD, or something, if I wanted to get more heavily into third-party distribution. Or just stuck with Microcosm and concentrated on putting out a good zine once a year.
But that’s not what happened. When I started 400 Words, it was really important to me to have a physical product: not just a web thing but little books that people could flip through, smell the ink of, put their hands on. Doing it twice was unbelievably fun. I recommend it to everyone. But there are also logistical issues with physical products that you just don’t face with internet-only affairs: per-unit production costs, shipping, the inability to make changes once you’ve committed to a print run, getting your orders out to the post office, and last but not at all least, where to store all your cardboard boxes full of stock. I loved it, but it was a real operation, and as a one-woman show which at a certain point seemed likely to remain a hobby, albeit an awesome one, it got to be a bit too much.
I sense that I’m starting to get repetitive here, so, moving on: I’m going to post, very soon, one submission that I was so excited about that, when it came to me over a year ago, I kept waiting and waiting for the right time to post it. The time when it would make the most impact, and when I’d be able to do it the greatest amount of justice. That time never seemed to come, and the submission that I’d been so delighted about began to cause no less delight but also a significant and ever-increasing amount of guilt. So that, and the story behind it, are coming out soon.
I’m also announcing, just in time for the holidays and the next Great Depression, deep discounts on the remaining stocks of 400 Words, Issue 2. A clearance sale, if you will. I will be posting the revised prices at the store tout suite.
I don’t know what else there is to say right now. Good night, and good luck?
(Image: Nick Russill)
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