It is my great pleasure to announce some really fun news in the Credenda department. We just got the latest issue back from the printers (which means that your copy should be in the mail), and the first thing you will notice when you get it is that the layout and look has been completely overhauled. This is the first issue in our twentieth year of publication, and so we celebrated a little. The Cave is longer, and in the front of the magazine, the whole thing is thicker and weightier, the standard features (like Femina) are in the “walled city” section in the middle of the magazine, and the layout was completely redone by our talented Rachel Hoffman. Well done to her. We have also shifted to a quarterly schedule for publication, as opposed to our usual attempt to publish six of them a year. When you get it, sit down and thumb through it slowly. Hope you enjoy the changes as much as we do.
But the major change here requires me to give a little history lesson. When we started twenty years ago (I was thirty-four then, by the way), we sent it out free of charge to anyone who asked. Quite a few people asked, and quite a few people added their Christmas card list, and so our circulation got up to the neighborhood of 30,000. At the same time, that number for the print run sucked all the oxygen out of the room, if dollars were air, if you know what I mean. We found ourselves going to print rarely as a result, but still printing large numbers. Because we wanted to keep forward momentum, we shifted to a donation system, a variant of which we were on until yesterday. If someone sent a gift of any amount, we kept them on our list for several years, and we sent out a couple fund-raising letters a year. Under that procedure, we found ourselves printing and distributing around 5500.
With this new look, and our new situation, and our growing opportunities, we are now geared up to go back to our first system. Yes, that’s right. Lord willing and the crick don’t rise, as of today, we are going back to free. We would like invite you to subscribe for free, and to add anyone you have reason to believe would appreciate it. (The language at the link I just gave will be changed in the next day or so, but you should be able to sign up for free now.) Please don’t subscribe others in fits of revenge or spite, or add folks whose interest in what we might have to say would resemble a flat brain wave. But other than odd circumstances like that, please help yourself and encourage others to help themselves.
If our happy little magazine were running around the block, we have just turned the third corner.