Some Good News

From the very beginning, there’s been some juggling of finances to make Cirsova work and be able to function as a semi-pro paying print zine.

It’s been my hope that someday Cirsova could be self-sustaining, but until that happened it would be a case of trying to strike a balance between putting out the magazine and staying fed.

Completely putting the Kickstarter aside, Cirsova had a really good month last month. Between T-Shirt, Amazon and Lulu sales, we pulled in over $200. I don’t expect to get fat checks from Lulu all the time, since I know that hardbacks are going to sell slower, but that is, in one month and on residuals alone, pulling in enough to buy 2.5 short stories, 2 novelettes, one novella* or about half a cover. Averaging just $100 a month, we can theoretically pull together almost an entire issue on residuals alone. And hopefully, as our back-catalog and reader-base grows, those numbers will grow.

I was also left a small endowment (I’m not prepared to go into details, at the moment) that will cover the costs of most of an issue and certainly buy Cirsova Publishing some of the time it needs to grows.

I recently crossed an interesting psychological threshold, where the magazine’s red ink and the amount left on the note on my car crossed. It is the sort of thing that gives one pause. “What if I’d spent that money paying off my car instead? I’d have a ton of free money right now! Has it been worth it? Is it still worth it?”

I’ve had to put up with some crap, been called a lot of names, and had people feel the need to distance themselves from me, which is stressful and frankly a pain in the ass. But I think it has been worth it.  And it will be worth it to go forward, at least for the time being.

*:Disclaimer – We don’t take unsolicited novellas. Please do not submit them.