END OF THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

When this post first goes live, there will be one hour and 54 minutes remaining on our KIckstarter campaign.

Right now, we’re $11,049.00 short of our goal.  Everyone says that “SF isn’t about predicting the future”, but I do feel pretty confident in stating that it doesn’t look like we’re going to fund.

(Of course, we all know that the problem with predicting the future is that such things are based on trends and trends get disrupted…like they would be in this case if one or two well-heeled individuals in our community were to decide to drop $5500 each at the last moment….just sayin….)

Amazing Stories currently has 41,874 REGISTERED members.  (An individual who signs up, receives and responds to a verification email.)  Lets assume that, oh, 50% of those members who have registered between December 2012 and now still have the same email address they registered with, are still keeping an eye on the website.  Lets round that number down to 20,000.

If everyone of those members contributed $5.00 per year, the magazine would have a budget of $100,000.00 – sufficient to pay salaries, purchase stories and art and print four issues per year.

$5.00 per year is:  about the cost of one electronic issue of the other magazines; it’s also only 1.3 cents per day for a year, or .42 cents per month.  Forty-Two (cents).  Talk about the meaning of life…ain’t that a kick in the head?

If that number became $37.45 (the average price of an annual subscription to the other print magazines), we’d be budgeted at $749,000.00 per year, and I promise, we’d throw a party, increase the size of the issue, increase our pay rate and increase the number of issues.

But back to the five dollars.  Five bucks is EASY!.  If I had cash in my wallet and someone – even a stranger – asked me for five bucks, I’d probably give it to them and not ever worry about seeing it come back to me.  Most everyone can scrounge up five bucks in change with hardly any effort – check the pants pockets, the change purse, the seat cushions in the car…heck, if you walked around your town for a day looking down, chances are you could find enough change just lying in the street!

But that’s not what we saw with the KIckstarter.  Instead of thousands participating, we’ve seen less than 500.  This is greatly at odds with the large number of people who have offered us both verbal and electronic encouragement   It’s roughly 1% of our total membership, rather than the 2+ percent we needed.  (And if it had been 10%, we’d be filling stretch goals….)

But it is what it is, and now we have to face that reality.

First, I want to thank ALL of our backers.  We hope that if and when we make another funding effort, you’ll stick with us.

Next, I’d like to thank Kermit and Ira who really put a lot of effort into trying to make this happen;  they’ve got a vested interest, sure, but that interest comes from love for the magazine and I feel bad that they have to experience this disappointment – though I know that it has not deterred them.

I’ll not address the naysayers this time around.  I devoted more than enough wordage to that subject yesterday (click this pic if you want to read that) and they had no to little impact, so best left alone.

Finally; Ira and Kermit and I are already re-assessing and figuring out what our next steps will be; I expect that opening for general submissions as we stated we were going to do this month is going to be a bit delayed (sorry about that, but we need a home for the stories we buy) and I expect that our decision will most likely include a stage of being electronic only until we resolve other issues, but, while this train may slow down a bit from time to time, it keeps moving forward.

I am sure that our backers and supporters may have some things to say and we’d be very interested in hearing from you all, so please feel free. And please stick around,

we’re not done

.

Please take a moment to support Amazing Stories with a one-time or recurring donation via Patreon. We rely on donations to keep the site going, and we need your financial support to continue quality coverage of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres as well as supply free stories weekly for your reading pleasure. https://www.patreon.com/amazingstoriesmag

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1 Comment

  1. I see fundraisers and projects that are unfulfilled all the time, but I also see how that if each member or subscriber would´ve donated a couple of dollars..sometimes only ONE dollar each, the project would´ve been a go. I support Amazing Stories and the efforts being made by the whole staff. In some way, shape or form, this magazine should be around for everyone to enjoy.

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