Filthy Lucre

Time for a little straight talk about money (also known as moolah, which two of the three people in our apartment call, for reasons that seemed to make sense at some point in our lives, moo-cow moolah, which became moo-cow, and then just moo; so that now, if you stop by at just the right time, you may hear a grownup explaining to her child with a perfectly straight face that she would love to order pizza for dinner, but she just doesn't have the moo).

Sorry. No more digressions. It's all about the moo-cow now.

Secular Homeschooling costs $7 an issue.

Many homeschooling families are getting by on one income.

Which makes $7 a lot of moo.

Let's talk about that.

A very wonderful lady brought her copy of SHM to her local park day gathering. Another gorgeous dame saw it and liked the looks of it so much that she not only ordered a copy of her own, she mentioned it on a homeschooling forum she's a member of.

Which generated SHM's site some decent traffic. Which I need, because my advertising guru Gail is trying to get people interested in advertising on the site, and they aren't inclined to do that until I'm getting more people stopping by.

But I digress.

Except not really, because this is about money, and money is about advertisers, and I basically have none. None on the site, and almost none in the mag itself.

One of the women on the abovementioned forum said that she'd purchased a copy of the first issue, but hasn't ordered the second one, because of the price. "Hopefully it will come down a little," she added, "because I would love to support it."

Let's talk vocabulary for a minute.

Support is what you offer friends and other people you care about. They need you, and you're there for them.

Waiting until this costs less before I buy it is bargain-hunting. It's what you do when money is tight and you're being careful what and how you spend.

Both of these are noble endeavors, but let's not confuse the two.

When I -- the publisher, editor, copy-editor, proofreader, main writer, envelope-sticker, and stamp-buyer for SHM -- have more support, the magazine's price will come down because I'll be able to consistently place a large enough order at the printers that my own costs will come down. Then, thanks to terrific supporters like the two mentioned above, I will be able to offer a real deal to the bargain-hunters, and we'll all be happy.

I cannot lower the price of the magazine until I have more subscribers, because I have basically no advertisers and I can't count on getting them any time soon, in spite of all poor Gail's hard work. The ones who would be appropriate for SHM are unthrilled by our circ numbers; and the ones who'd be happy to place an ad are companies with names like Gracious God's Homeschooling Curriculum For Wee Lambs of Our Lord Jesus.

(I am not making fun of Christians, Christian homeschoolers, or Christian homeschooling educational materials here. I do think it’s humorous that companies with names remarkably similar to the one above really do contact Secular Homeschooling Magazine.)

Per-issue costs to the publisher notwithstanding, $7 an issue is, nevertheless, a large enough sum to give the average homeschooler pause.

It doesn't differ that much from $6.50 an issue, which is the per-issue price of the terrific Home Education Magazine, which is an older, more established journal with advertisers. They, too, had humble beginnings, which gives me hope; but then I look at their advertisers, many of whom wouldn't be appropriate for SHM, and then my shoulders slump down again and I reach for the chocolate.

Of course, in a way HEM does cost much less than SHM, even though they come out more often, because they offer subscriber discounts. I can’t yet. I can’t afford to.
 
SHM is a quarterly. The first issue was 60 pages long; the second is 62.

All text. Long, deep-delving articles with basically no ads. And no religious landmines.

Which means that if you put away $2.50 a month, at the end of three months you can put fifty cents back in the laundry-quarter jar and mail the rest in for a copy of SHM.

If you have a friend who's also interested in reading SHM, you have three months to save up $3.50. Of course, then there's the whole custody-battle aspect of things; but still, three months should give both of you plenty of time to arm-wrestle over who gets to read it first.

If you have no heathen-homeschooler friends and no moo-cow moolah, you might have a local public library. A library supported by your tax dollars. Tell them you want them to subscribe to SHM.

In the meantime, I'll be working on the next issue. And I'll be trying very hard not to think about the morbid conversation I had recently with my math-nerd (that's a compliment at our place) husband. We were talking about per-copy costs -- printers, postage (going up in a couple of weeks), envelopes -- and just to make my day complete, we tried to factor in the time we spend working on the mag.

We even pretended that the time he spends typesetting the magazine doesn't exist. We just looked at me.

We’re not losing money. That’s good news, anyway.

However, I'm not making as much as I'd make if I just gave up and went back to working retail.

I'm not making half as much.

I'm making something like a tenth.

Plus, if I got back behind the counter of a bookstore, I'd get an employee's discount.

Okay, I'm getting back to work on an article I've been trying to finish for weeks now. Trying not to think about all that.

Still -- who do I call if I want to report myself as a sweatshop owner?