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"Christian Distributivism" is the "Business Model"

A little witticism there...

As far as "making a financial 'go' of it."

Christian Distributivism has usually worked when there is a rich patron in the background who provides the land or seed capital or whatever else is needed. Not that the Guild members don't work hard; it's just that the world doesn't value their works sufficiently to make a financial 'go' of things. Hence the need for sponsorship.

E.g. (even though it was not explicitly Christian), Elbert Hubbard's community Roycroft only worked because the workers received room and board and little if any money.

40 years ago you could make a living on a limited-circulation printed, mailed newsletter--if the information was timely and valuable. Today, things are quite different. Nearly everybody in the target demographic has a scanner and email. Keeping one's finger in the dike is not a realistic option. E.g., Stereophile's website gets more unique visitors in a month than printed copies get mailed. I usually get two rounds of letters to the editor: the first wave that comes when the print issue hits; the second wave (oftimes more rude and making less sense) when my column goes up on the web for free reading a month or so later.

When I was between TAS and Stereophile and therefore owed loyalty only to myself, I discussed with another writer the economics of a print-only newsletter that would not accept advertising. Our considered opinion: Impossible--regardless who the editor in chief was. Not enough people are willing to fork out fifty bucks in advance for six or eight newsletters, even if the newsletter were written by Shakespeare and copy-edited by T.S. Eliot.

So, OK, you have to have advertising. Oops. The same people selling ads and writing reviews? Are you serious? So you have to have an ad salesperson, and he or she needs to feed himself or herself and perhaps a family, and so it goes. You also need a business/copyright lawyer, and insurance, etc.

So it comes back to, the only way the craftguild business model works is to have a voluntary or involuntary "patron" or patrons. At one point I had been told by someone who should know that AMM's cumulative losses were in the vicinity of $6 million, although that person said in the same breath that post-kicking HP upstairs, the magazine was making money on a cash-flow basis. A magazine that accepts advertising, has had at least one prominent ethical imbroglio, is not written by Shakespeare, and is not copyedited by T.S. Eliot.

I am not making these points to run anyone down or to be a wet blanket. It is possible that the world would be a better place if HP had his own print newsletter (or .pdf). But barring someone who is willing to stand him a few years' living expenses, and pay the printer and the post office and the layout person, and for circulation development ($100,000 is a drop in the bucket right there) etc., and be willing to lose it all, I don't see it happening, certainly not on a pay-as-you-go basis.

The other factor of course, is that HP's appeal is primarily to men who are at least 50 years old and who have been in the hobby for at least a decade, and that is a demographic that is thinning out rapidly. And a business model that includes making HP more relevant to kids wearing earbuds makes as much sense as a business model of teaching Maria Callas to sing Motown... .

John Marks

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