Scribtotum from Matthew Wayne Selznick

There’s an idiom in American English that dates from the middle of the last century: “A day late and a dollar short.”

With origins in the post-war obsession with efficiency, productivity, and expansive opportunity (read: peak Cold War-driven capitalism as a dubious ethical imperative), it’s come to represent opportunity lost due to lack of initiative and / or bad timing, and a dearth of resources.

As one of my most financially difficult years crawls to an end, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been at the bleeding edge of many things across the last thirty years that are now, in many ways, near-ubiquitous wellsprings of prosperity.

One could say I was a day early, and now I’m a dollar short.

I Blinked and Realized I’m a DIY Publishing Veteran

To wit:

• 1996: THING, a double-sided one-sheet microfiction and poetry literary zine distributed by postal mail and to coffeehouses, bookstores, and record stores in the western United States. Monetized. (1996)
• 1998: Sovereign Serials, a shared-world anthology online magazine (web) with e-mail distribution in the final year. Monetized (donations). (1998 ~ 2001)
• 2003: Multiverse Magazine, a fiction anthology periodical distributed via e-mail. Monetized (donations). (2003 ~ 2004)
• 2007: Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: “How It All Got Started,” serial fiction distributed via e-mail. Written by me. Monetized. (Now available to every member of my Multiversalists community, including free members, and still sporadically updated.) (2007 ~ 2009)
• 2013: Walk Like a Stranger: “Passing Through Home,” serial fiction, written by me, distributed through e-mail. (2013 ~ 2014)
• 2016: THING, re-imagined as a microfiction, poetry, and non-fiction literary zine distributed via e-mail. Paying market. Monetized. (2016 ~ 2017)

What do we see, there? I was editing and publishing periodicals distributed via email as early as a quarter century ago, and people were giving me money in return.

You know what we call that in 2024?

An e-mail newsletter, that’s what.

And in 2024, the e-mail newsletter market is worth… billions.

Is it Time to Get Back in the Magazine Game?

Makes me wonder what the 2016 version of THING, for example, would be worth now?

THING was working.

I let it die in late 2017 as the first of my mother’s increasingly frequent medical crises hit. I barely had the time, energy, and resources to handle client work. Momentum for THING petered out.

That same year, Substack launched.

By 2019, paid e-mail newsletters were booming. Regular e-mail service providers like Kit (then called ConvertKit) launched monetization integration to compete in a niche that was suddenly Hot Shit… a niche I’d skittered in and out of for decades.

I was a day early and many dollars short of what was necessary to keep THING rolling when life got rough, and 2017 was not the last rough year.

We all had a few, there, since.

I’ve had more than not.

THING was working, though.

So why wouldn’t it work again, in 2025, when the infrastructure is much more established, and the culture acclimated to the publication model?

I’m inclined to find out, and to do so in a measured, reasonable, and necessarily low-risk way.

A Plan to (Maybe) Resurrect THING

One thing’s for sure: It would be irresponsible of me to risk, up front, any of my own money, or to put time and effort into something no one wants.

So, here’s what’s coming next:

• I’ll solicit several writer and author colleagues and friends, including some folks who, once upon a time, had works published in previous versions of THING. Would they be willing to submit work? If I get enough takers to fill an issue or two or three, their clout and participation will help market THING in the next step.
• Assuming there’s interest from contributors, I’ll set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough capital to cover at least the first twelve issues. THING will start as a paying market with a token $5.00 per-piece rate, and there will be between three and five pieces per issue. To also account for my own time, incidental expenses for associated services and tools, and of course the cut the crowdfunding platform and payment processing services will take, I’ll look for $1,000.00. That’s a teeny tiny crowdfunding target these days, so I’ll have stretch goals to raise the rates to semi-pro ($0.05 / word at $5000) and, why not, pro ($0.08 / word at $10,000).

If the crowdfunding campaign fails… that’s that.

If it succeeds… I’ll be funded for twelve issues, and all that will be required is to attract forty to sixty quality submissions to fill those issues.

THING will live again.

What Do You THINGk?

Okay, I know, I should apologize for that pun. But y’know what? If y’didn’t like it, that might be a yellow flag.

Still here? Hi!

So! What do you think about my plans to resurrect THING?

I’ll have a dedicated site back up before long… but you can help me determine if I should take that step by commenting on this very post!