YIKES! That's a heck of a price hike??!!

I received the following perfectly understandable email this morning:

Hi Ann,  The jump in the digital price of a magazine was a little under 25%.  That is quite a lot.  As a senior on a fixed income, that's a significant increase for me.  As you know, I've been a regular buyer but I am not sure if I will continue going forward.  I'm sorry about that.  Sincerely, S.A.

We understand completely. We hate price hikes as much as anyone.

In fact we hate them so much that it's been ten years since we raised prices.

In 2005, the price of a yearly subscription was $35.99, exactly the same price as it is now. That's a decade of rising costs without a price hike.  And unfortunately, it's a reality that everything gets more expensive for us, too.  We've added staff, our various editor's fees have gone up by a total of 40% in the last 3 years, and all of the machinations that make the digital magazine delivered automatically have become more expensive.  We don't want to raise prices again for years and years ahead, so we went with a bigger hike.

Digital Subscriptions are still $2.99 per issue.  Subscription prices will rise slightly in January for NEW subscribers, but current subscriber's $2.99 rate won't ever go up!  Subscription info >

When you publish a magazine like ours, with a teeeeeny tiny niche group, it's always tough. We are publishing for an entire market of thousands rather than millions.  This small market is the reason large publishing companies won't publish a colored pencil magazine. With so few colored pencil artists in the world, there's simply not enough demand.  It's also the reason North Light has stopped publishing new colored pencil books; lack of substantial demand. There's no question that colored pencil is growing in popularity, but it will always be a small group of enthusiasts.

Only micro-publishers, like us, can even attempt to make it work!  The time, effort and expense that goes into each monthly magazine is substantial. Somehow we have to keep up with expenses.  A raise in price once every 10 years seems reasonable?  And even with the new price, it's still cheaper than a latte, cheaper than a movie and cheaper than a piece of pie that's gone in a few minutes...except where it lands on our hips.  :-)

We hope you'll understand our decision, and that you'll consider subscribing soon!