Sales

"I was wondering if your group sells copies of your magazine once they are printed to raise money? If you do, how much do you charge and how successful is it? In the past we've tried to sell some but never sold more than a few copies at graduation." -Lars

Yes we do sell the magazine. In the two years that I have been involved in selling the magazine we have sold it for $5 and then the following year $7. This year we are talking about selling it for $10. Our problem has been, and always will be, No matter what we sell it at we will never reclaim the cost of publishing. This year's price is an attempt to maximize the amount of money that we can get.
We print 200 to 250 copies of the magazine. We sell 60 copies on average. We feel that we can sell the higher quality magazine to the same 60 people at $10 instead of $5 or $7. In this way we can gain a little more revenue to put towards next year. This is only a theory. Time will tell if it works.

I can't remember where I heard the idea, or who mentioned it; however, there is an idea floating around about the possibility of selling the magazines on Amazon or eBay. We haven't seriously pursued the idea, but it is an avenue that we are going to be looking into. At this point in the game, we (As lit mag people) are going to have to come up with some creative solutions to this problem.

Unfortunately, I cannot ever see a high school literary magazine being published and paid for through sales. Sponsorships, patrons, and donations are always going to have to be a part of the equation. I hope that I will be proved wrong in the future.