Erin Wiegand

I’ve recently published a few articles in Paracinema, a new magazine devoted to cult and horror films.

The magazine’s editors are currently pursuing a DIY distribution method to a handful of independent stores, which means you can’t pick it up in your local Borders or Barnes & Noble. I think this is a fantastic idea. As someone who witnessed the collapse of what seemed to be a very successful magazine (great sell-through rates, even in the chains), I know first-hand the disaster of getting too big too quickly — and how the mainstream magazine publishing industry is designed to simply crush any independent magazines that are trying to compete with glossy, advertising-driven ones. Simply put: if you’re a small magazine, and you don’t have a built-in income from high-paying niche advertisers, you’re eventually not going to be able to cover the cost of printing an issue because the newsstand money doesn’t trickle in until many months after the last issue’s been taken off the shelf. Once your popularity increases, and the bookstores start demanding your magazine in higher numbers, you’ll very quickly realize that the money you’re getting from the 2,000 copies you sold of the last issue isn’t going to make a dent in the cost of printing the 6,000 copies your distributors are now asking for. (And forget about paying anyone; once you start trying to make money to pay writers, editors, publishers, and designers, rather than just trying to break even on your printer bill, it becomes exponentially difficult.)

Here’s a list of independent magazines that have gone under in the last few years.

Instead, buy issues from Paracinema directly, whether in one of the few stores that carry them or online, or better yet, subscribe. Subscriptions are what keep indie magazines like this running, because it provides the money up front to print upcoming issues.

I hadn’t been paying much attention to media coverage of the LiP anthology, but then came across this article in In These Times:

Tipping the Sacred Cow is a savvy and well-curated collection of the comics, illustrations, articles and interviews featured in LiP’s myriad print and online incarnations from 1996-2007. Capturing the magazine’s cheeky nature, it reads like a super-special edition of LiP—complete with illustrations by cartoonist Eric Drooker, a “theft ethics” quiz, a glossary of culture-jamming lingo and other useful appendices—including some exclusive, behind-the-scenes, previously unpublished material…. Tipping the Sacred Cow serves as a worthy headstone for a publication that died before its time.

A quick search turned up two more great reviews that I’d like to share: the first is from the Feminist Review, written by Kerri Kanelos.

Every single article in this anthology forced me to shift my thinking about issues near and dear to my heart (feminism, the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., eco-friendly policies—even the fine art of using the toilet).

…and the second, from the Utne Reader:

The spunky indie rag LiP was never afraid to dissent from lefty rallying cries, always challenging its readers to scrutinize the structures and institutions underlying their pet causes. Tipping the Sacred Cow captures a cross section of the now-defunct magazine’s wares, with essays and interviews challenging so-called radical perceptions of feminism, gay rights, and political correctness.

Two books I’ve contributed to, In the Beginning and Tipping the Sacred Cow, are now available!