Issue 41, Article 1
2001: A cyberspace odyssey?
Most members of the current T&S collective joined in the early 1990s, and all of us remember (in some cases rather nostalgically) when producing the magazine required what you might call traditional craft skills. We employed a professional to set the type, but we pasted up the final product ourselves on large boards, using scalpels to cut the bromides to column length and cow gum to stick down the type and illustrations on each page. It took some half a dozen women a whole weekend, we needed to borrow a large space to do it in, and since we varied in how skilful we were, the results weren't always perfect. If you look at certain issues before about number 30, you'll find the odd sloping margin or not-quite-right angle.
In the mid-1990s we went over to desktop publishing using Pagemaker software: we no longer needed a typesetter, or boards and scalpels and gum, and most of the layout could now be done by one person sitting in front of a computer screen. We retained the design we had had since the beginning of T&S in 1983, and the illustrations — especially cartoons — that had made the magazine look distinctive, but we also started to make use of clip art; later on we became able to download images from the internet and to scan in photos and printed illustrations. Some of us did initially regret the passing of traditional paste-up, which offered the opportunity to work communally and to physically handle what would become the finished product. But we wouldn't want to go back now. Even if we did not see the advantages of new methods for ourselves, the rise of the computer has changed the face of publishing in general, and at some point this trend would have become impossible for us to resist.
All this is by way of introduction: we are writing this because, several years after we embraced DTP, we are contemplating another change, and considering the possible long term irresistibility of another trend — the move from print to on-line publishing. This trend is partly technology-driven (that is, it is made possible by the new medium of the internet/World Wide Web), but it is also economic. Here we want to explore — and solicit opinions from our readers about — the question of whether in future T&S should become an on-line publication accessed via the Web, rather than a printed publication that you buy in a shop or have delivered direct to your postal address.
Luxury goods?
Let's begin with the economics. For small, independent, nonprofit publishing organisations, the production of a physical object — a magazine or whatever — is looking increasingly like an unaffordable luxury. In the case of T&S, for instance, though the collective's and contributors' labour is free, we pay for the commercial printing of about a thousand copies every six months; for posting copies out to subscribers; for a distributor to supply copies to bookshops; and for unsold or returned copies to be kept in storage. In the past we were able to cover these costs (we do not aim to make a profit and never have done) because we had a healthy number of subscribers. But that has changed over time. Our highest-paying subscribers — institutions like university libraries and feminist organisations — have been starved of resources and the numbers subscribing have dwindled; inevitably they look for cost-cutting opportunities and we can no longer rely on their annual renewals to bring our bank balance up to scratch. Numbers of individual subscribers, similarly, have fallen steadily. We have fewer subscribers than bookshop buyers, and it is only from subscribers that we receive the full price of the magazine, since our distributor takes a large cut of bookshop sales. The result is that we can barely stay solvent now, and if subscriptions go on falling we will eventually find ourselves in real trouble. We are aware that raising the cover price would probably lose us more subscribers, which would make things worse rather than better; anyway, we ourselves do not want T&S to cost as much as we would probably need to charge.
That said, we do not really think the decline in our sales has happened because women are poorer than they were a few years ago. Without denying that T&S is more expensive than most magazines (because we do not have advertising revenue), it only costs about the same as, say, a packet of cigarettes or (outside London) a cinema ticket. There are, of course, some feminists who can't afford to smoke or go to the pictures, but many more find it reasonable to spend £4.50 on these pursuits — and not just twice a year either. Those who decide that T&S is too expensive must mean 'too expensive for what it is/what I get out of it' — in which case we have to ask ourselves why they have come to that conclusion.
Galloping consumption
Some might say our sales are in decline because fewer women want to read radical feminist publications: radical feminism itself is out of date. We think that's too pessimistic, but it may well be relevant that the feminist and other political networks through which potential new readers would see or hear about T&S are not as extensive or as tight as they once were. We can't afford much in the way of advertising and promotion, so if women don't already know what we have to offer, it's not easy for them to find out. Thus a lot of our readers have been with us for many years, but those who drift away for whatever reason are not being replaced by new ones. That's something we would like to address for political reasons as well as purely economic ones.
There's also been change in people's habits with regard to what's grandly known as 'cultural consumption' — the books and magazines we read, the music we listen to, the films we see, and so on. Few feminists can (or would necessarily want to) entirely resist the logic of a consumer society in which there is more and more 'product' to choose from, and for many, less and less time in which to process the stuff available. Our lives have speeded up, with ever-increasing pressure on our working time, our leisure time, the time we spend doing politics or domestic work. We're more accustomed than we used to be to getting things (from our shopping to the news to our next meal) quickly, at the moment when we need or want them, from the most convenient source; we'll order things over the phone or on the internet rather than wait until we have time to go out and get them. In that context perhaps it becomes more difficult for people to develop or maintain the habit of sending off a subscription form every year and waiting six months for the goods to be delivered.
T&S is not by any means the only publication that has experienced falling subscriptions, it's a widespread phenomenon, and to some extent it must reflect not just market competition but the way every activity nowadays has to compete for space in crowded lives. (The objection that these 'crowded lives' are in reality only the lives of economically privileged people is a point we'll come back to later on.) Arguably, the traditional 'periodical' — a physical object that appears at intervals and requires an effort to get hold of — does not fit well with the new speeded-up culture of consumption. And this applies whether its subject-matter is feminism or angling or needlepoint. Even the porn industry has had to recognise the change.
These are the considerations that have made us think seriously about moving to a different communication medium, abandoning print and publishing T&S on-line. It is clear that to do this would dramatically cut our costs (no printing, storage, postage or distributors); but while that is a pressing practical consideration, for us in principle a more important question is whether on-line publishing would also have other, more positive benefits. After all, we produce T&S for political rather than commercial reasons. 'Saving' the magazine in monetary terms is pointless if we cannot also further our political goals in the process. And it is also important, of course, to consider what non-financial costs might be involved in moving on-line.
New possibilities…and new problems?
We can see several potential advantages in the move. First, speed. On-line we would not necessarily have to stick to the magazine format of ten to twelve new pieces every six months; we could add new material as and when it was ready (and archive the older material so it stayed available.) What was there for readers to look at could alter month by month or even week by week, and we would be able to publish more topical pieces, including responses from readers to what we had published before.
Second, ease of access. More people in more places would be able to find us in cyberspace using the various tools that exist to search the net, and access would be instant — no waiting weeks for the post. Though we have not yet worked out in detail what we might want to do about on-line subscription, it is conceivable that we could make access free of charge as well.
Third, diversity of content and purpose. While we imagine that the core of an on-line magazine would remain similar to that of the print version, i.e. a series of articles, on the Web we could theoretically do other things as well. We could for instance run a forum in which women could post information or request it from others. We could set up direct connections (hyperlinks that can just be clicked on) to other sites we thought T&S readers would find interesting. We could institute chat sessions where radical feminists were on-line at the same time to discuss particular issues. These features would enable an on-line T&S to serve the needs of the radical feminist political community in ways a printed publication cannot.
If these are the advantages, what about the disadvantages? The most obvious one is something that has been extensively discussed by commentators on gender and the internet: though often touted as a 'democratic' medium, the net in practice is not equally accessible or congenial to all. Even if there are no economic barriers to access, many women do not feel confident or comfortable with the technology. This is not just a 'women versus men' issue but at this point perhaps even more an issue about age and generation, about education and about social class. In going on-line, would we be excluding the very women whose access to radical feminist ideas we should be making most effort to facilitate? And what about feminists in the poorer countries of the world, where even elite professionals can't always take for granted easy access to the necessary technical resources? One solution in the case of our existing subscribers outside the rich world might be to produce a printout of the on-line material and send it to them annually. But the general issue of inequality of access is undoubtedly a serious one. It does seem to us that computer use and internet access among feminists in western countries is now more the rule than the exception, whereas not very long ago the reverse would have been true. It's easy now to get internet service free, though the phone calls still cost, and using the net can still be a pain if you don't have your own home computer. But there remains variation in what people habitually use their access for. Even in the T&S collective, which routinely communicates via email, some of us have had little practice navigating the Web.
Another potential disadvantage arises from the fact that websites are relatively easy to discover. The more accessible we make an on-line publication to the women we want it to address, the more accessible it also becomes to every obsessive nutcase or misogynist with a search engine and a grudge against feminists. We do, in fact, have a few male subscribers now — we've never refused to take their money — but since they have to go to a certain amount of trouble and write us a cheque to get their copy, we doubt they are motivated by anti-feminism. On-line, where all you have to do to go anywhere is click, we could find ourselves bombarded with all manner of vile communications from men (possibly disguising themselves as women, which is not difficult in the virtual world). Of course we wouldn't have to publish their rantings, nor would we, but would women feel inhibited by knowing they were out there?
Finally, there's what some writers about computer technology call 'the romance of the book'. Books, and magazines too, are pleasurable to have, hold and use, and many people are attached to them as physical objects, over and above what they contain. We have always been committed to making T&S as appealing aesthetically as it is radical politically. For both us and many of our readers, its demise as a physical object would represent a sad loss. Of course, websites can also be more or less pleasing to look at and to navigate, and so long as you have access to a printer, you can still read their contents in bed, in the bath or on the toilet! But it does seem most people have not yet developed the same strong feelings for new digital media that we have for more familiar ones. If pleasure matters (and we certainly hope you don't read this magazine only because you think it's your radical feminist duty), then this might matter too.
Where would you like to go today?
The purpose of this piece has been to raise questions that we believe can no longer be avoided about the future of the publication you are reading. We think the economic realities we've discussed here will eventually force not only T&S but all publications of its type — small-scale, independent, without revenue from advertising or subsidy — to change or go under. We are the longest-surviving independent feminist journal still publishing in the UK. In our time we have watched many sister publications both here and abroad go under because of financial and other problems we have managed to avoid; but in recent years conditions have changed rapidly, and if we can't adapt, our prospects for continued survival look increasingly grim. However, we aren't notifying you unilaterally of a definite decision to stop printing T&S, and we certainly aren't encouraging you to cancel your subscription yet. This definitely isn't the last issue we will ever produce in print — just the first in which we openly broach the subject of whether we can go on printing, posting and storing T&S indefinitely. One of the many things we have to discuss as we talk about possible futures is what kind of publication our readers want us to be: so please, write to our editorial address (or email us at troublestrife@yahoo.com if you prefer) and let us know what you think. 