Pricing creative work is notoriously difficult. I find it especially so for zines. In running Sheer Spite, two things that are important to me are supporting people in making some money from their creative work, and making beautiful and important work accessible. There is, to some extent, a tension between those, and sliding scale pricing is one of the ways I try and balance those two priorities.
For a lot of the things I sell, I allow people to choose one of three prices to pay, which I titled “I’m unemployed,” “I’m working,” and “I’m comfortable.” Obviously these do not capture all the factors that play into the amount of resources people have, but I trust people to use them as a proxy or approximation of their means.
Here’s what this looks like in terms of number of items sold at each level of the sliding scale:
And here’s how much of the revenue from sliding scale products comes from sales at each tier:
(A few disclaimers: for the sake of simplicity, I only used data from products that use that particular three-tiered sliding scale. Some other zines just have two options, like “pay less” and “pay more”, more or less arbitrarily. Other zines have a different sliding scale based on their author’s values and preferences, such as offering a lower price for BIPOC readers.)
I am truly not much of a math/business guy, so I don’t really know what to take away from these graphs other than that it seems like people are self-selecting into them at a pretty reasonable distribution: if people were overwhelmingly selecting one category over the others, I’d probably re-think them.
Sheer Spite is coming up on two years of existence, and I’ve been trying to think through its role in my life. It is run by me, Lee, one (1) person. It has been pretty much breaking even. I work very very hard on it, in addition to the work I do that actually makes me money. Some things that are true:
- I find this work meaningful, and it is important to me to have a way to use my particular set of skills to support others, this is so far the best way of doing that that I have found.
- I am threading the needle between “help artists prosper” and “make good work accessible” by throwing in an immense amount of my own time and energy. I reflected a lot as I was hauling suitcases of zines around Europe that, in lieu of money, I am often paying with my body, and spending the currency of the ways in which I am currently able-bodied. I can’t necessarily afford to ship things or take cabs, but for the time being I can lug boxes around. Sometimes! This isn’t something I can always do, or that I can do forever. I also don’t want the worlds of zines, small presses, or self-publishing to be ones where only people who are able-bodied in certain ways can take part.
- Sheer Spite doesn’t necessarily pay me in money, but it pays me in meaningful experiences: for example, as I wrote about before, that Europe trip was paid for by an arts grant. On a smaller scale, it provides opportunities for me to travel to other cities and approximately break even on my travel costs on the sale of zines. To some extent, this is worth it to me, since I like to go places and see people.
- It’d be nice to make some money, so I don’t have as much pressure to balance the press with my paid work.
- A lot of small presses don’t function without things like the person who runs it having a spouse with a well-paying job who is able to be the breadwinner while the publisher labours away at their passion project.
- The more that Sheer Spite can pay its own way, the larger a space in my life it can take up, if it becomes able to displace some of my paid work. Insofar as it doesn’t make me money, it has to remain at a size where it doesn’t interfere with my ability to work enough to pay my rent.
- I want to be able to keep doing stuff that doesn’t make money, and that loses money! It is not profitable to share zines by authors from Gaza and pass them 100% of the proceeds, but I believe myself and everyone else to have a responsibility to the people of Gaza, and I need to maintain space in my life to uphold responsibilities like that.
Some things I’m contemplating:
- Putting more energy into grant-writing (or paying a friend to do so and crossing my fingers it pays off)
- Taking on zines for distro in a more standardized way so that I am doing less admin, and can carry more titles.
- Trying to make money in ways that don’t also make my workload scale up proportionately:
- Digital zine sales are one way of doing this. It takes work to set up new zines, and to pay out royalties for sales, but obviously not needing to print and assemble zines, store them in my apartment, and pack and mail them, is really really nice!
- Sheer Spite’s new U.S. store is also an experiment with this. If it takes off, and I can sell a bunch of zines that I don’t have to personally carry to the post office with my own two hands, that would be QUITE NICE.
Anyways, this isn’t a cry for help or a warning that the press is in danger, I’m kind of just thinking aloud. I’m curious how people have made similar projects fit into their lives, though: if you would like to talk about it, please get in touch at lee@sheerspite.ca. I’m also committed to sharing what I know, in the hopes that it is useful for other people doing or contemplating similar work.
Appreciation zone:
- GenderFail Press has a great book, Publishing Now: GenderFail’s Working Class Guide to Making a Living Off Self-Publishing, that goes into a LOT of detail about the economics and logistics of starting a small press without a bunch of generational wealth/institutional support/a glucose guardian. It’s a great read and I appreciate it, and their work in general, a ton!
- Brown Recluse Zine Distro has put so much thought and care into their sliding scale practices, and they are really a role model for me in that. They are also currently fundraising to support their continued existence, and it would mean a lot to me if you supported them.
- Marc Fischer of Public Collectors, Half Letter Press, and Temporary Services, is a role model to me, for both the amount of extremely cool, affordable, values-driven work he puts out or takes part in putting out, but also in his generosity with sharing information. He recently set up an Art Book Fair / Zine Fest Public Sales Transparency spreadsheet that I and others have been contributing to. People’s willingness to share info (including info like i bombed at this event and did not make back my table fee) makes my heart grow three sizes.
- Basically every small press person I have ever met has been breathtakingly generous with their time and candour, and I am so grateful. It is hard! But easier and nicer when we share resources, and when we admit that it’s hard.
