The Dawn of a New Day for Stanchion Magazine

With apologies to the bank on South Street, my first real adult job was at Vanguard, the investing behemoth in the suburbs of Philadelphia. My hiring class was filled with business people fresh with expensive master's degrees, but I took my community college credits into my interviews and talked my way into an entry level job by telling my first real story, that of an eager young entrepreneur who'd started a record label and found himself a defacto project manager juggling artistic talent, creating artwork, securing distribution, working on marketing and publicity, fulfilling orders, and staying on top of production. I would spend 9 years at Vanguard before leaving to be a stay at home dad. I learned a lot during that time, most notably that not all financial services companies are evil. Oh don't get me wrong, most are, but Vanguard wasn't. In fact, they actively tried and successfully did LOWER costs for clients every year and managed to never lay off employees even during recessions.

My kids are now adults and I'm running a literary magazine and small book press. Back to my amateur project manager roots! And I'm lowering costs, too, by 23% while at the same time, increasing payments to contributors by 33%. I'm doing this because I want to put a bit more money into the pockets of creative people and because I want to work harder at making Stanchion more accessible to more readers around the world.

So I'm going back to a $10 cover price and hoping to make up the difference by selling more copies. Fingers crossed. Issue 19 can now be pre-ordered. Additionally, for the first time, starting with Issue 19, Stanchion Magazine will be available to order from wherever you buy books around the globe, like Bookshop, B&N, Amazon, etc, just like every Stanchion book is, as well as as an e-reader-friendly PDF immediately upon publication directly from the Stanchion shop (no more waiting until it's sold out for an affordable PDF option to appear).

Stanchion is now five years old and I've learned quite a bit about the finances of indie lit and the importance of community, as well as the limitations of this burgeoning space. I consider Stanchion a baby still and I know there's a lot of growing still needed to be able to ensure this fledgling will stay aloft. I hope you'll continue to support Stanchion or, if you never could before, I hope the new price and greater availability globally will allow you to give an issue a try. Thanks for being a part of the Stanchion story. Now, more than ever before, All Are Welcome.

Celebrate 5 years of Stanchion on July 16 with the magazine's first Zoom reading! RSVP now.