Blog Sale! Some Assembly Required Magazine

 

I’ve been reticent about writing this particular post for some time. Two reasons why:

1) I don’t want to use this forum to sell stuff to people. I’m not Billy Mays shouting at you about Oxyclean or cool screwdrivers. I may promote my friends’ and colleagues’ work, and the whole idea of this blog is to increase my exposure, but I don’t like the idea of selling actual products.

Still, people sell products online everyday, so I guess I need to get over that. I promise you, though, that I won’t do this sort of shameless hard sell often – I don’t even foresee having another “product” available for a long time. It’s just this one thing.

2) The bigger reason for my hesitation, though, is that every time I start to write this, or even think about it, it just gets soooo long. I needed to sit down and narrow it down to its most salient points, despite the fact that this thing means so much to me, and needs – I feel – a lot of explanation.

But I think I’ve got it now.

THIS POST is my attempt to sell you an issue of a literary magazine that I published and contributed to 3 years ago. The following is a description of the magazine – called Some Assembly Required – and what I intended it to do, presented in as few words as possible.

What it is. SAR is a magazine  published 3 years ago with contributions and help – a little time, money, heart, and soul – from several of my friends, including the contributing writers, the cover artist, the masthead designer, and my technical support. Definitely a labor of love.

What it was meant to be. There’s a brief essay at the front of the book that describes my intent in greater detail (I may publish that essay in a future post), but here’s the gist: SAR was my attempt to open a niche in the community of literary magazines and crack that shell by publishing a magazine that, rather than publishing individuals the way most magazines do, would publish entire literary groups – MFA classes, critique groups, etc. They could contribute as a whole and I would dedicate each issue to their group.

Seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.

What it turned out to be. I’m not the most successful writer in the world, but I don’t have a lot of things that I’d count as outright failures. This, however, would be one.

This magazine never saw a second issue. Ironically, the magazine sold enough issues to mostly pay for itself, so I was encouraged in that regard, and would have happily gone through the whole process – the investment of time and money – to publish a subsequent issue. But you can’t publish a magazine without content and you can’t have content without contributors, and simply put – I got no submissions.

I believe that the reasons for not receiving submissions are twofold.

First, I guess I miscalculated how hard it might be to get a group to come to a consensus on something like this, especially with no one to guide them through the process the way I did the group that I DID publish. (BTW, if there’s anyone out there who was part of group that saw this opportunity and ended up passing on it, I’d love for you to e-mail me and tell me why you didn’t submit. I’d appreciate the feedback. All I got back then was silence.)

Another reason is that I didn’t anticipate potential resistance from the literary community (at least as it was 3 years ago when social media wasn’t making the inroads it is today). Suffice it to say that I found the literary magazine community resistant to change, ambivalent to newcomers who didn’t jump through the same hoops as they did, and outright hostile to anyone who might encroach on their (diminishing) audience. I might be wrong on this point – it is just my perception – but I don’t think so.

What this magazine could be to you. I think everybody out there would get a kick out of at least one of the 7 stories contained in it. The variety of content is high, mostly because of the diversity among the members of the group I published – the variety in tastes, styles, and world outlooks translated into a lot of different stories and voices. Some will no doubt appeal to you, and some won’t.

Also, the artwork is sublime, the magazine is well put together, and regardless of the success or failure of it, I still think the premise - the idea behind it -  is pretty fucking cool.

So, all that said at last, I’d like to sell you a copy of the magazine.

Here’s how we’ll go about it: you set the price you want to pay, and I’ll send you an issue. You have to pay the minimum shipping, which is $1.65, but beyond that, I don’t care. You pay a penny + shipping, you get an issue. You pay full cover ($14.95) + shipping, you get an issue. You pay anything in between (or above, heh heh), you get an issue.

Just send the amount you’re willing to spend to my Paypal account at kenyon7@mindspring.com or in the mail to:

SAR
P.O. Box 904
Fort Gaines, GA 39851

and I’ll send you an issue.

Hell, it worked for Radiohead. It probably won’t work as well as for me, but even if it works a little, I can start moving this project over from the failure category to the success category.

In return, you’ll get a pretty decent magazine that’ll entertain you, even if just a little. You get to see a little bit more of what I’m all about. And who knows? The magazine might be an inspiration to a writer or literary magazine that YOU know, to show them what is possible.