2010 Financial Statement
For the sake of transparency and to operate under the same requirements of a 501c3, we will continue to publish our financial reports.
2010 Income $383,024.12 (increased $70,000 from last year)
Expenses
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Total staff wages (divided between Nate, Jessie, Rio, Adam, Joe, Matt, Rio, Sparky, Steven, Dylan, and Chris) $47,298.74. (Paying an average annual wage of $4,729.87) (50% decrease!, 12% of budget))
Printing Bills $57,587.66 (a 26% decrease, 14.8% of budget)
Shipping $69,352.77 (73% increase!, 17.9% of budget)
Publishers and distributors $129,365.09 (339% increase, 33.5% of budget)
Zines bought from makers $24,315.73 (35% decrease, 6.2% of budget)
Rent $14,480 (3.6% of budget)
Utilities, insurance, phone, office supplies, etc $6,682.77 (1.7% of budget)
Royalties to authors $20,256 (47% increase!, 5.2% of budget))
Travel $4,881 (1.2% of budget)
Catalog Printing $3,658.93 (.9% of budget)
Donations $4,975
Staff Healthcare $3,576 (.9% of budget)
Advertising $4,410.52 (1% of budget)
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Total Expenses $385,865.21
Total $-7,815.47 (loss)
We’ve made two significant changes to our operation—we will no longer be publishing as many books and we will have stronger requirements for the zines that we distribute. The former change was decided at our annual meeting in May of 2010, but due to the weight of our existing release schedule, it took some time to reach that point.
In the future we will focus primarily on publishing instructional DIY books and distributing DIY themed, politically powerful, and popular zines.
Distributed zines will be required to sell at least 40 copies per issue per year in order to remain in the catalog. Because we have such an extensive zine catalog and pay zinemakers before the zines have sold, we end up buying a lot of zines that sadly live their lives in the packing room, not being read.
We think that with these changes we should be back on our feet by the end of the year and able to pay the zinemakers, ourselves, and our bills.
In the short term, our finances are in dire straits. We are working hard to pay off bills from December. If you are able to donate, it would be an excellent time. We’ve recently took on a lot of new items in the catalog and published the new How and Why and Edible Secrets books. After hopes that our holiday sales would cover
more of these expenses, it seems we’ve bit off a bit more than we can chew. The writing has always been on the wall that there isn’t much money in this kind of work.
We have decided to operate as not-for-profit without being a 501c3, because, to an extent, it allows us to put our mission ahead of our finances without being managed by an outside board of directors. Being a collectively-run publisher and distributor of zines and related work is important to us, and as always, Microcosm strives to add credibility to zine writers and their ethics, teach self empowerment, show hidden history, and nurture people’s creative side!
We are currently accepting donations:
You can send paypal donations to
orders@microcosmpublishing.
But here’s to many more years of successful support of zine makers, distribution of radical literature, and giving people access to information—in print—that they is difficult to come by.
All orders are also extra appreciated right now.
Thanks for all of the years of support!
-Microcosm
(Illustration by Rio Safari)