SOBERING FACTS (Autumn, 1997)
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You may be wondering why this issue is so incredibly late. Depending on who you
listen to, you may also be surprised to see it at all. We've basically been hit
with a crisis that is part of the risk any publisher takes. We owe it to our
readers to explain just what's been going on.

When we send issues to stores, we have to go through a process that involves
companies known as distributors. The vast majority of stores will not deal
directly with publishers and most publishers don't have the time or staff to
deal directly with individual stores. This is where distributors come in. They
take care of contacting stores and getting our issues to them. In turn the
stores pay them and the distributors pay us. By the time we get paid, it's
generally at least half a year since the issue was printed. The distributors
keep around half the cover price (some actually want more than this).

For a number of years a distributor based in Austin, Texas, known as Fine Print
has been getting us onto shelves in Barnes and Noble, Borders, Hastings, and a
large number of independent stores nationwide. They've done this for all kinds
of independent zines for years. But, during those same years, there were all
kinds of financial mismanagements taking place there, which we didn't have a
hint of until fairly recently. It started with a lot of smaller zines not
getting paid at all. Some were eventually forced out of business. Early in
1997, Fine Print filed for Chapter 11 protection, owing us nearly $100,000
printing costs for three issues. The first signs of trouble came this summer
when we began to not get paid for the current debts as well. We started to run
out of money to pay bills, our web site development had to be frozen, paid
staff became unpaid staff, and numerous expansions and new projects had to be
indefinitely postponed or canceled. We were advised by numerous professional
sorts to consider bankruptcy ourselves.

The biggest nail in the coffin came as a result of Beyond Hope, our second
hacker conference that took place this summer. By all accounts, the conference
was a terrific learning experience and a huge success. Financially, though, we
lost over $10,000 on it, mostly due to last minute greed and deception on the
part of the venue and our network provider. Ordinarily, we could have handled
this and we would have even considered it a worthy expense for all of the
positive things that came out of it. However, coupled with the Fine Print
problems, it was enough to practically make our financial wounds fatal.

Practically. Because there's one thing we have that most businesses and
corporations lack. That is a spirit and a knack for survival. The people who
read 2600 and give us moral support were the main reasons we knew we couldbeat
the crap we were facing. And that's exactly what we intend to do. That is why,
no matter how bad things get, we won't declare bankruptcy and absolve ourselves
of responsibility to our debtors and our readers. We know how that feels and we
won't continue the cycle.

But we have come up with a plan where our readers can help and at the same time
get stuff back. We've dropped prices on a number of things that we sell that we
already have in stock. Since we already have all of this merchandise, we don't
have to worry about paying for it. If enough people buy these things, we'll
have more money to work with and we'll be able to hopefully pay a larger
percentage of our bills if not all of them. Look for details on specifics in
various ads in this issue.

Because of the lateness this has caused, we have suspended putting the season
of our issues on the front cover. If the Autumn issue comes out nearer to
Winter, a lot of places may pull it off the shelves too soon. We are trying to
tighten up our schedule so that, inside of a year, we will be back on track.

The reorganization plan was recently announced by Fine Print and the cash
settlement offered to us was a whopping $150. Needless to say, we're now taking
the plunge and moving our accounts to other distributors where it will take a
while for the sales to reach us. Once that happens, again within the next year,
we expect things to start turning around. After all, had we been getting paid
all along, we'd be in pretty good shape right now.

We're sorry to put a damper on what should be a positive period. Beyond Hope
was an inspiration to a large part of the hacker community and was technically
as flawless as we had hoped for. Once we climb out of the hole we will begin
planning the next one. We've made tremendous progress getting our weekly radio
show out on the Net and now, thanks to bandwidth donations, regular live
listeners include people all over the world. It will take a great deal more
than financial disaster to stop hacker progress.

We bear no animosity toward Fine Print. Please don't turn off their phones they
have enough problems. They helped to get us into a lot of places we may never
have reached. We hope they work out their problems and once again help
independent zines reach a greater number of people. There's no question that
people are hungry for information and alternative ideas in every region of the
country. The most important thing is to make sure the ideas keep on flowing.