Over at Canadian Magazines, D.B. Scott breaks the news that the guidelines and application forms for the new Canada Periodical Fund’s Aid to Publishers program are available online today. The program has $75.5 million to disburse, and the application form is a simple, “one-time-only” two-pager—great news for the mags who qualify, but sadly, small arts and lit mags like TNQ still need not apply—until we have a minimum of 5000 in annual circulation.
However, the news is not entirely bad. It is evident from the Canadian Heritage website that someone over there heard what we had to say—there is a page devoted to the Status of Arts and Literaries, in which their rationale for leaving us out is reiterated. It also includes the news that “The CPF will give priority to these publications in the management of the Business Innovation component over the next few years, in order to help them reach the 5000 paid circulation threshold or migrate toward digital distribution.”
The description of the Business Innovation program is brief and, honestly, a little chilly: “This component encourages innovation to adapt to changing market conditions and contributes to the diversity of content sought by Canadian readers.” It feels a bit Darwinian, or something, doesn’t it? Adapt. Migrate. Or die. It’s not that I’m not pleased or grateful that they’ll be giving my mag a real chance at some funding for online initiatives. I love the interweb as much as the next girl. But I’m not ready to forsake our print edition in its favour, if that’s what they’re driving at. Not yet, anyway. Sigh.
More information about this component will be available “shortly.” You can be sure that as soon as it’s available, I’ll be blathering on about it.
Until then, stay strong, my fellow “smalls”!
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Ditto on not forsaking our print version of the magazine. We’re looking forward to seeing how the digital project for On Spec (courtesy of Magazines Canada) fares this year, but it would never replace the little magazine that our loyal readers love to collect and hoard. And we’d have to sell a whole lot of digital copies to come close to the threshold that the CPF demands. A thousand paid subscribers? Dream on!
According to the new guidelines…..”Aboriginal, official language minority and ethnocultural publications have to sell only 2,500 paid copies a year to be eligible.”
Perhaps we could each add an “ethnocultural” section to our magazines? I’m sure there must be some Latvian Science Fiction somewhere.
(with tongue firmly in cheek)
Diane
Yes, and what did you make of the exception to the funding cap (of $1.5 mil – gah!) for farming publications? How many such mags are there, for one, and why does the Dept of Heritage think they’re so much more important/worthy than mags on any other subject matter?
There’s more farmers who vote for the Conservatives than there are Literature and Poetry and Art lovers? (No disrespect intended toward farmers. I’m just sayin’ that the Harper Government tends to think all their supporters have a very narrow world view.)