“Publishing books to make money…is a little like hanging out in a singles bar if you want to get married. It might work, but there are way better ways to accomplish your goal. If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you’ve got.”  Swap ‘a lit mag’ for ‘books’, and these words from guru Seth Godin capture my sentiments exactly. But the thing is…I’m the magazine’s Managing Editor. Making money is, um, in my job description. (Well, technically, I am responsible for “business development”, but you know what I mean.)

And I do it. I write project grants to get the money to do things like buy ad space, run subscription campaigns, develop renewal letters, add e-commerce functionality to our website. I make projections, set goals, talk in terms of growing our revenue, capacity, sustainability. Then I do those projects, wholeheartedly, and report the results back to the organization which gave us the money.

I honestly believe in the importance of each one of these projects. I want to sell magazines. I want advertisers.  I want people to buy the t-shirt. Really. I’m not one of those lofty artsie types who disdains the very idea of making money.  I’m into it. But at the same time, I can’t imagine we’ll ever make enough.

Even if every business development project we did reached my ridiculously high hopes for it, it wouldn’t be enough. TNQ could never survive solely on the proceeds of its products (the print magazine, t-shirts, and ads) no matter how many we sell. (Well, maybe there is a magic number of units, but it’s so far from where we are, I really can’t imagine getting there). Without the support of annual operating grants, a certain lucrative sideline, the generosity of our donors, and the volunteered labour of so many people, including our editors and board of directors, we’d be sunk.

All of these people and organizations support TNQ because they believe in what we’re doing, publishing excellent Canadian writing. They know that we couldn’t stay in print without them: we tell them at every opportunity (um, which reminds me…thanks, everyone!!)

So, the question I ask myself, oh, every few months or so, is this:  if we’ll never make enough, why must we bust our asses making any? If what we do is worth doing in itself, but is not in itself ever going to be profitable, and that’s why we receive support to do it…why does the world at large insist we try to make a profit at it?

Yes, we want our writers to get the audience they deserve. Is selling magazines the easiest or best way to do this? After five years of doing it, I can tell you no, it’s most definitely not. Some days, I can hardly see what selling magazines has to do with it. But it’s the model we’ve got, at least for now. And if we can’t dispense with it, I’d like to at least get rid of the title, ‘not-for-profit’.

Because it’s not that we don’t try to make a profit. We do. We try very hard. (All that stuff I mentioned at the top of this post, the grants, the campaigns, etc? That stuff is tough.) TNQ is called a not-for-profit because making a profit isn’t the end of our enterprise. It’s just a means to our end, which supporting excellent Canadian writers and writing.

So, I would like to propose that we stop defining ourselves in relation to what we are not, that we give the ‘for profit’ part of our operation the backseat it deserves. I’d like to be the Managing Editor of a For-Passion corporation. Or a For-Joy. Or—wait for it—a For-Awesome. Who wouldn’t want to support a For-Awesome enterprise?

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