Tithe

For the past five years, it's been our honour, privilege, and profound joy to publish the fantastical work of truly amazing poets. Hitting such a milestone as the Fifth Anniversary is intoxicating; it makes us yearn after the Tenth Anniversary, the Fiftieth Issue, the Thousandth Poem. At this point, however, to do so, we need a little assistance.

Since we launched it in 2006, Jess and I have been operating Goblin Fruit completely out of pocket, free of ads, for the pleasure it brings us to do so. We have never aspired to making money from it, but we have hoped to make it self-sustaining. When we published Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties, we were delighted to see that happen; for the last year and a half, thanks to our readers, we have been paying for our web hosting and contributors through profits generated from the chapbook. This is a model we would like to move towards — but for various reasons to do with the fact that Goblin Fruit is a labour of love, neither Jess nor I are in a position to produce a chapbook this year.

This is a general idea of our costs:

$5 buys an original poem
$8 buys a week of webspace
$15 buys a Feature
$100 buys a modest run of chapbooks

You may have noticed that 2010 was a lean year in terms of poems per issue; simply put, we've been trying to keep within our means. Our original plan had always been to publish only nine poems per issue (we do so love the number nine), but, well, we love poems, and our enthusiasm took over such that we were publishing anywhere between nine and nineteen. Now that our reach really has exceeded our grasp, however, we figured the time has come to put pride into a little box, seal its flaps, and shove it under the bed while we stand by five years' worth of a good product to say, Hey! We are now open to donations!

Our long-term goals involve increasing the amount we pay contributors and being able to take our volunteers out to lunch every now and again. What can we say, we're ambitious!