We charge for the writing. The printing and shipping comes at cost.
A printed zine costs us money to make and money to mail, and we don’t mark-up either. So when something here is discounted, the discount comes off ourshare — the writing — and never off the printer’s bill or the postage.
That’s a slightly odd way to run a store, and it makes our sale prices look stranger than most. This page shows you how all of it works, with the arithmetic to back it up.
One price, two parts
$3.99 writing + $3.00 printing = $6.99
That’s a print issue of Foofaraw. The $3.99 is what the issue costs as an ebook — editing, art, paying the writers, keeping the lights on. The $3.00 is what the printer charges us for the physical object, passed straight through.
The writing
Ours to price, and the only part a discount ever touches.
The printing
A real invoice from a real printer. Never discounted, so no deal can cost us money to fulfil.(Printing costs can vary slightly by final page count--we made a best effort estimate of the average per type of book.)
The postage
A separate line, close to what the Post Office charges on average. Not folded into the price and not a profit centre.
What everything costs
| Title | Ebook | Printing | In print |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quotidian Bagatellea small monthly, 12 a year | $1.99 | — | digital only |
| Foofarawthe magazine, 12 a year | $3.99 | $3.00 | $6.99 |
| Novelettesone author, 4 a year | $3.99 | $3.00 | $6.99 |
| Anthologiesthe big ones, 2 a year | $9.99 | $6.00 | $15.99 |
Foofarawis priced by the masthead, not by the page count — a 46-page issue and a 76-page issue are both $3.99, and the printing is a flat $3.00 either way.
Postage
Then a dollar for each additional item, and it stops at $6.00 however big the box gets.
Per shipment, every shipment, whatever is in it. Fifty cents under the retail rate.
Because it isn’t free. We’d only be hiding it in the price of the book, which is the one thing this page is about not doing.
These are averages, honestly meant. A single zine in a 9 × 12 envelope is $2.85 of actual postage, so on that order we keep about sixty-five cents for the envelope, the label and the trip to the Post Office. That margin narrows as the box fills, and at four items and up the $6.00 cap is almost exactly what the Post Office charges us — so on a big order we’re handling it for free. We’d rather quote one simple number than a live carrier rate that shifts under you at checkout.
More than one
At three items the writing goes on sale, and the postage stops climbing at six dollars. Here it is in print copies of the magazine, delivered to your door:
| Copies | Books | Postage | You pay | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $6.99 | $3.50 | $10.49 | — |
| 2 | $13.98 | $4.50 | $18.48 | $2.50 |
| 3sale starts | $19.17 | $5.50 | $24.67 | $6.80 |
| 4postage capped | $25.57 | $6.00 | $31.57 | $10.39 |
| 5 | $29.96 | $6.00 | $35.96 | $16.49 |
| 6 | $35.95 | $6.00 | $41.95 | $20.99 |
“You save” is against ordering the same copies one at a time and paying postage each time. Two copies isn’t a bundle — the books are just full price twice, and the only break is that they share an envelope.
You’ll notice these totals don’t end in a tidy $ .99. That’s deliberate: a cover price gets rounded to something readable, but a discount is arithmetic, and we’d rather show you what the arithmetic says than round it back up in our favour.
Subscriptions
A year at a time, which is the deepest the writing gets discounted. Print plans bill the year’s printing at cost and the postage as its own line, the same as everything above.
The percentages on the digital plans are off the cover prices, so you can check them: twelve issues at $3.99 is $47.88, and the digital subscription is $37.99. Digital is the one place a percentage tells the whole truth, because there is no printing to leave out of it. Print savings are quoted in dollars against buying each issue as it appears — see below for why we won’t put a percentage on a physical object.
See the plansWhy we never say “25% off”
Because you’d check it, and we’d be wrong. Five print copies of the magazine list at $34.95. If we advertised “25% off” you would reasonably expect to pay this:
Three dollars and seventy-five cents apart, and we’d be the ones holding the extra. The gap is the printer’s $15.00, which we didn’t discount because we can’t — the invoice arrives either way.
And it depends what’s in the basket
The same three-item discount is 8.6% off three magazines, 9.4% off three anthologies, and 15% off three ebooks — because the printer’s share of each is different. There is no one honest percentage to put on the shelf, so we don’t put one there.
So we quote dollars instead
Every number on this page is one you can verify with a calculator and a shopping cart: a price point, or a dollar saving against the alternative. Percentages appear only on digital, where the cover price is our share and the arithmetic comes out even.
The short version
Printing is charged at cost. Postage is charged at cost. The discount comes off the writing.
If a price here ever looks wrong to you, write to us and we’ll show you the arithmetic. Prices are US dollars and were set for 2026; postage is based on USPS rates as of 12 July 2026.