Since reposting the Relief SOS two weeks ago, things have been pretty slow on the donation side. Believe me, we know times are tough, but please consider giving even $5 toward the cause. If even 10% of the people who visit our blog every month chipped in $5, we'd be on stable ground for the year to come. For those of you who have already donated, THANK YOU!
Relief Staff Still Hopeful for a December 1 release of Volume 2, Issue 4
That's right, friends! We are busting our tails, but we're working hard to have 2.4 shipped by December 1st! Layout is happening as we speak and authors and proofreaders will have galleys to review by the end of this week. It's a good thing we have a quick turn-around from our printers, because after the recent server-related setbacks, we'll be using all of our wiggle room. We're not too proud to beg for prayers, especially now, so please pray that our editors are blessed with a smooth process and supernatural amounts of energy.
Now it's time for Kimberly to throw all the work up in the air and let God determine the order for the next issue! Okay, well, there may be better ways of letting God in on that process, but we'll see. We're pressed for time, you know ;-}
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings you great news and the opportunity to save some money.
Don't Miss Out on AWP
AWP's Annual Conference and Bookfair is in Chicago this year! The Conference takes place February 11 - 14 at the Hilton Chicago. We're thrilled that for our first year of attendance, the conference will be taking place right in our backyard (so-to-speak). We've reserved a booth and many of Relief's editors plan on attending, including Lisa Ohlen Harris (flying in from Texas) and Amanda Bauch (flying in from Florida), and Heather von Doehren, Alan Ackmann, Brad Fruhauff, and of course, Coach and Kimberly (though we all have it easy since we all live in Chicago-land). We're looking forward to meeting readers and Relief authors. We'll also have some founder and donor perks planned, which we'll be announcing as we get closer to that date.
Relief Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings the news for this week, including an exciting announcement!
Introducing Relief's Newest Assistant Editor
We'd like to formally welcome Amanda Bauch to our editorial team. She'll be joining Heather von Doehren and Lisa Ohlen Harris as an assistant editor. Amanda has already been working with us proofing and copyediting for the past two issues, and in her new role, she'll be managing our copyediting and proofing, working to streamline our proofing and reading processes, and weighing in as we evaluate fiction submissions, among other things. She has already been a blessing, and we're thrilled that she's willing to contribute her talents and energy to our adventure in publishing.
To help you get to know her, here's a quick bio: Amanda C. Bauch, writer and teacher, fled the harsh Upstate New York winters and now resides outside of Jacksonville, Florida. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently working on a young adult novel and a memoir. Her short fiction has appeared in Tattoo Highway, Bent Pin Quarterly, and The Hiss Quarterly; nonfiction pieces have been published in Writer Advice, and Empowerment4Women, as well as two print anthologies, Tainted Mirror and MOTIF: Writing By Ear (forthcoming, December 2008). She also won an honorable mention in the 2007 Writers' Workshop of Asheville Memoir Contest and second place in the 2006 Lantern Books Essay Contest. Some of Amanda’s favorite authors are Isabel Allende, Patricia Hampl, Jasper Fforde, Emily Brontë, Beth Moore, Ravi Zacharias, and God.
Thanks to Coach
After hundreds of hours, the website, including the RWN and Relief Store are back up and running! We're so grateful that Coach is so talented, and also that we don't have to pay him for his work. Please check out our brand new store by clicking Purchase at the top of the page or by clicking on one of the buttons to the right.
Relief SOS
We've gone ahead and reposted the orginal Relief SOS below. We've also reinstalled the ChipIn in the sidebar. Now is the time to resume our support raising campaign. So far we've received some generous donations--the $330 that you see in the ChipIn, and an additional $100 that came to us seperately. (Since we aren't able to increase the amount of donation on our ChipIn chart, we've decreased the amount needed from $2000 to $1900). We've raised almost a quarter of what we need!
Given the timing of our server meltdown, we received some email asking if we had gone under. I'm sure you've all noticed that we haven't :-} But I want to assure you, especially for those of you who are considering donating, but don't want to throw money onto a sinking ship, that we have no intention of closing up shop. If that time did come, which I don't forsee any time soon, we would have many updates on the website, and you would know that we were approaching that point before we reached it. We would also be sure to honor all subscriptions and orders. Coach and I have often supported Relief from our own funds, and while we can't do that forever, we would certainly do that if we needed to, so that no one would be left hanging, so to speak. We are simply asking that people support this project BEFORE we have to make those tough decisions. I've often heard, "If I would have known, I would have helped" after a project or a ministry has had to close it's doors.
So we're letting you know now: We need some help. If you love Relief and want it to be around for years and decades--is centuries pushing it?--then, please, support the cause by either subscribing or donating .
UPDATE: The DNS servers have rolled over, no further downtime is expected.
After two weeks of server battles, Relief’s Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings news of forward movement.
First of all, thanks so much for your patience and for your encouragement over the past month. We have truly needed both in the last few weeks.
So what’s been going on around Relief? Here are the highlights:
Relief Server temporarily stuck in Vortex of Hell:
Our (previous) hosting company had a hardware failure on the server that we were using. They couldn’t fix it, so we’ve hired a new company, but the transition from the broken server to the new server was not very fun. Since the database was badly broken, SuperCoach had to restore everything manually. It was server surgery. It took many many hours but he persevered.
Twenty Days of Submissions Lost
As you may have noticed, I had to repost some of our recent blogs. On the main site, we did not lose any content other than blogs posted after 9/5. This is because the recent backups were irretrievably corrupted, and we had to revive the site from the last good backup, which was on September 5th, 2008. We also lost recent content on our Relief Writer's Network. Because of this data loss, anyone who created an account and/or submitted work after September 5th, will need to sign up or submit again. Go to the RWN and log into your account. If you can’t, recreate it. If you log in and your work does not appear when you click on “Workspace” at the top, resubmit it. We’re so sorry for the inconvenience, but the good news is that none of the work submitted after that date had been evaluated, and thankfully, the data loss was less than one month, rather than the four months we initially feared!
The Relief Store will be up and Running Very Soon
So what does this mean for Relief’s store? We lost a few orders on the site, but we have paper and digital backups of every order (three different backups, in fact). No orders were lost in the filming of this server restoration project. Just in case any of you are wondering, there is absolutely no security breach or problem with the store. It is not up yet because we are having problems viewing the images.
Website Downtime Expected This Week
We have also changed DNS Server companies (our old company was owned our old webhost). Once our domain names are transferred over to the new registrar, you’ll see a GoDaddy parked page on our site until Ben is able to redirect the site to our new DNS server. This should take no more than four hours. The DNS Servers have been rolled over, no further downtime is expected.
Status of Relief SOS Support Raising Campaign
You may have also noticed that we haven’t reposted the blog regarding our SOS support raising campaign yet. Don’t worry, it will be back :-} Before the server meltdown, we were very encouraged by kind words and prayer, as well as increased subscriptions and donations. The encouragement went far in keeping Coach going in his battle for Relief’s site.
While we’ve still got a way to go, we’ve brought in enough through sales and donations so that Coach and I will not have to cover the print run for 2.4 or the costs of the necessary government paperwork from our own bank account. We’re so grateful. We’re also thrilled to already be seeing an increase in subscriptions, but we’ll definitely need more to help keep the project sustainable in the long run. If you haven't subscribed yet, you'll be able to soon (as soon as the store is live)!
Thanks for sticking with us during the downtime. We’re thrilled to be back in the day to day grind!
It wasn't long ago that Rock & Sling announced a hiatus due to financial concerns. Emails flooded in from friends and readers lamenting the sad reality. In our discussion of the situation, another editor asked us, "Are we the only ones who know that independent non-profit journals have no sugar daddy to depend on (read: university)? Subscriptions and donations are, for all practical purposes, it?"
The answer is, I'm not sure. So let's talk about Relief's financial affairs.
When Ben (that's Coach to most of you) and I began this endeavor, the economic times were different, both personally and nationally. We felt a call from God to create a venue for Christian readers and writers that stand in the gap between stereotypically secular and Christian writing. We were and are fully willing to support the cause with our own dollars when necessary, and when we are able. Relief was blessed by subscriptions and donations before the first issue went to print, which allowed us to order the first print run, purchase some of the requisite supplies (the rest were paid for by donations from our editors), and pay the Editor's Choice prizes to winners in each genre. Other donations and "profits" have been spent on various business costs, such as fees to attend Calvin's Festival of Faith & Writing (though editors paid for their own travel expenses), contributor's and editor's copies of the journal, minimal advertising, ISBN numbers, paperwork costs, etc.
The reality is that subscriptions are down in these economic times. I've also been told that the second year is the hardest when creating a literary journal from nothing--that the newness has worn off and the loyal readership is still building. Our current subscriptions and presales generally cover the books that have been ordered as well as contributor's and editor's copies and shipping the books, but that's about it. What that means is that every other expense of running the company is paid for by our editors (and the donations that trickle in occasionally, for which there are few words to express our gratitude).
These days we (that is Coach and I) generally pay from our own pockets for paper, ink and toner, mailing labels, etc., as well as bigger sums like accounting costs and government paperwork costs. The problem is that, though we love and stand behind the mission of Relief, we're significantly affected by the struggling housing market and have to face the reality that we can't continue to pay the majority of the costs associated with the journal. For Relief to have any long term success, we need help.
Before year's end, Relief will be in the red. The costs of two upcoming publications, the fees for our final 501c3 nonprofit corporation paperwork (due this month and estimated by the IRS to take at least 100 hours of preparation, and on which Coach has worked at least that many hours over the last two years), a new block of ISBN numbers, returns (books purchased by booksellers like Barnes and Noble which have been returned to our printer and must be paid for by our company), and upcoming costs associated with our presence at AWP in January total into the thousands. The reality is that Ben and I cannot do this alone.
How You Can Help
1. Subscribe : If even a quarter of the people submit to Relief and/or express their gratitude for this project subscribed, we'd be well on our way to financial stability. Subscriptions provide for contributor's copies and, depending how many of them we have, sometimes also provide for basic supplies and advertising, etc. They also help attract advertisers. Speaking of which...
2. Advertise in Relief : Does Relief's audience overlap with the demographic for your product, publication, or program? We run full page ads at the end of the journal, and occasionally one ad at the beginning of the issue. Advertising revenue supports our journal and your business!
3. Donate! You'll be hearing more in the next couple of weeks while we try to raise the money to keep Relief running. For those of you who stand behind Relief's vision, please pray about helping the cause.
Thanks, Kimberly and Ben, with the rest of the Relief team.
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings you up to speed on Relief happenings.
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