Greetings to all Raging Chicken Press fans, supporters, contributors, and newbies. As I wrote back in December, Raging Chicken Press skipped a January issue so that writers, contributors, and yours truly could take a much needed break to spend time with friends and family and get some behind-the-scenes work done. Here we are in the last week of January and we’re ready to hit the ground running. I want to give you a little update on operations stuff, but first things first.
Deadline for February issue right around the corner
We are still accepting contributions for the February issue of Raging Chicken Press. The deadline for contributions is Saturday, February 11th. If you think you’ve got something to send our way, check out our submission guidelines. If you still have questions, drop me an email at ragingchickenpress@gmail.com. I am pleased to report that we will have some new voices in the February issue – and if that little birdie was telling the truth, there are a few more on the way. Awesome. The beauty of the digital environment is that we are not limited to a set number of pages…we can expand the number of articles in an issue if we choose.
So, again, SUBMIT! if you’ve got something to get off your chest! DEADLINE: Saturday, 2/11/2012.
RCP News
Intern!
The biggest news I have to share is that last week I sat down with Raging Chicken Press’s first intern to discuss plans for this semester. Pretty cool. Drew Simonovich will be an active contributor to Raging Chicken Press this semester as a designer, reporter, writer, and BS detector (that’s actually what I put on his cards). I’m not going to spend much time singing his praises here (you’ll see for yourself). I’ve asked Drew to put a little bio together so you can hear his story from the horse’s mouth. Welcome, Drew! Earlier today Drew sent me a list of projects and ideas he’s already working on…I have no doubt that he will set the standard for future interns.
PA Progressive Summit
In just eleven short days, Drew and I will be heading to the PA Progressive Summit in Philadelphia from February 10-12. This will be my first time attending. While I am thrilled at the prospect of having at least two folks from Raging Chicken Press cover the Summit (there’s room for more, let me know if you’re going and want to do some reporting), I am even more excited about learning from other amazing progressives across the region. If you are reading this and are in PA or nearby, you should REALLY make an effort to get there…it’s going to be an amazing event. Think I’m just being a booster? Check out the full schedule of workshops RIGHT HERE. AND, as a bonus, regular contributor to Raging Chicken Press, comedian Lee Camp, will be performing Saturday night. I am especially looking forward to the march and rally in support of Philadelphia Oil Workers on Saturday, 2/11 at noon. If you don’t know what’s going on with the oil workers, do yourself a favor and listen to the Rick Smith Show’s interview with Jim Savage, President USW 10-1 on the future of the Pennsylvania Refinery Industry. Then get your butt out there.
Powell’s Partnership Program
You may be one of the people who have used the search boxes on the right-hand side of our site to order books from Powell’s Books as a way to help out Raging Chicken Press (thank you if you are one of those people!). A couple of weeks ago, I received a disappointing email from Powell’s that it is terminating its partner program in PA. Here’s their explanation:
Dear Partner,
It is with great regret that we are terminating your participation in the Powell’s Books, Inc. Partner Program. We need to do this in response to the Pennsylvania Sales and Use Tax Bulletin 2011-01.
As an independent retailer, we support and respect local economies and communities and do not disagree with the notion of collecting sales tax online for out-of-state purchases. However, at this time, the costs involved in implementing tax on our sales to Pennsylvania would be too high for us to bear. Thus, in order to comply with the new law, we are closing all partner accounts based in Pennsylvania.
I’m bummed. As you may know, Powell’s is an AMAZING independent bookstore in Seattle AND they are a union shop. I was thrilled to have Raging Chicken Press join their partner program. Not only would sales through our search box help generate some funds for RCP, but we could help support an independent, unionized bookstore in return. While I would still encourage you to shop at Powell’s, I wanted to let you know the news about the Partner Program. If Powell’s is able to start-up the program again, we will certainly link up and let you know.
Best of Raging Chicken Press: 2011
As you may have read in a previous post, beginning in July 2012, Raging Chicken Press will publish an annual “Best of” collection. December marked our sixth issue and we figured it made sense to stick with the calendar year for the collection–not to mention the fact that it will be much more manageable to work with only half a year for our first crack at publishing this collection. We hope to run a limited number of paperback copies as well as making the book available as an e-book. At this point, our intention is to license the collection under the same Creative Commons “share alike” license with which our web page is licensed.
Beginning with the February issue we will be asking readers to weigh in with nominations for the “best of” collection. If you’ve been with us since the first issue or if you just recently came across our site, we’d encourage you to browse through our archives and begin thinking about which articles you would want to see in Best of Raging Chicken Press, 2011. By February we should have a good idea about how much this project will run us and which local, union printer can work with us. Ideally, we’ll have all the final selections together by March or April and will be shooting for a July publication date–just in time to celebrate our first birthday!
Fundraising
And, yes, as I’ve been hinting about for a while now, you will be hearing a lot about fundraising in early 2012. I was expecting to make our fundraising debut through the site Kickstarter. However, I’ve been back and forth with some of the folks at WePay and I am beginning to think WePay might better suit our interests at this point. My intention is to ensure that Raging Chicken Press will be a sustainable, independent, progressive, and activist media site. It’s become pretty clear, pretty quickly that we are going to need some start-up funds in order to get many of our new projects off the ground. For example, while we expect the Best of Raging Chicken Press series to become relatively self-sustaining, the up-front money to get the book off the ground is something that most of us working on RCP don’t have lying around in our bank accounts. Our goal is to avoid, as much as possible, relying upon advertising to fund RCP and our new projects. We are taking a page out of the podcasting world here and will be turning to our readers and the progressive community to help invest in building an independent, progressive media infrastructure. We know it’s possible–at least it’s been quite successful in the podcasting world. So, we’re going to give it a whirl.
Continued Success of Subscriber Give-Away!
Yes, I know that I haven’t posted info about who was chosen for the December Subscriber Give-Away. But the Give-Away is going strong! The subscriber selected for the December Give-Away was Melissa Osborne from Goshen, MA! Congratulations (again) Melissa! Melissa received Noam Chomsky’s Profit Over People and Hopes and Prospects (which seemed only fitting given our awesome interview with Noam Chomsky in December). Here’s what Melissa had to say about why she became Raging Chicken Press subscriber:
Since the revolution in Egypt, I was keeping my ear closer to the ground than ever, knowing deep within myself that this would be a chain reaction. I am extremely full of hope that the power of love will overcome the love of power, and that there is a consciousness shift happening exponentially around the world. At the same time, I realize the fragile state we are in as humans, and how we have greatly affected the earth’s homeostasis as an organism on a whole. It is our birthright to have access to truthful information, and I had been looking for more sources of information written/documented by uncensored, passionate journalists, and authentic experiences. I came across Raging Chicken Press during the very beginnings of the Occupy Movement. Raging Chicken, along with Daily Kos, Motherjones, Huffingtonpost and wikileaks, all provide a great service.
Thank you so much – Love and Light to you in the new year.
Thanks to Melissa for taking the time to let us know a little about her and why she subscribes to Raging Chicken Press. I hope all of us can be encouraged by her passion and hopefulness to keep the fight alive and strong. Here words also allow me to make another pitch to all of you to subscribe to Raging Chicken Press, too. All you have to do is enter your email address in the subscription box on our website and click the “subscribe” button. As a subscriber, you will receive an email each time new content is posted to Raging Chicken Press. We won’t spam your inbox, we only want to expand our Raging Chicken Army. Make sure that you VERIFY your subscription. After you enter your email address and subscribe, you should receive an email at that address asking you to verify it. Just click the link and you’re done. How much does it cost to subscribe? Nothing. Zero. Nada. Then, each month we will randomly select one subscriber to receive the Give-Away of the month. As a super incentive, I can tell you now that we will select THREE ADDITIONAL subscribers to receive a cool Raging Chicken Press gift. So, get that subscription in!
There is so much more that I could write, but I think I should put a cork in it before I get even more carried away. Happy New Year to everyone out there! We hope you’ll continue to support and contribute to Raging Chicken Press throughout the year! Together we can help expand and strengthen independent, progressive, activist movements in PA and beyond!
Bread and Roses,
Kevin Mahoney
Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press
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