2024 Annual Funding Report

As a not-for-profit journal, it is important to us that we share with the community what we are doing with their money, where Radon is funding-wise, and also have it be a resource for future editors considering starting a lit journal. Too many journals hide this information and we never felt that was right. This will be posted publicly tomorrow, but is appearing here for our supporters first.

Our previous 2023 funding report can be viewed via the link in our FAQ "Supporting Us" section.

How Much It Costs to Run a Literary Journal (2024 Edition):

As you know well, our journal has no formal fundraising campaigns and exists solely off our Patreon subscribers and occasional ko-fi donation. With Issue 8 we now sell print copies and receive one to two quarters per sale. But more on that below.

In 2024 we continued our triannual cadence and published three issues with around 60 authors and six artists. At our semi-pro rates, each issue costs about $750 in author + artist payments, or $2,250/year.

Additional costs: 

- Website hosting+domain costs: $294/year (our web costs doubled in 2024 due to our half-off three-year introductory rate expiring)

- Business and email newsletter features from web host: $120/year.

- Submittable (via heavy CLMP discount): $290/year

- CLMP membership $125/year

- Canva Pro: $156/year

Radon currently has $155/month pledged on Patreon (thank you all so much) and had $105/month when 2024 started. Patreon takes 11% and all merch is deducted from our own account. Our goal remains $200/month so we can expand poetry pay and fiction word counts. Though true full-funding would technically be $273/month. Our take-home from Patreon has ranged from $106 to $133 this year.

Print: We have made so far $22.64 in worldwide book sale profit. In addition, we have paid and sent ~100 copies from our publisher account at-cost to authors, patrons, and anarchist bookstores. The majority of book sales happened in the first two weeks when we had a lower price set as a thank you to our community.

At current levels, depending on the world region where the book is sold, we receive 40-60¢ per copy. We currently are implementing a 55% trade discount for libraries and booksellers. Ingram takes 15% of that for themselves. If no stores take us up on this after Issue 9 we may remove the discount and lower the overall price for readers. Of the 45% left for publisher compensation, it is largely eaten by printing costs, distribution fees, and taxes. Print editions were never intended as a money maker, it should be noted, and any few cents above cost we make always go directly back into paying authors.

2024 Funding Summary:

• $1,355 from Patreon ($1,002 in 2023)

• $175 from Ko-fi ($152 in 2023)

• $750 grant from CLMP (paid out directly to website consultant for site enhancements)

2024 Journal Summary:

• Radon cost $3,277 ($2,848 in 2023)

• Radon made $1,553 ($1,338 in 2023)

• Radon's deficit was $1,724 ($1,510 in 2023)

Our journal costs should stabilize in 2025 as we have just paid for our website hosting three years into the future and we do not anticipate any costs unexpectedly rising as they did this year.

We thank you all for your support and your direct impact on increasing Patreon. We hope that 2025 will continue the upward trend and we will be able to reach full funding in 2025. We are proud of the radical writing community we have built and will continue growing and offering more value for you and our readers. We truly believe in what we are doing here and will keep going for years to come.