Happy New Year, dear readers! We hope you had a great holiday break and are excited for the year ahead. Have you made any resolutions? One of mine is to write more – including explaining the rationale behind how to write more.
2016 was a big year for Five out of Ten: Jess joined the team as our Web and Social Editor, which has led to a vastly improved social presence and some fun blogs on the website to complement the magazine. We’ve also noticed a steady increase in Patreon backers, which is encouraging! There were other changes behind the scenes that have dramatically improved the way we work: less time on admin drudgery, more time making a great mag.
I should also acknowledge that 2016 brought personal challenges across the team: house moves, new jobs, illness, and all sorts of stressors. I want to thank Craig, Lindsey and Jess for all their efforts in the past year, but especially for sticking it out when things got tough.
2017 will bring obvious new goodies like our next issue (due out in February) and a new compilation (later this month). I think we’ve exhausted the ‘Year X’ format for our compilation issues, so it’ll probably be called ‘Five out of a Ten: Anthology 4’ or something. If you’ve got a clever name, get in touch — we like wordplay and video game references, in case you were unsure
As we approach our fifth anniversary in November — I can hardly believe it’s been that long but the calendar doesn’t lie — it raises questions about what we want the next five years to look like and what we want the magazine to be. We have plenty of ideas but would appreciate any you have on what we could do better, or what we could do that no else is covering. Reach out to us via email or social media.
Before I go, I also a short notice: Jess and I got engaged in December! I’m not sure if planning a wedding will be harder than planning a magazine, but at least the invitations will have impeccable font choices. And one final piece of good news: Robbie will be rejoining us for copy editing duties from the next issue. Maybe I’ll even let him publish that essay on Zool he’s been threatening to write for the past five years!
Thank you for supporting us!
All the best,
Alan
