Hello!

This email breaks down how much it costs to run Train Songz, how much money we made, and how I'm thinking about Train Songz going into our next year of issues.

It's not a short email, but if you're invested in what's going on around here, I encourage you to set 10 minutes aside to read it. Toss on your favorite record from the year while you do. (May I suggest East Nash Grass’ All God’s Children or Sam Grisman Project’s self-titled debut studio album?)

If you have any questions, thoughts, or just want to say hey, hit reply. I read everything.

By the way: I just posted our annual recap on Instagram. Check it out, leave a like or a comment, and share it with a friend. Helps a lot…

Before we get into it: Later on in this email, I’ll explain why we’re bumping our recommended subscription price for four issues to $55, up from $44.

I want to be abundantly clear that existing subscribers will not be required to change their subscription price. You can switch to $55 if you want—and only if you want. You can also go down to $33, all the way up to $77, or just stay at whatever you gave in 2025. These will be our new pricing options in 2026, as soon as #9 comes out in February. For now, anyone who subscribes in January 2026 still gets all four issues from 2025. We’re in purgatory!

If you would like to increase your contribution, now is not the time to do so. Instead, I will email you the month you’re due to subscribe. For those of you due up this month, I will email you in the next few days.

If you’re in a tough spot and not able to renew but want to keep reading, I want to remind you that we give away one issue for every 10 sold, and we’ve never ran out of free issues to give. Don’t hesitate to apply.

Reminder: You can log in here to see your renewal date and amount. You can also cancel at that link if you'd prefer not to renew.

Our tradition of financial transparency started from the very beginning, when we ran on a "ships free, pay what you want" model. We ran on that model through our third issue, as we moved production from my apartment to an actual print shop and started paying contributors. Opening our books and sharing our reasoning helped us explain why we were doing what we were doing and proving that your Venmos and CashApps and PayPals and mailed cash (shoutout to mailed cash) to a print-obsessed niche meme page admin weren’t going into a black hole.

To get the first issue off the ground, I put up $1,114.85 of my own money on a printer, postage, and materials in hopes of making that back and getting to make a second issue. Y'all came through and paid for my costs—and then some. Your continued support since that first issue has brought us from an eight-page folded zine handmade in my apartment to a 44-page professionally printed booklet made by 15+ paid artists and contributors alongside the original duo of Promontory Paul and me.

2025 was our first year charging for all four issues up-front and offering a subscription. Nearly 1,300 of you trusted us enough to subscribe at our sliding scale of $33–$99, and that support allowed us to invest more into the art than ever before, while also mailing out more than 600 free copies to those who applied.

Growth from 2024 to 2025

Given this was our first year charging for all four issues and launching a subscription, we had a lot more money flowing through the system. Here’s the biggest impacts:

• Page count: More than doubled from 20 to 44 pages.

• Artist payments: More than tripled, from $6K to over $23K.

• Free issues: We mailed out over 600 copies for free to those who applied.

• My life: More balanced. Fewer nights and weekends spent on operations and fulfillment, thanks to paid help. More creative time as a result. (Thank you!!! And shoutout Liza!!!)

2025 Profit & Loss

Here's exactly where your money went this year.

The Zine

• Revenue: $65,195.59

• Expenses: $63,638.50

• Net Profit: $1,557.09

Zine Expense Breakdown

• Artists and labor: $23,695.99

• Printing, paper, and envelopes: $15,763.05

• Shipping: $7,679.63

• Stickers: $5,686.21

• Software/Admin: $4,238.20

• Marketing & Volunteer Program: $3,522.03

• Payment Processing Fees: $2,038.82

• Research: $815.30

• Supplies: $199.27

Merchandise

• Revenue: $21,756.42

• Expenses: $20,570.62

• Net Profit: $1,185.80

Merchandise Expense Breakdown

• Cost of goods sold: $10,609.98

• Shipping: $4,503.01

• Contract labor: $3,787.92

• Payment processing fees: $1,887.96

We also received $10K in sponsorships from our partners this year. That money funded our events in Austin and Asheville and some "giving back" initiatives like a down payment on branding and design work for this year and covering BMFSDB's web fees, which we’ll do again next year but in a lesser way, since they also receive support via their Patreon and will be using that cash towards web hosting.

State of the Junction

We're entering 2026 with $2,524.64 in the bank.

As a subscription business, we expect to have about $54,500 in annual payments coming from our 1,262 active subscribers. (When some of you opt to cancel your subscription, this number will go down, but we hope it’s replaced by new subscribers.)

Combined with our existing cash on hand, we expect to have $57,000 to work with for our next four issues, before any revenue from merchandise, single-issue sales, or sponsorships.

2026 Budget

Next year, we plan on spending at least $53,000:

• The Zine ($48,000): We plan to spend at least $12K per issue on printing, shipping, and artists. This is as much as we spent in 2025. We could end up spending more, but this is a good guideline.

• Operations ($5,000): Software (email, website), accounting fees, and business subscriptions.

That means we’ll have an estimated $4,000 left over at the end of next year, and our subscriptions will totally cover our essential operating costs. That means we don't have to rely on merchandise or sponsorships to keep the lights on. Instead, those things can now act as the "cherry on top" to build our cash reserves and fund new ideas.

Not baking sponsorship revenue into our core budget allows us to be more selective about sponsorship partners, only working with those who feel like a fit. We’ll still take zine sponsorships as the right partners come along, but we won’t be pressured to fill a certain amount of slots per issue because the money will go toward growth, not survival.

Modeling for subscriptions to completely cover our costs also means we can commit to pricing merchandise more like a subscriber perk, and continue only selling merchandise to subscribers. In fact, we’ll be password-protecting merchandise this year, with the password only printed in the zine. We’re bringing back gatekeeping!

Cost per Subscriber = $41

Those are a lot of big numbers. You, like me, might find it more helpful to think about it in terms of our cost per subscriber.

Here's the breakdown of what it costs to get the zine to your door, relative to the number of subscribers we currently have:

• Four Zines ($38/year): It costs roughly $9.50 per issue just to pay the artists, produce the booklets, and pay for shipping.

• Operations ($3/year): When we spread our $4K–$5K in annual software and administrative fees across our subscribers, it adds about $3 per person.

For those of you doing the math at home, you’ll see that $38 + $3 means it costs Train Songz roughly $41 per subscriber just to break even.

2026 Pricing

The above “cost per subscriber” breakdown brings me to my next point: I think recommending $55 per year, or $13.75 per issue, is a great place to be. This is up from our recommendation last year of $44 per subscriber — less than $1 per month more from any one of you, but a meaningful difference at scale.

To keep the quality high—and eventually allow me to rationalize dedicating a small part of my "day job" time to Train Songz, which is my eventual goal—we are adjusting our sliding scale slightly for new subscribers in 2026. Existing subscribers who'd like to opt in are welcome to go up to $55, if they’d like. You can also go down to $33 or all the way up to $77.

These will be our three options going forward:

• $33/year — Community Rate

  For anyone who needs it.

• $55/year — Recommended

  Covers our costs and then some, so we can keep building this thing.

• $77/year — Pay It Forward

  Funds free copies and discounted subscriptions for others.

Last year, about 60% of you gave our recommended price of $44. 25% of you were at $33, and 15% of you were at $55 or above. If we can maintain this fairly even balance, I feel good about these three options.

“You want to make a profit?!”

I started this zine with the mindset of "we will not profit at all—we're just replacing costs.” That worked when we were a two-person DIY project with a zine I handmade in my apartment, but my time spent on this has ballooned, both prepping bigger and more ambitious issues and running the backend. Issue budgets have gone from $1K to $12K, and what we’re able to put into each issue with a larger budget feels right. I like that we’re able to pay a lot of different artists to bring their talents, passion, and creativity to making each issue a unique work of art.

I love this thing, and I want to bet on it and pursue it to be all that it can be. By pricing slightly above breakeven, I can move toward a world where I might be able to focus on this during the day as a fraction of my day job, rather than just on nights and weekends. For now, this doesn’t mean directly paying myself cash, but it means putting ourselves in a position to make more than we spend without cutting costs — so we can maintain the same quality we expect from ourselves with each issue.

My promise to you

We won't do this price increase dance every year. In fact, we are committing to $55 as our recommended price for as long as we're putting out 4 issues per year. Now that we've run the subscription for a year, we have a better sense of how to price this thing sustainably. I value your trust, and don't want you to get used to me asking for more and more without good reason.

What This Means for You

As I said at the top of this email, existing subscribers are welcome to keep their 2025 price. You will renew at whatever rate you paid last year. Your price will only change if you choose to opt in. You could choose to be at our recommended $55, or you could be at $33 or $77.

Thank You

That’s that. Every artist we paid, every page we added, that one zine Royal left on the NPR Tiny Desk, and every free copy we gave away is because of you. We still give away one free copy for every 10 sold, and we couldn't do that without the folks on the higher tiers paying it forward.

In a world of soulless AI garbage polluting our senses and trillion-dollar social media companies monetizing our attention and behavior, I love that we get to be something real. Print is not cheap. (Email makes a heck of a lot of sense!) We know print is a privilege, and we take your financial support to create something seriously — while trying not to take ourselves too seriously along the way. We appreciate the hell out of you, whether you read every word twice, like to leaf through and check out the original art, or just get a kick out of collecting it.

I'm not sure exactly what Train Songz is meant to become, but we've got some good momentum and exciting interviews and partnerships in the works, so this next year feels like the right time to explore its potential. The only way to find out is by f—ing around, as they say.

Thank you for being part of this, and you have my word 2026 will be our best four issues yet. Whether or not you choose to rejoin us in 2026, I can’t thank you enough for this year.

See you in Asheville on February 12th?

–The Conductor