Hello my beloved print media freaks,

The main point of this email is to remind you that the merchandise store closes today. The t-shirts and sweatshirt are pre-orders. The hats and coffee are ready to ship. All merchandise is priced around a $10–$15 profit. All printing and handling ($3 of the $8 shipping) proceeds support Forest City Press. Dye proceeds support The Doodah Man Dyes.

• Want a chance to win 99% off merchandise? Please complete this survey by end of day today. I will email the winner tomorrow morning, and you’ll have all weekend to place your order.

You’ve probably seen us talking about hosting concerts at this point. We’re giving that a go, because it sounds fun. In some instances we’re paying and booking the band, which means we’re taking on the financial risk and trying to recoup our losses via ticket sales. In other instances, the band is taking on the risk and asking us to support via marketing and generally good vibes. In all cases, we hope to see you there. We’ll have zine-team representation at all three in New York, Austin, and Asheville. They are strategically positioned around Billy Strings runs. Clever strategy! Woah. We’re the first people to think of that.

As we’re reaching the last issue of the year, it’s also time to start talking about your subscription. Your subscription will automatically renew on the date that you paid last year.

If you log into zine.trainsongz.net, you can see your payment renewal date and cancel your subscription for 2026 if you’d like to do that. You’ll still get #8, the last issue of 2025, as part of this year’s subscription!

Once again, if you’d like to keep your subscription, you don’t need to do a thing. And at any point if you forget to cancel and you meant to cancel, I will give you a full refund. I’m not out to get you.

On pricing for next year, you will be locked into the rate you elected to pay this year forever. That’s your gift as a thank you for being a subscriber in our first year. That being said, I am considering raising the price next year to $15 per issue or $60 per year. That’s a $4 increase per issue, from $11 to $15. This price increase would be 100% optional for you to opt into, if you can afford it and you want to continue supporting us.

The logic for this price increase is me treating Train Songz like an actual job versus a hobby. We basically spend $11 on each issue when you divide total issue cost by subscriber count, and we sell it for $11. Our financial cushion comes from sponsorships and merchandise sales.

Thanks to your support, we’ve paid contributors and people helping me out over $29,000 starting at issue #3 to make this operation possible. We don’t ask for the homie discount. We don’t pay in clout or exposure. We pay all artists who touch the zine a fair rate.

What I started alone in my apartment has grown to be complicated! It takes a lot of work! We love to do it, and I’m very proud of what it’s become. I hope you’ve seen the quality increase this year, from issue 4 to issue 7, and we intend to continue to push ourselves to new print media heights with issue 8 in December.

With the increase in funds, we hope to be able to:

• Pay more artists

• Pay more bands

• Improve the physical quality of the zine

• Host more shows in more cities

• Pay our staff $20/hr for more hours to help out

When I started this thing, I had a full-time job at a company that was pretty chill. I got laid off from that, and now I work for myself (social media agency) and pretty much make my own hours and decide how much “client work” I take on at a time. I would love to take Train Songz a little more seriously and maybe drop one client because of that, so like 75% of my working time is actual pay-the-bills work and 25% of my time is Train Songz.

Anyway — that’s all to say, you will not be forced into any price increase. It’ll be 100% optional. Think of it as sort of a vote from each of you if you want to support my goal of taking this to the next level. An extra $4 per issue will allow us to do more stuff for you to enjoy.

Ta-ta for now, folks.

–The Conductor