The Irregular lives up to its name
common / backtracks
The Irregular lives up to its name
(Editor’s note: this story is taken from the Vol. 9, #19, March 8, 1976 issue of the Sugarloaf Irregular and is reprinted here in its entirety. ©The Original Irregular)
Last week marked the inadvertent return to an every-other-week printing schedule; in other words, we missed an issue, and here’s what happened.
We started September 1 with a wing, a prayer, no money in the bank and lots of enthusiasm.
Throughout the season we’ve been running before the wind, with ad revenues barely covering operating costs. The fall was particularly hairy, as we had not yet built up a stable of advertisers, but still had to go to press, figuring the one major obstacle we had to overcome was the reputation of sporadic publication we inherited. Christmas and subsequent vacation weeks brought in lots of new faces to our advertising ranks as we built up a following with the public.
We got through the meat of the season looking great on paper, but with lots of loose ends like paychecks, printing bills and a huge accounts receivable; it got to the point where we just had to call time out and regroup. Wherein lay another pleasant surprise the year has brought --where bills for advertising are traditionally hard to collect, here at the Irregular it’s been a case of us not getting around to billing, rather than any foot-dragging on the part of advertisers. It seems people read us pretty regularly, and use us to plan diner reservations, but houses or whatever, and nothing makes an advertiser happier than to know that money spent in that nebulous area has brought concrete, traceable results.
It makes us happy, too. One of the hardest things, psychologically, in putting out a paper every week is wondering, as we scramble around taking pictures, writing articles, typesetting, pasting up, running off to the printer and playing newsboy, whether or not anybody reads the darn thing.
So, here we are, in spite of last week’s lapse, we’re showing alarming signs of health for a business where the mortality rate is so high for undercapitalized ventures like ours. Now to get through spring without getting too distracted by the sun, skiing and scenery.
