Become a Founding Member

We’re doing things a little differently than usual here at Digits & Threads, and that means it’s a little more risky than if we were following the tried-and-true way of launching a new magazine, online or otherwise.

We think this risk is absolutely worth it, because we believe the tried-and-true business model of magazines should have changed a long time ago.

Traditionally, magazines in print and online have relied on display advertising for a sizeable portion of their revenue. Subscriptions have been sold for cheap because advertisers want to reach as many eyeballs as possible. Or if an online magazine is available for free, it’s littered with ads and pop-ups and click-bait to maximize eyeball traffic so more ads will sell.

We think you’re more than eyeballs. We think you’re a complex, fascinating person who loves learning about fibre and textiles from all angles, whether it’s examining the properties of a certain breed of wool, exploring how to make a new kind of project, or learning about where a textile artist finds inspiration.

We want to spend all of our time and energy creating a magazine that you, our reader, wants to read. (Frankly, we’re making a magazine that we want to read, too.)

In our more flippant moments, we insist that if we’re going to pander to anyone, it’s going to be to you, not to advertisers.

So we are ditching the business-as-usual approach to creating this online magazine. And we are inviting you to help us do it.

Digits & Threads is supported entirely by our members.

Wait. “Members?” you say, “Not subscribers?”

Right. Members.

It’s a fine line, we know, between a subscriber to online content and a member of an online community. In both cases, you pay money once a year to gain access.

The difference – the major difference – is that a subscriber is eyeballs and a member is a partner.

We rely on our members not only for the fees they pay to read our online magazine, but also to let us know what they love, what they want to learn more about, what we could do better. Our magazine is not a fire hose that’s pointed at your wallet; our magazine is a dialogue.

So are we about to offer you a sweet discount as an incentive to join us from the very beginning?

Actually, no. We’re going to do the opposite of that.

We’re going to ask you to join at a higher rate this founding year, so that your enthusiasm and financial commitment can help us to get this new publication off the ground. After that, in recognition and of and gratitude for the vital role you will have played in establishing this new magazine, you’ll renew at a deeply discounted rate each year you renew.

So, yes. We are asking you to begin your membership before we have much content ready for you (there’s a couple of things there now, and there’s more in the works, for publication very soon!). We’re asking you to commit financially before we can show you all the exciting things we have planned, because most of those things don’t exist yet.

In return, we will show you everything. You’ll be here for our first articles and features. We’ll show you how we work, behind the scenes. We’ll explain how this online magazine will enable us to publish more e-books and hopefully print books and why we rejected our original idea to build our company starting with books.

We like knowing how things are made – especially things we love and learn from – and we suspect you like knowing how things are made, too. We intend to make Digits & Threads a source of wonder and learning for you, and we want you to be able to see all the stitches we make to put it together, including the ones we have to rip out and redo, and even the ones that end up tossed into a corner because they really didn’t work out.

As a Founding Member, your commitment will be both financial and informative. Your membership dues will help us to do all the things we need to do, from fairly compensating our contributors to hiring help from experts to paying for the software that runs the show to our own salaries to covering the overhead involved with running a business – the legal and accounting fees, web hosting costs and the mailbox we rent.

Founding Membership will be available only until December 7th. After that, we’ll consider Digits & Threads to be founded, and we’ll begin to offer memberships at regular price. Your initial commitment of $120/year will renew at $60/year twelve months after you join, and that renewal rate will not change as long as you remain a member. This Founding Member renewal rate will be lower than any membership subscription rate we ever offer, to thank you for the initial investment you made to get Digits & Threads started.

This magazine has been a dream for many years, and we’ve been working on creating it for many months. With your help, we’ll make it into something that inspires, educates, encourages and connects – us to each other, and to the materials, practices, traditions and innovations that make our hands itch to make something.