Author: Jesse Willis

All of us at MechMuse wish to thank you, deeply, for your support and
encouragement over these last several months. We have received so
many kind notes expressing gratitude for the product and enthusiasm
for the future of MechMuse. We accomplished something significant
with our first issue. We released a professionally produced, finely
crafted anthology of audio short content. We are proud of what we
have achieved, and grateful for the contributions of every writer,
performer, artist, musician and listener involved.

While preparing our Summer issue for release, we have also been
working to significantly upgrade our website to accommodate a change
in our business model and positioning. MechMuse will be pursuing a
new revenue strategy based on advertising more than on subscriptions,
and on positioning MechMuse as a free podcast with tasteful audio ads
interspersed within our content. Though our content will be
available with commercials free of charge, our subscribers will
continue to enjoy premium service, including access to full issues at
a higher compression quality and completely without ads.

We have also been altering the layout of MechMuse.com to provide
better “at a glance” coverage of each audio feature, and to make it
much, much easier to download and listen to content. With the
release of our updated website, the free and subscriber editions of
MechMuse will be available as RSS podcasts (the subscriber edition,
of course, available securely only to subscribers), which means that
all you should ever need to do is paste our podcast address into your
jukebox application (iTunes, for example) under the “subscribe to
podcast” feature. All tracks will automatically be downloaded into
your jukebox, ready for listening. As new tracks and new issues are
released, they will automatically be imported into your jukebox,
without you ever having to download and manually import another ZIP
archive.

On August 11th, we will release our updated website along with the
free edition of our Spring issue. On August 21st, the initial
feature offerings of both the free and subscriber editions of our
Summer issue will go live (additional tracks will be released
incrementally, just as they were in our Spring issue).

Every one of you has helped to make MechMuse happen through your
belief in the project and your appreciation of the publication. We
are especially grateful to those of you who ratified our long-term
vision by purchasing six-issue subscriptions. We thank you for your
patience as we have paused to observe the sales trends following our
creative efforts, and have made decisions to adjust accordingly. We
have not received a single angry note concerning the changes to our
publication schedule, or the delay in publishing our Summer issue.
Many have written kind inquiries expressing encouragement and
anticipation for the upcoming issue. This is extraordinary. In our
subscribers we have found fellow enthusiasts for short audio fiction,
fellow collaborators in building something wholly different on the
web, and friends.

We have faced difficult decisions these past months. Though
enthusiasm for our first issue ran high among a core group of
believers, drawing the attention of the market at large has proven
difficult. Many thousands of dollars have been spent in print
advertising, exhibiting at fan conventions, and distributing coupons
and sample CDs. These efforts have proven ineffective. We remain
confident that ours is a marketable product, but successfully
communicating this new idea to the correct market segment is proving
a real challenge.

In addition to the introduction of the free edition and the upgrades
to MechMuse.com, we made a decision to completely eliminate salaries
for all MechMuse employees, and push 100% of subscription proceeds
out to our contributors. Everyone at MechMuse is now working on a
volunteer basis, and as before, all of our talented writers,
performers, artists and musicians are working for royalties. This
has necessitated a cut-back in our production schedule, resulting in
our new quarterly publication plan. This gives us the flexibility to
explore our market niche for longer, without worrying about
significant operating overhead, and also gives us more time to
capitalise on the content of each issue.

These technical changes and shake-ups in organisation and strategy
have put us behind on release of our Summer issue. I want to
reassure you that the audio has been produced, and sounds fabulous.
We have two exciting stories from New York Times Best Seller Kevin J.
Anderson, as well as another story from New York Times Best Seller
David Farland and the continuation of his gripping novel On My Way
to Paradise. Along with a group of thought-provoking short stories,
we are also releasing the first several chapters of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula, performed stunningly by British voice-actor Ken Richman,
with a haunting original score by James Guymon.

We have a diverse marketing and PR plan that will go into play
following the August 21st release of our Summer issue. With our free
editions, not only will we be able to grab listeners from amongst
those who are interested but not sure enough of this newfangled idea
to put money down, but now that ours is a free offering we’ll have
access to an enormous podcast audience and be able to approach them
through a wider variety of established communities and publications.

This is an exciting time. We’ve had to tighten our belts, yes, but
we feel that our new strategy has tremendous potential. We are
dedicated to making this publication a success so that you, our
listeners, may continue to enjoy well-written, well-produced and
affordable audio short fiction!

Again, we thank you for your patience and understanding. The
confidence of this core group of subscribers is one significant
factor in our hope for the future of MechMuse.

Onward!