Posters, Postage, Paper Supply & More (Patreon)

Well, the pandemic finally caught up to the magazine printing industry.

Though the world's been dealing with the impact of COVID-19 for over two and a half years now, NF wasn't too negatively effected for a long while. Throughout all of 2020 and 2021, we were able to keep trucking along with our regular rhythm, and the printing company that we work with to produce physical copies of each issue -- Century Publishing in Post Falls, Idaho -- was able to keep production costs for each print run in the same price range we'd been used to for several years before that.

Unfortunately, as the calendar flipped in 2022, cost increases caught up to Century, and then to us. My contacts at the printing company called to let me know that paper mills around the country -- the places producing the raw paper that is sold to Century and ultimately transformed into NF issues -- have been getting really squeezed by supply chain troubles. The quantity of paper they're now able to produce has been greatly reduced, and the costs to buy the amounts that they are able to make has gone up.

The situation has gotten so dire, it seems, that Century has had to turn away new clients wanting to print with them. They just don't have enough paper to go around! It's really straining their business.

Luckily, because we've been working with Century since the very beginnings of NF nearly 10 years ago, we're grandfathered in and have priority to keep our regular rhythm going -- just at increased cost. So far every issue we've produced here in 2022 has cost more to manufacture than the one before, and that's a problem that I'm really hoping doesn't continue too much longer, because it could ultimately effect the whole future of NF!

We're not in the absolute danger zone yet (and hopefully never will be). But for the moment, in order to keep NF rolling as we have been, we do need to take one step to offset the cost increases that have been piling up: separating out the production costs of the magazine issues themselves from the extra things like the wall posters and bonus items. We'll have just one charge to cover at least the next whole year's worth of extras, so each upcoming issue can continue to include a double-sided wall poster. It'll also cover the increases to postage so that the issues can keep getting mailed out to print subscribers, and fund a much-needed website revamp and digital backend overhaul so that things keep rolling smoothly for our digital patrons and web store customers as well.

I'm hoping to avoid a permanent price increase on our pledge tiers, since that would impact every issue production and would be awkward to make happen since Patreon wasn't really built with that in mind. So no worries there. The current listed rates on the tiers, like $2.99 per issue for a digital subscription, will stay the same.

Thank you all for your understanding and your continued support! Being able to keep things like the wall posters going is appreciated by so many. I know probably not everyone hangs up the posters, but they're a big deal for the kids who are just taking their first steps into becoming Nintendo fans and decorate their bedrooms with them, the teachers who've used them in their classrooms and the diehards like Justin Do! He sent in the photo attached to this post: He combined the Smash banner pieces we included with Issues #57, #58 and #59 into a full connected poster, then framed the whole thing. It looks great!

We'll keep that kind of fun going. We'll also do at least one bonus item in the year ahead, like the papercraft Paper Peach that was packaged alongside Issue #47. (I have an idea for a fun Pokémon Scarlet & Violet item that would ship along with Issue #62 later this year, so stay tuned for more on that as I work to make it happen.)

For more immediate appreciation and compensation, I'm also going to get back into gear with sending out the digital bonus issues! Sorry that I dropped off on sending those. I'll get every patron here back up to speed with a new email of download links to all the bonus back issues we previously sent out, then add to that total. We just hit the milestone moment of publishing NF #60, so I'm thinking a full third of the whole NF publishing history is in order! Issues #1 through #20 will hit your email in digital form soon. We've had so many new members join the Force in recent years that I'm sure there are tons of you who've never perused our earliest issues!

Next up, we've got NF Issue #61: The Rule of Three on deck. It's going to be an issue that marks the weird moment in Nintendo publishing history that has just started today with the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 3: a string of three "3" games! The next two major retail releases from the Big N are Splatoon 3 in September and then Bayonetta 3 in October, and having three different series debut their "3s" one after another after another is just so oddly coincidental that we felt we needed to mark this special moment in time. And the issue will also include reviews of Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, River City Saga: Three Kingdoms and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. It's "3" madness! I hope you look forward to it. It'll be done in roughly three weeks!

Thanks as always for your continued support, and if you have any questions about any of this, hit me up by sending a DM here through Patreon. I'll do my best to personally respond to everyone in a timely manner . . . but give me a bit of grace in the months ahead, too, if I'm a little slower than normal. Because I've got one last thing to tell you all:

The Thomas family is expanding once again! Yes, I'm probably out of my mind, but my wife and I are expecting Baby #5. Just like Babies 1 through 4, this fifth kiddo is going to be a boy! (Apparently I'm destined to be only a #BoyDad.) Carter, Calvin, Cooper and Colson are all looking forward to the new arrival, and his due date is October 6. So we won't be waiting much longer! 

Feel free to consider me insane for agreeing to have just one more this year. My Dad actually grew up in a family of eight children, so our total's going to fall three shy of that. :p But it was fun to grow up with so many aunts and uncles and cousins. Christmastime with the whole Thomas family out at my Grandpa's farm was wild and crazy. 

And hey, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge has six-player support, so I had to have a fifth kid to play video games with me, right?

~ Lucas M. Thomas