Lotsa New Stuff On Sale Now!

First, from out of left field: The Snuff Taker's Ephemeris Volume One- Master Edition.

The Master Series is what we're calling our new series of reprints that will put our first four issues back into print in a deluxe format. It contains all of the content from the original printing, plus a couple dozen pages of bonus features. This new version is the same size and format as our current issues, NOT the digest-size of the original printings. One of the biggest complaints we've had about our new direction is that Volumes 5&6 completely dwarf Volumes 1-4 when placed on a bookshelf. Not anymore!

Ordinarily I discourage double dipping, but I wholeheartedly recommend buying the Master Series even if you own the original printings. There's just no comparison in quality. Plus, all the additional behind-the-scenes features won't be printed anywhere else, so you HAVE to buy this edition. It's the law.

Volumes 2-4 will be reprinted over the course of 2013. These are not available in b&m bookstores, only online at our site or from other retailers.

2. The Snuff Taker's Ephemeris Volume Seven

Due to hit stores Christmas Day, we're putting the finishing touches on our fourth quarter Winter special. It's got tons of great articles and is going to be another nice thick edition like our last one. Order it now and save 1.00 off the cover price!

3. Subscriptions!

It only took two years, but we were finally able to install a subscription delivery service. We've got a few different packages you can choose from. All subscriptions begin with the next issue. For example, Volume Seven comes out on December 25th, so if you order a sub between now and then, it will start with Volume 7. After December 25th, it will begin with Volume Eight. Confused? There's more!

The GREAT news is that US subscribers will get free shipping (a 16.00 value)! The bad news is that we couldn't offer our international subscribers free shipping. We're really sorry for our friends in Europe, Oz and Africa. But that doesn't mean you can't still get free stuff out of us:

4. Contest!

 

Frankly, our social media sites are looking pretty dead. Our blog page, our Facebook page and our Youtube videos aren’t getting any hits. You would think that we had a circulation of 40 copies or so by the looks of things. This doesn’t really inspire confidence in an on-the-fence customer or retailer. Who wants to order three copies of a magazine that only has 46 views of their latest Youtube commercial? (We wouldn’t.)

So we’re bribing (err... “reaching out to”) our readers for help. Watch those videos. Like them. Subscribe to our blog. Connect with us on Facebook and give us a thumbs up for every stupid post we make, just as you do for that hot girl you know from Starbucks who always writes something like “LOL jst walked into a wall” and ends up getting 2,366 ‘likes.’ Be our pals.

Each month, we’ll choose one lucky (?) poster from each outlet to win a random prize. It could be a year’s subscription to the magazine. It could be a rare, out of print back issue. It could be some of the free stuff that we get at conventions and have no use for. (Ooohh... check out this neat USB Flash Drive carrying pouch they gave us in Louisiana!) Or it could be cash money! (Actually, no it can’t. We’re broke.)

If only half of our readership were to connect with us on Facebook or Youtube, we would have thousands of internet “friends,” which we all know are more important than the real-life kind. So head over to these sites and get bizaay:

Facebook

Youtube

5. Super Secret Special Publication

If you've heard rumors that the STE has put together a special Holiday publication, you heard right. We're not advertising it anywhere but in Volume Seven. Supplies are extremely limited and all proceeds will be donated to charity. See our ad in that issue to find out the details. In short, you'll be helping a good cause, getting a rare book, and the donation is pretty cheap to boot. The only hint is that it will make a great stocking stuffer for children or adults, and we say that without the slightest bit of sarcasm.

...till next time!

STE Volume VI

We want to thank you all for making this issue our most memorable yet! If you haven't bought your copy yet, get it here: http://www.stephemeris.com/page7.html

I have noticed that the printers screwed up one page. This is how page 35 was supposed to look, but the graphic on the right got chopped off, leaving a big blank space. Sorry for the mixup.

 

Sorry for the delay...

Volume VI should have shipped out last Tuesday, but we're still waiting on the printer to get done with them. Apparently since we're sixty pages bigger than our last issue, we broke all the printing presses or something. Anyway, word is that it should start shipping next week (week of October 15th) so let's all hope this is true.

Meanwhile, the digital edition started shipping yesterday, so there's one small consolation. Reader feedback so far has been incredible, so if you haven't yet ordered your copy, DO IT!

www.STEphemeris.com

Sexist, Sexy or Stupid?

Our newest ad. I'll let it speak for itself.

Photoshoot

We did a photoshoot the other day for the next couple of issues and things kept going horribly wrong.

First, there was the girl trapped in the closet:

Then when they started eating her liver, it kind of creeped us out.

Then there was the girl we hired to model the new General can, but instead she crawled in a bathtub full of human blood and started moaning:

After that, we pretty much just gave up and took pictures of trees and houses and stuff.

Yes, We're Still Alive!

Contrary to popular belief, The Ephemeris has not died and gone to hell simply because we haven't posted a blog update in over three months. We've just been really, REALLY busy. Here's a few updates:

European Distribution, Sexy Girls

Finally, you can order our mag in Europe at a fair price through Amazon Europe! Just like in the US, it's eligible for free Super Saver shipping when you hit a certain sum. (I can't decipher quid or Deutschmarks, but the numbers look pretty small).

Before this happened, we were in talks with a German distributor who gave us a few pointers in marketing to a Euro audience. "In America," began Col. Klink, "you put anysing vit nudity on top shelf in plastic bag. In Germany, nobody buy mega-seen unless it has naked girls." Huh... and here I thought we weren't selling as well as we should in Germany because we had terrible distribution there. Now I realize it was due to a lack of naked girls!

So we went to our readers, as always. We polled and questionnaired you to the breaking point and found out some interesting statistics:

• Readership: 51% female, 48% male (I don't know what the other 1% is.)

• Question: Would you like to see more photos of actual everyday people using snuff and snus?
• Response: 88% yes, 11% no, 1% don't care

• Question: Would you be interested in seeing pin-up/centerfold type photos presented in a tasteful manner?
• Response: 86% yes, 13% no, 1% don't care

• Question: In these photos, would you rather see women or men? 
• Women: 94%, Both/Don't Care: 5%, Men: 1%.  

It seems that men and women alike want to see pictures of women using tobacco.So what did we do? Hire a bunch of models!

So in the next few issues of The Ephemeris, you're going to be seeing a lot more women in our pages. If the experiment backfires, and we get a bunch of angry feminist letters, we'll make a change. (Jennifer Goldsmith, our resident Canadian staffer, was excited by the prospect. "Hell, I'd pose naked for the Ephemeris! But then you'd go out of business.")

This isn't going to end up on the internet is it?

Play "Where's STE" at your local Barnes & Noble

So we're finally available at your local chain book stores. Or, at least we should be. You see, even though we're in the same giant catalog of magazine titles that every bookseller in the US uses, not every store on the list will take a chance on us. Even some of the chain stores are divided. I can buy a copy of the STE at Barnes & Noble locations all over North Carolina and California, but I go into South Carolina or Florida and we're nowhere to be found. Same way with Borders and Books-a-Million. 

So here's my biggest gripe with Barnes & Noble: the placement of The Ephemeris in each store. My local B&N sticks us between CIGAR SNOB and SKUNK MAGAZINE. Some stores we're mixed in with the literary magazines like the Oxford Hemingway Appreciation Bi-annual Journal. Some place us on the "Collectible Americana" rack next to the baseball card priceguides and vintage Lionel train collector quarterlys. Hell, one store had us on the "movie" rack next to Fangoria and Horrorhound! I'm starting to wonder if they're going to put us next to Gothic Beauty when we start running sexy lady pics.

But it's a small complaint. And if you've looked all over the newsstand and can't find the STE, go see if they have any in the back. If they don't, tell them to order you a copy. Under our contract, a B&N location MUST be able to provide their customers a copy of our magazine within 48 hours. 

The same is basically true for any independent bookseller. Give them the title of our publication (or the ISBN) and they should be able to order it for you with no problem. And when they order it, tell them to order a few more to actually keep in stock, fer crying out loud!

Subscriptions

 

You guys have been asking for them since day one, and we're finally able to offer them. Beginning post-publication of Volume VI, we'll be offering a one year (four issue) subscription. The best part is that shipping within the USA WILL BE FREE. It will definitely be within your best financial interest to save money by buying them in advance and getting them a week before the newsstand does. (Remember, this won't kick in until AFTER Volume VI hits the stands, so the subscription will be for Volumes 7-10). 

More to come later!

Volume Five... On Sale NOW!

Available here on our site

(Note: if you subscribe to our newsletter, feel free to skip this blog as it's pretty much the same info you've already read.)

Our Spring issue is on the way, and we’ve completely rebuilt our format. Don’t worry: we haven’t killed our writers or changed our editorial vision in any way. We’ve simply hooked up with a new distributor who is concentrated on marketing The Ephemeris to the big box book chains, along with increasing our internet presence (Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com) while still catering to independent booksellers and tobacconists. In the next few weeks, you’ll be able to walk into virtually any bookstore in the USA and purchase our book. (If you don’t see it on the shelves, ask your retailer to order a copy for you. Most any bookseller worth their salt can have it delivered to their store within 48 hours.)

For our European readers, don’t think we haven’t forgotten you. We were also courting an international distributor with headquarters in England and Australia. Unfortunately, the deal fell through when they started making ridiculous demands concerning packaging, editorial direction, advertising, etc. You see, we feel that The Ephemeris should cost the same low price all over the world ($10.99 list, 9.99 through our site). But our potential Euro distributor wanted to charge £9.99 everywhere outside of the USA- about $16.16 at the time of this writing. Their reasoning? “Because the market will bear it.”

Hogwash! The main reason we wanted a European presence was to save on shipping charges from the US. But with the jacked up cover price, it would have still been cheaper for international customers to order from our US based warehouse. Maybe next year...

On to the magazine, er, bookazine. (Yes, that’s what our distributor calls our publication. I still prefer the term sleaze rag.) Whatever you call it, it puts our previous four editions to shame. It’s almost twice the size of our older digest format, and at 110 pages it contains about 25% more content than the last few issues. The printing and binding are a 100% improvement over the efforts of our indie mom & pop printers that we struggled with since 2010. Gone are the misglued spines, the saddle stitched, miscut pages, the misprinted covers, etc. The Snuff Taker’s Ephemeris is going to be printed at one of the best printing presses in North America, the same folks who bring you the latest Clive Cussler and Stephen King books every week. I don’t want to jinx us too badly here, but in short, this book should meet your very stringent demands. (Hopefully!)

You may have noticed that our cover price has increased slightly. We had absolutely no control over it. The minimum list price that we were allotted was 10.99. This is what you can expect to pay at your local bookstore or through Amazon. HOWEVER, for as long as feasibly possible, we will sell The Ephemeris for 9.99 at our website, www.STephemeris.com . Our shipping costs will more than likely increase as well, owing to the larger size and weight of the new format, but we will hold off on raising the rates (again) as long as we possibly can. 

New Lower Price!

 

Now that you’ve heard the bad news, here’s the good: we’ve lowered the price of our digital editions. That’s right; in order to stay as competitive as possible in the burgeoning e-book trade, we’ve dropped the price of our e-zine to 50% off the cover price of our print edition. At a mere 4.99 a copy, there’s no better way for first-time readers to check us out and find out what all the fuss is about. Our long time readers will appreciate the extra pocket change they get to hold onto, as well. 

Dent and ding back issue sale! 40% off!

As we near the end of our back issue supply for Volumes One and Three (our only remaining print back issues- - but don’t forget, our E-Zines are always in stock!) we’re coming to the more, uh, “weathered” copies. Most of these are Newsstand returns, meaning they’ve made the journey from the printer to the warehouse, then to the retailer, then back to us: chances are, they’ve picked up a few dents and dings along the way. But nothing too major, a minor scuff here or there or a slightly miscut edge or spine.

So, we decided to hold a sale for the next few days (as long as supplies last) and offer our remaining stock for 42% off cover price: a measly 4.99 a book!  Yes, we’re losing money on this deal. Yes, we’re crazy. And yes, we hope that with this low introductory offer, you’ll maybe buy a couple of copies and send them off to a friend who isn’t aware of just how magnificent a bookazine The Snuff Taker’s Ephemeris is.

So, to sum it all up:
 

1. Volume Five ships first week of May. Feel free to place your order now and we’ll ship it as soon as we get our supply.

2. All of our back issues are on sale. Get them while you still can.

3. Thank you for being the best readership we could ever hope for!

H&H

"I Got a Letter From the Government...

...the other day. I opened, and read it, and said they was suckas!"

It's true. But this one came from the Canadian government.

Waaaaaaay back in Volume II we featured a one-page painting submitted by a reader. This was a tasteful semi-nude study in silhouette and we added "Coming next issue" graphics over it. Remember? 

About 6 months ago a Canadian reader wrote to inform us that she never received her copy of Volume II. We sent her another copy and this one reached her fairly quickly. All was well and forgotten.

This week, we finally found out what happened to her missing copy. Apparently, Canadian Customs intercepted the package and then destroyed it. According to the form letter, it was denied entry due to being "obscene, pornographic" and then sentenced to death.

My teachers always warned my parents that I was going to grow up to be a sleazy pornographer. I guess they were right!

I suppose that this was in reference to the nude painting. The checkbox didn't specify which part of the magazine was "obscene, pornographic" so I can only make educated assumptions here. Maybe it was Bill Johnson's reference to "pokeberry chew" that got their feather ruffled.

It could be worse. An American citizen was arrested by Canadian Customs officials and charged with trafficking in child pornography because his laptop had dirty manga on it. Apparently even cartoons as innocuous as Sailor Moon and The Power Puff Girls are deemed obscene by some agents, and travelers entering Canada can be facing a minimum of one year in prison for attempting to bring in such filth as The Story of O or Nabokov's Lolita.

Even worse, while these books may have been controversial during the 1950's, they haven't caused the average American to bat an eye in the last fifty years or so. (Of course, there's always that one parental advocate group in Alabama or Massachusetts that wants to ban Harry Potter or any book that features talking animals.) But if you're convicted in Canada for possessing illegal material like this, guess what? The United States reciprocates the Canadian sex offender registry program, no matter the charge.

Take that in for a minute. Say you get on a plane to fly to Ontario or whatever. You're packing a Hustler or Penthouse in your carry on. You get arrested and charged with trafficking in child pornography because under the draconian wording of Canadian law, that naked centerfold dressed up like a schoolgirl is imitating a minor, therefore it's child pornography. You do at least a year in Canadian prison and then come back to the United States, only to be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life.

"I just won't bring in any porno mags," you say. But what if they confiscate your laptop and search your hard drive and find pictures of your eight year old daughter playing on a Slip n' Slide? Or say you have your daughter with you, and she has a Kim Possible coloring book with her? The same rules apply.

This isn't just a paranoid "what if" scenario, these are all situations that have actually happened to US and European citizens flying into Canada. Thankfully, the last two cases were thrown out of court, but the damage was still done to those men and their families.

While I find it pretty hilarious that they considered The Ephemeris obscene, the Canadian border agents that engage in such a blatant abuse of power should be taken very seriously. I say we send Chuck D after them and let God sort them out.

"You have absolutely no idea just how white you are right now."

Volume II Officially Sold Out

Well, it took a year to happen, but we've finally sold out of all the print copies of Volume II. (Take that, Time and Newsweek! I bet they'll be swimming in thousands of unsold copies of their Feb. 2011 issues for another twenty years!) All remaining orders placed by today (Feb 2nd) will of course be filled. Unlike our second printing of Volume One, we have absolutely no intention of reprinting any subsequent issues, so once they're gone, they're gone.

If you failed to order Volume II, don't despair. Our digital editions are always for sale and they look really snazzy to boot. I'm told that .pdf stands for "portable document format," but I'm pretty sure it means "pretty darn fabulous" when it comes to describing our e-zines.

Also, our shipping department just informed me that we have less than 50 copies of our special limited edition Halloween Cover copy of Volume IV.  Which means that they'll probably be sitting around the warehouse for another five years, seeing as everybody hated it. Don't worry, we won't try to veer too far away from our standard design again anytime soon. We learned our lesson, honest!

Happy 2012!

Yes, I know this post is about a month late. But I've got a good excuse- we've been busy as heck getting the new issue up to par. Like we alluded to in the last couple of blog posts, there are some big changes in store for The Ephemeris, and it's taken a lot of effort to be put into motion. Most of the details are still top secret, but we'll share them as soon as possible.

Secondly, we've been getting a lot of mail lately along the lines of "I want to buy Volume X, is it still in stock?" Yes. If the issue is advertised for sale on our site, it means that it is currently in stock. When we run out of copies, we'll put a big "Sold Out" banner on the issue in question. 

Another question we've been getting is "I haven't seen you guys around on the forums lately, are you still in business?" Again, we've been really busy getting the new format streamlined, so we haven't had as much time to frequent our various tobacco forums. But heck yeah, we're still in business! We're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Finally, we wish to address one more semi-frequent question we get. "Why aren't you guys available at my local big box bookstore?" All we can say is... stay tuned.