Happy birthday bOING bOING

Today bOING bOING turns twenty, or thirty three. I count it as thirty three, because I used to travel to Compendium bookshop in Camden town in London during the nineties to get the print edition.

Today it exists as a website, which celebrates its twentieth birthday today: with most of the same writers, still writing away.

Carla and I conceived of it as a print zine in 1987. The first issue of bOING bOING came out in 1988. We printed 100 copies on a Xerox machine. I sent a copy to Factsheet Five, which was a zine that reviewed zines. Based on the review that ran in Factsheet Five, we sold all the copies. We also got an order from a newsstand distributor for 100 copies of the next issue. So we printed 200 copies of the second issue, sending 100 to the distributor and 100 to people sending $3 cash to us in the mail. We basically followed a Moore’s law style growth curve. The final issue of bOING bOING, number 15, had a print run of 17,500. Unfortunately it was our last print issue because our two major newsstand distributors went bankrupt, owing us tens of thousands of dollars.

You can see the official article on the boing boing website here.

It includes a link to a 2000 edition. Long may it continue.