Some of our wonderful small-business advertisers from Issue 03. Enlarge this page. See also: first small-business ad page, which ran opposite of the table of contents.

Folks, this is just a courtesy post to let you know that our closing date for receiving Small Business ads has been moved from September 15th to September 30th. So all you stragglers who have been meaning to get your ads in, but haven’t gotten the chance to – you have one more week! Please email us to reserve your ad space. No ads will be accepted after September 30th, because we have to get Issue 04 out the door.

For those of you hearing about this opportunity for the first time, this is Coilhouse’s way of promoting small businesses in our pages by providing prominent, full-color ad space for as low as $99-149 a pop, depending on how many issues you commit to in advance. In addition to our returning advertisers from Issue 03, our new crop of Issue 04 advertisers is looking very eclectic already: it includes a swimsuit calendar inspired by Butoh, an Etsy seller of vintage-inspired capelets and scarves, and a music label of genre-crossing electronica.  Join them in getting the word out about your endeavor!

For the full Advertising FAQ, click here. If you’re ready to place an ad, email us!

UPDATE: We did it! Together! We made it into the Top 10. Now, we wait ’til the 24th to find out if we’re selected as one of the finalists. Thank you to everyone who stepped up at the last minute to make a difference.

First off, thank you, all, for your incredible support. We’re currently at 355 votes, placing us only 100 or so votes shy of breaking into the Top 10 (out of 3,994 nominees!). Not bad for being in the competition for less than 12 hours, eh? Most of the businesses in the Top 10 registered on the site back in August, whereas we only found out about this contest yesterday. All we can say is: wow. Thank you.

There are 2 hours left to vote. In those 2 hours, we want to make it to the Top 10. We’re almost there! After midnight ET, it’s in the hands of the judges, who will choose 3 finalists. They’re not necessarily going to be looking at this as a popularity contest; it’s more about the story that each business has to tell. Even though it’s not a numbers game at that point, being at the top will certainly help us catch the judges’ eye. That’s why we’re asking any stragglers who haven’t yet voted for Coilhouse to help us win.

Again, the steps take less than 60 seconds (Tequila timed it, says it took him only 41 seconds)

• STEP ONE: click here to register as a voter on the site. We know, registration is super-annoying. This one’s petty painless, actually. Just a few fields. Don’t worry about spam – they explicitly say “we will not solicit your email for special offers, product news or other communications.”
• STEP TWO: click here to view our entry on the site. On this site, click on the blue button on the left sidebar with the words “Support This Story, ENDORSE NOW.” And that’s it. You’re done!

Thank you again, guys, for all your support. It’s been wonderful watching this story spread on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve almost there – let’s close the gap!

We will return to your regularly scheduled Coilhouse programming on Monday.

Esteemed Coilhaüsers, we need your help. Each and every one of you. It’s important. We’ve entered Coilhouse into a competition for small businesses. The winning prize is a $100,000 grant, and we need your vote. We’re pretty pragmatic when it comes to any sort of contests or sweepstakes, but in the off chance that we win this thing, it would enable us to do things with this magazine that we’ve only dreamed about. We’re already imagining some responsible ways we could spend that money… such as making every subsequent issue of Coilhouse scratch-and-sniff.

The competition is called Shine a Light, and it’s sponsored by American Express and NBC. The goal of the competition is to “recognize an inspiring small business.” We feel that Coilhouse deserves to win, and in order to make that happen, we need your vote. Your support matters!

In order to help us, you need to take two short steps.  Both steps can be completed in under 60 seconds (promise – we timed it). Register (they won’t spam you) and vote (it takes 1 click).

• STEP ONE: click here to register as a voter on the site. We know, registration is super-annoying. This one’s petty painless, actually. Just a few fields.  Don’t worry about spam – they explicitly say “we will not solicit your email for special offers, product news or other communications.”
• STEP TWO: click here to view our entry on the site. On this site, click on the blue button on the left sidebar with the words “Support This Story, ENDORSE NOW.” And that’s it. You’re done!

NOTE: We just discovered that there’s no way that people from another country can enter. So for you guys, we introduce the bonus step (can be followed by Americans as well).

• BONUS ROUND: If you really, REALLY want to support us and take one extra step, get the word out! Let people know we need support. Post this link on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or whatever: http://coilhouse.net/2009/09/help-coilhouse-win-a-small-business-grant/

The 60 seconds you take to support Coilhouse will make a world of difference to us. Suggestions for our first scratch-and-sniff issue flavor are welcome in the comments.

Thank you, guys. For this and everything else.

This is just a housekeeping post to let you know that the Coilhouse page has been updated. We’ve changed the look of the buttons at the top of the site, and added two new links. The first is a proper button for our shop (where shirts, stickers and Issue 03 are still available!) and the second is a link to our updated Coilhouse FAQ. The FAQ covers both the magazine and the blog.

We’ve also put up a FAQ for potential small business advertisers! This program was a hit in Issue 03, and we want to thank all the indie businesses who took the plunge and placed an ad. The advertisers we ended up with were very diverse, but all appropriate to Coilhouse; to give you a range, Issue 03’s ads included a music label, a shop of rare books, a company that makes Victorian-inspired clothing, and a gal who makes monster jewelry/soap. The PDFs of the final ad pages that appeared in Issue 03 can be found below:

• Coilhouse Issue 03 Indie Business Ads – Page 1
• Coilhouse Issue 03 Indie Business Ads – Page 2

As of this time, we’re ready to begin accepting ads for Issue 04.  The closing date for Issue 04 advertising is September 15th. This leaves you guys with some time to book an ad, but please note that ads are placed into the magazine in the order in which they were received, which means that the earliest-booked ads end up on the most prominent pages! So if you’re interested in advertising in Coilhouse, now’s the time to review the advertising FAQ and email Nadya if interested. Thank you!

by Edd Cartier, “Other Worlds” 1952

Guys, we have two major announcements.

First of all, Coilhouse is going international! The three of us have been operating out of California for the past two years, but as of August, we’ll be releasing our spores across three different continents. Nadya’s job is moving her to London, and Mer is traveling to New Zealand to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a professional hobbit-fluffer. Meanwhile, Zo shall continue to oversee our sinister stateside operations from her sooper seekrit LA lair.

Die Nachthexen. Hat-tip to Suzanne G of Wurzeltod.

Coilhouse readers attending Nerd Prom (aka the San Diego Comic-Con) have one last chance see us all in one place at the same time at the Avatar Press booth before we scatter to the winds. It’s actually quite fitting that our final meeting is at Comic-Con, seeing as that’s where the three of us met face-to-face for the first time two years ago. We’ll be signing and selling copies of Issue 03. Below are the specifics:

Where: San Diego Comic-Con, booth #2701 (front of the 2700 isle, by the front doors).
When: Saturday, July 25
What time: 12 to 1 PM

Also, Mer is going to be performing some tunes with her old friend Amanda Palmer at the big CBLDF fundraising concert on Friday night in San Diego. Click here for details. Hope to see you there!

Holy schnikies! This has been by far the most overwhelming first day of magazine sales we’ve eover had. Thank you to severyone who ordered a shirt, magazine or sticker so far. Wow.

Okay, two notes about shipping

Firstly. Everyone, please check your PayPal invoice to make sure you remembered to enter the correct shipping address, and that the precious order is not about to be sent to someplace you used to live. For whatever reason, PayPal makes it easy to overlook the important step of choosing the correct address to ship to. Don’t let it happen to you! If you need us to fix your address, email Gretta ASAP.

Secondly. A note from Gretta, our lovely shipping extraordinaire: “Hello Coilhouse Magazine Lovers, it warms my ventricles to see so many returning customers and I am delighted at the sight of hundreds of new customers from around the world. This is great because this means there will be an Issue 04! This also means that some of you who ordered on the 16th, your magazines may not be shipped until as late as Wednesday, so please kindly exercise a little patience, as it is just me doing the label printing, order filling and post office deliveries. This is not a cry for pity, just a heads up. If you must must MUST have it shipped sooner, send me an email and you’ll be bumped to the top. Gotta run, lots of work to do to get your goodies to you! Lovies, Gretta”

Regular posting will resume shortly. Thank you again, everyone!

The shop is now open! Issue 03, the stickers, and the shirts are up for grabs (note: the shirts have already been printed, and are available to ship immediately).

With our past two print issues, we were content to take a couple of snapshots of the best-designed articles and show them off on the blog in hopes of enticing you to buy a copy. This time around, attempting to choose select images from our newest issue is proving to be painfully difficult. Thanks largely in part to our phenomenal creative director, Courtney Riot, each and every article had a design personality so strong, it’s clamoring to represent Issue 03. What to choose, what to omit…

Eh, screw it, this ain’t Sophie’s Choice! It’s late. We’re giddy and delirious. Let’s throw caution to the wind, yes? FULL MONTY, baby. After the cut, a tantalizing, low-res glimpse at all the articles in our latest issue. Enjoy.

It’s a big day for Coilhouse! In addition to the new stickers, today we are also premiering the new shirts, featuring our original poster girl, the Stratosphere Messenger. Here are a couple of pics. More will be posted to the store, along with details and sizing charts. Below is Zoetica and above is photographer Lou O’Bedlam, who also appears inside Issue 03.

Our next post on this blog will be it. The one that you’ve all been waiting for. The one that we’ve been waiting to post for many months now. With our next post, our shop will officially open, and you will come face-to-face with Issue 03!

In the next hour or so, here we are going to reveal the contents of Issue 03 and put it on sale in our shop (along with new shirt designs and stickers). Stay tuned!

To tide you over while we put our finishing touches on the big Issue 03 post, order here are the two new stickers up for grabs. These premium contoured vinyl stickers are water-resistant, printed with a UV finish and will last you 20 years. They cost $3.99, but the first 5 people who order Issue 03 will receive a sticker of their choice for free! (Update: congrats Matthew, Ruth, Nickolas, Charlotte and Jason!)

More pictures of the 2 stickers designs after the jump.

Issue 03 arrived today! We’re still too giddy to write up a proper post describing the issue, so for now, we’re just showing off the cover, photographed by the talented Gustavo Lopez Mañas. Part of a haunting series called Avatars, this image was shot exclusively for Issue 03. Behind the jump, a couple more images from this 8-page series. Watch the blog carefully this week – very soon, we’ll be unveiling the rest of Issue 03’s content, the day it goes on sale, and what other goodies (new shirt design! stickers!) we have for you.

Our third issue took us further down the spiral of paper-fetish addiction; we upgraded the thickness of both the cover paper and the paper inside. This time we went with a heavy gloss for the cover and experimented with embossing for the title. Many more facts about Issue 03 are yet to come!