But like most magick, these magazines don\u2019t manifest without thought, planning and intention. Each one is thoughtfully created by editor, designer, and publisher Anne Newkirk Niven, and she\u2019s been doing it for nearly 30 years. <\/p>\n Witches & Pagans<\/em> and SageWoman<\/em> continue to exist while other print publications (Pagan and mundane) fall by the wayside \u2014 entirely because of Anne\u2019s dedication.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m doing this as a gift of love to the community,\u201d she says with a hearty laugh. And also because \u201cevery time I tried to step away from this, the Goddess kicked me in the teeth. I believe that publishing these magazines is what I\u2019m here to do, and you do what you do if you\u2019re fortunate and able to pull it off.\u201d <\/p>\n This journey, she says, began when she walked into a women\u2019s bookstore in 1990 and saw SageWoman<\/em>. At the time, she and her husband Alan owned a small print shop in Point Arena, California. <\/p>\n \u201cI picked it up, bought it, took it home, cold-called the publisher, and said, \u2018I want to print your magazine.'\u201d She printed SageWoman<\/em> (then owned by Lunaea Weatherstone) until 1994, when Anne became the managing editor and publisher, too. Over time, she and her husband published The Green Man<\/em> (a male-only counterpart to SageWoman<\/em>) which morphed into PanGaia<\/em>; newWitch<\/em> (a pop-culture witchy magazine); The Blessed Bee<\/em> (a Pagan family newsletter), and Crone<\/em> magazine (for eldering women.) Witches & Pagans<\/em> came about as a union of newWitch<\/em> and PanGaia<\/em> in 2009. <\/p>\n Anne is completely self-taught, from copy editing to graphic art, and says that she and Alan gleaned much of their knowledge by printing other people\u2019s publications, many of them other Pagan magazines. <\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to learn from our printing clients, saw them do things that worked \u2014 and things that didn\u2019t. We were self-taught on instinct, and too stubborn to stop.\u201d <\/p>\n Social Media & Internet Publishing<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne\u2019s publications and their parent company also have a healthy presence on the web. Alan encouraged her to start the major Pagan blog site Pagan Square<\/a>, which she admits tested her urges to take editorial control.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a hard time releasing creative control. There\u2019s no way to run a blogosphere and edit every post. It\u2019s not going to happen. With blogs, you just have to trust your writers. You can\u2019t edit them the way you do in a magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n She notes that the timing of Pagan Square\u2019s arrival online was auspicious.<\/p>\n \u201cShortly after I put out a call for contributors, we had several dozen bloggers,\u201d she says, noting that Pagan Square actually helps people discover the print magazines. The Witches&Pagans Facebook page<\/a> also caught on early, with about 325,000 \u201clikes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe rode that wave really well. We got in when everybody did, and got big really fast.\u201d Social Media \u201cbrings in people who otherwise don\u2019t know we exist,\u201d and Witches&Pagans has a presence on Twitter<\/a>, Tumblr<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a> as well as Facebook.<\/p>\n Readers Are the Reason They Exist<\/strong><\/p>\n Changes in the publishing industry since the Great Recession means that BBI Media no longer is a profit-making endeavor. Alan returned to his career as an audio recording engineer, and Anne juggles two other part-time jobs to make ends meet.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth Alan and I now have side gigs that provide most of our income.\u201d<\/p>\n While more and more people turn to online resources, Anne still sees the value of holding a real magazine in your hands rather than staring at a screen and clicking. A magazine is vastly more satisfying to keep than an online bookmark. <\/p>\n \u201cPrint has a presence that is not matched, and is not fast on its feet,\u201d she says, adding that even old issues are highly sought after. \u201cWe sell past issues and people still pay good money for them.\u201d <\/p>\n She notes that all issues of SageWoman<\/em>, PanGaia<\/em>, newWitch<\/em>, and Witches&Pagans<\/em> are still available for purchase<\/a>. <\/p>\n Besides dedication to both Goddess and community, Anne is also dedicated to her publications. A stickler for detail and editorial content, she strives to continue producing the kind of magazine her customers expect.<\/p>\n \u201cI refuse to cut back on the work it takes to make it happen. I try very hard not to cut corners. Every article and interview is edited, every layout is hand-designed. I\u2019m doing it the only way I know how.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople get a sense of community out of reading our magazines. You will not find an article that attempts to take somebody and tear them down. We have a beautiful, wonderful set of interlocking communities that I want to uphold and uplift. You won\u2019t find a scandal on our pages. We\u2019re there to uplift and bring the community together, not tear us apart.<\/p>\n \u201cThe community has uplifted us many times, most recently when Borders went down. The Borders chain owed us $30,000 that we were never going to be able to collect when it went bankrupt. Our printing and postage costs run about $18,000 per issue, and we were not sure where that was coming from. We asked for donations on the web and raised $28,000 online. Our readers are incredibly generous. They are faithful and they are loving.\u201d<\/p>\n Just like the publisher herself, it could be that readers also realize that Witches & Pagans<\/em> and SageWoman<\/em> are more than just paper in their hands. Anne likens the magazines to \u201csome tiny little corner of sanctuary\u2026 stories of people and places and things, and what brings us together as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n Anne\u2019s dedication to her magazines\u2019 integrity extends to her advertisers. \u201cWe will not take just any ad that shows up. We don\u2019t take ads from non-Pagan vendors. We\u2019re vouching for what\u2019s there.\u201d <\/p>\n That\u2019s why you won\u2019t find ads in Anne\u2019s magazines that offer to remove curses for $5,000, or unverifiable claims, like \u201cbuy this candle and you\u2019ll win the lottery.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAdvertisers are generous supporters of our work, and important to my bottom line, but my readers are more important. I don\u2019t want to damage my readers\u2019 trust to benefit an advertiser who takes advantage of our readers.\u201d<\/p>\n A Ministry in Print?<\/strong><\/p>\n Does Anne\u2019s dedication to the quality of her publications, her community, and her readership without significant financial gain seem almost\u2026 religious? A ministry? Could be. Anne discovered her Pagan path while working on her master\u2019s degree in theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, intending to become a United Methodist Minister.<\/p>\n Then \u201cI read The Mists of Avalon<\/em> and The Spiral Dance<\/em> and went, \u2018ohhhhhh! That\u2019s who I have been, and what I have been searching for all these years.\u201d <\/p>\n Anne continued her seminary studies, spending her second year as a part-time ministry at a church in Point Arena, California \u2014 where she met her future husband, Alan. She ended up leaving the ministry and becoming consecrated as a priestess of the Lord and Lady; her consecrating priestess was notable Pagan author Diana Paxson<\/a>. <\/p>\n In studying with Diana, Anne discovered that \u201cmy path was not to be pastoral or to be a priestess. My path was to be a publisher. I just didn\u2019t know it yet.\u201d A publisher, she says, is about \u201cbringing together and amplifying voices. It\u2019s not my voice. In a single issue, there\u2019s about 30 people whose voices I\u2019m able to publish \u2014 story, letter, poem, drawing \u2014 I put it out as widely as I can. That\u2019s what I do. <\/p>\n \u201cEach of these people has something to say. Together, we have the ability to share it with more people. We are a choir\u2026 many voices, woven togethe. That\u2019s why we have so many writers. That way, we have critical mass.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, Anne is essentially a minister at heart, and her ministry is her magazines. She says they touch readers for different reasons.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/110\/2019\/03\/Slide2.jpeg\")
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