Clearing the Shelves

For the past six years – ever since that fateful day in the spring of 2009 when I decided that my offsite storage space was far too inconvenient to be worth the monthly cost – I’ve been surrounded in my office by floor-to-rafters shelving stacked with back issues of WaterShapes.

I love the old magazines, and despite the fact everything we ever printed is now easily available online, I still reach for back issues to look things up or review articles that are pertinent to something else I’m doing with the web site or the newsletter.

But I have to say that I’ve gotten tired of the hemmed-in feeling. I’m at a stage in life in which I’m generally more interested in spinning things off than in holding onto them or gathering more, and yesterday I finally had enough when I entered my office to discover that a shelf had given way under the weight and the resulting avalanche had crushed my trusty all-in-one printer.

So it’s time for a clearance sale, and here’s how it will work: While supplies last, all back issues will be available at a 75% discount off the cover price of $7.00 per issue — that is, they’re on sale for just $1.75 each, plus a nominal shipping and handling fee.

As a very special offer, you can buy a mint-condition set of all 131 issues we published between 1999 and 2011 for just $300.00 complete, with no shipping or handling charges added. There are only eight of these sets available – an amazing, complete archive for print enthusiasts – and we’ll include a copy of our beautiful 100th-issue celebration poster from 2008 for good measure.

There’s a terminal date for this sale: Everything will go either to interested watershapers by May 31, 2015 or to my local recycling center on June 1 – no ifs, ands or buts.

To see which issues are available (outside of the complete sets), go to the STORE button on the top of the WaterShapes.com home page and pull down to the Back Issues tab. Many issues are in short supply or completely out of stock, so time is of the essence.

As a reminder of this offer, I’ll be running ads in the newsletter between now and May to promote the sale, but please be aware: If there are any gaps in your collection of back issues, you have until May 31 to act, or it will be too late and paper copies of WaterShapes will be entirely and forever out of stock.

It’s been good to have these reminders of the past all around as we’ve made the transition to our all-digital future, but it’s time to recapture some storage space and move on. So check your own stock of back issues, identify gaps and order right away: All issues will be available on a first-come, first serve basis, and as they say, supplies are limited!