📼 A Pouch Q&A... video!
Arguably half the video is just me explaining when Pouch Issue 3 is coming out
Hello my friends!
Today I have something NEW and UNUSUAL to share with you all….
It is not a newsletter…
Nor an Instagram post…
Nor is it software nor even a zine…
It is a VIDEO!!! 🥳🥳
I recorded a Q&A video about Pouch magazine!
📼 Watch: Pouch Q&A: Answering what you asked (and didn't ask) about Pouch Magazine
▶️ Subscribe to my ✨NEW✨ Pouch Studio YouTube channel: @pouch.studio
Why did I do this?! And why talk about a video on my newsletter? Don’t worry, I’m not pivoting to video 💀 I just had a lot to say!!
I’m not afraid to write long pieces (see: my 5000-word essay from earlier this year), but — I don’t know if it comes across in this newsletter lol — I hold myself to a higher standard when it comes to writing as opposed to any other medium. For me, it’s a matter of courtesy: When I present to you something I’ve written, I’m asking for your time and focus, in a world where “time” and “focus” are rare, precious commodities. If I’m asking you to read 5000 words, I want the words to be GOOD! I want your reading experience to be smooth, fun, easy and enjoyable; I do not want to waste your focus or your time. Whether I succeed at this is not really for me to decide, but regardless, I stand by every newsletter I send and every page of Pouch I publish. Each one passes my personal bar of, “OK, I think someone can have fun reading this.”
When it came to the Pouch Q&A, my intuition told me that I had even more than 50001 words to say, but I did not have the time nor the confidence to make all those words “good”…!
You may be wondering: What the heck could you be covering in your Pouch Q&A that is so hard to communicate??
Well… watch the video 😎
JK I explain later in this newsletter too (I mean not fully JK, please do watch the video!!)
I decided to record a video because I felt like the way I spoke the words — the tone of my voice, the facial expressions I make — could help support in the places where I lacked confidence that my chosen words, alone, could communicate what I wanted to say. Plus, video content has that multi-taskable quality to it, where you can put it on in the background to keep you company while you do some chores or take a walk. It makes me feel less pressure to say everything neatly, if I imagine my words politely accompanying you on a walk, rather than boldly declared in front of you as words on a page!
Anyhow, I write today’s newsletter with my usual FORMIDABLE standard for craft 😌 (I’m JK again) and I humbly ask that you watch my Q&A video, at your leisure, if you so desire, full attention not required.
Enjoy, and don’t forget to hit that like and subscribe button, everyone!! 🩵
♡ vrk
📖 Pouch Issue 2: DOING GOOD
Friends, Pouch Issue 2 has been doing REALLY well!! The reception has been beyond what I ever expected: I’ve sold over 1000 copies of Pouch now (😱???), and I keep selling out of both Issue 1 and 2 on my online store — actually, as of this writing, Pouch Issue 2 is sold out again! (Restock coming this Friday!!) There are now also TWO brick & mortar shops selling Pouch — Good Postage in North Carolina, and a second store that I’ll announce when it’s ready…!
(Also: If you’re interested in Pouch wholesale, send me an email at victoriakirst@gmail.com!)
Oh and the Pouch party last month ALSO RULED! The turnout was incredible — I was honestly so worried that no one would show up 😭 so it was so meaningful to me that, not only did a big crowd of friendly people come all the way to Bushwick on a random Wednesday night, to celebrate the launch of the second issue of a tiny indie zine, but the crowd was also like…. theeeeee kindest sweetest people imaginable. It was perfect, PERFECT!! 😭💖
I’m so utterly grateful to everyone who has supported me and Pouch, whether you’re someone who has bought multiple copies of the magazine for you and your friends, or if you’re simply someone who said, “oh that’s cool!” when you heard me talk about Pouch in conversation. Seriously, I cannot tell you how much this means to me.
THANK YOU 😭
💞 With love comes questions!
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Pouch over the last month! Lots of people wanting to know when Issue 3 is coming out or wanting to be involved in some way, and also lots of people curious about the making of an indie magazine.
A big part of the reason I wanted to make a Q&A video is to just have a resource to answer these questions about Pouch. I’m not “starting a YouTube” channel per se; I’m not planning to post regular content on my YouTube channel (I can barely keep up with my existing Substack and Instagram!!) and I don’t expect this Q&A video to get a ton of views lol. It’s more like, if there are die-hard Pouch fans, or die-hard indie magazine nerds, who are curious about Pouch and/or indie mags and want to know ALL the details — well this video is for you!!!
Here’s what I cover in the video:
What inspired you to make Pouch magazine?
When is Pouch Issue 3 coming out?
How did Pouch come into existence?
How do I contribute to Pouch Issue 3?
What’s the origin story of the name, “Pouch”?
How do you pick who is featured in Pouch?
OK that’s not that many questions. How long could this video be?
Fifty-nine minutes and nine seconds long 😭
HOW? is this video?? so long?????
It’s because of this question: “When is Pouch Issue 3 coming out?”
This question alone, with subsequent follow-up questions, comprises about half the video.
(…OK maybe that doesn’t fully explain the length. The other reason is, I’M WORDY, if you haven’t noticed already!!)
📆 When, indeed, is Pouch Issue 3 coming out?
IT TRULY WARMS MY HEART that this is the most common question I get about Pouch!!! I cannot believe so many people are excited about the magazine, excited enough to be eagerly awaiting the next issue 🥹
But this is also the question whose answer elicits the most follow-up questions lol, and the answers to the follow-up questions are…… long and complex.
Let me just show you!!
Here’s a fake conversation that illustrates the problem:
🎤 Q: When is Pouch Issue 3 coming out?
💬 A: Agh, you know, realistically: Probably Spring 2026. I really wanted to publish more frequently, but I think I can only manage 1 issue of Pouch a year right now.
🎤 Q: WHOA for some reason I thought this was a monthly magazine. Why just 1 issue a year?
💬 A: Well, I made Pouch as a passion project. I don’t have a team; outside of the community contributions, I make the entire magazine by myself. It takes me about 3 months of full-time work to edit, design, illustrate, photograph, print, and ship each issue.
🎤 Q: Oh wow! How do you get paid during this? Did you get a grant, or do you freelance or something? Or do you make enough from Pouch to cover the bills?
💬 A: This is 100% self-funded, no grants or anything like that. I’ve been on sabbatical this whole time, so outside of a tiny bit of freelancing, I haven’t been making money lol. Pouch is doing *great* for a zine, and I am making some money from it2, but it’s nowhere close enough for me to live off the profits from Pouch alone.
🎤 Q: Oh, so what’s going to happen after your sabbatical? Are you going to still continue Pouch?
💬 A: Yes I want to!! I’m going to try my best!!
🎤 Q: Are you going to try to make Pouch into a business, then?
💬 A: Ah… well KIND of… The thing is, even successful indie magazines do not typically make enough money from the magazine alone to be financially sustainable. They have to branch out into other product offerings, like merch, or publishing other titles, or Patreon or something to make it all work.
🎤 Q: Ooh omg so are you going to start a Patreon?! What are you thinking?
💬 A: No…. I know this is going to sound very random, but I wanna build software actually.
🎤 Q: 🤔 Software?
💬 A: Yeah, I’m actually a software engineer, and I want to build software for paper lovers.
🎤 Q: What’s software for paper lovers? Please tell me this is not some weird AI thing
💬 A: NO I HATE AI
🎤 Q: Oh wow, I’ve never heard a tech person say they hate AI. Why do you want to build software, then? Sounds your passion is in magazines and not in software. You don’t have to build software just because your career was in tech.
💬 A: NO IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME
WE CAN’T JUST LET THE SUPERVILLAINS WIN!!!!!!3🎤 Q: ??????
…….
YOU SEE HOW QUICKLY THIS GOES SIDEWAYS!
The twisty-turny answer to this question alone — When is Pouch Issue 3 coming out? — is why I made a Pouch Q&A video. To answer this question properly, I feel like I have to explain how Pouch works now, how Pouch came to be, what I’m planning to do next, and why. It was hard to come up with these answers for myself — I’ve done so much introspection over the last month to get there! — and it was hard to figure out how to give a worthy explanation to any passionate Pouch fan wanting to understand the full story.
This video is the best I could come up with!! I poured my heart into this, into the answers of, well, all the questions asked, but especially for the answer to, When are we getting Issue 3?
Again, I don’t expect a 59-minute-long-Q&A-about-a-tiny-indie-magazine to get a ton of views 😂 but if you’re a fan of Pouch, it would mean a lot to me if you took some time to watch!! 💓
💻 What’s next?
Well if you WATCH the VIDEO…
lol I will explain here too!!
I’m not working on Pouch Issue 3 right now, and I won’t think about Pouch Issue 3 for at least the next few months. Instead I’m focused on software!
Why software? In short:
Because financially I can’t work on Pouch full-time, and I don’t want to put pressure on Pouch to make a ton of money.4 I’d love to keep Pouch a magazine made out of passion.
Because software engineering is my expertise, and if I had to choose a “second revenue stream” to subsidize my work on Pouch, software would be the easiest route for me.
Because I’m actually passionate about building software tools like Journal Helper!
And because I think it’s REALLY important that we have software engineers who are AGAINST an AI-centered future, who are committed to AVOIDING AI in their products, who DEEPLY value human stories and human art — building independent software right now.
I’m picking up where I left off in December with Journal Helper. I’m gonna fix some bugs and reply to some feedback on the existing tool, but I have been ACHING to create a few other software tools: One has to do with printing photos in bulk; the other has to do with super ambitious journal layouts. I’ll be sharing more this summer!!
On a meta-level, I am officially ending my sabbatical and starting a new chapter: I’m guess I’m trying to start a business! I’m going to try to make a software business as an independent solo creator, 100% self-funded (and with no AI 💀). It’s going to be a slow journey and my first efforts are going to look really humble. But I’m hopeful that eventually, I can make enough money through this business such that every year, I can take 3 months out of the year to make Pouch, income-free, without any expectation that Pouch must reach some certain sales goal to continue.
I… do not expect I’ll be able to achieve this in 2025 😂 BUT I’ve got a bit of runway beyond that to self-fund my ventures a while longer, so I want to give it a try and see how far I get.
THAT’S the plan, so if you don’t see me post about Pouch for a few months, that is why!! I haven’t forgotten Pouch 💖 and Issue 3 is COMING, but you probably won’t hear me talk about it until later this year. I’m hopeful that this will lead me to being able to create Pouch indefinitely ☀️
📼 That video again is...
➡️ RIGHT HERE ⬅️
SEE YOU NEXT TIME, BYE~~
Over 9500 words in fact, based on the transcript 😭
As people say, you don’t make zines to get rich 😂 (It’s part of what makes zines so special — most everyone who make zines, make them out of passion.) Usually it’s a great success if you can just break even from a zine project, esp one that is as expensive to print as Pouch — so I’m grateful I’m making even a tiny bit of money from Pouch 🙏
I EXPLAIN IN THE VIDEO, I SWEAR!!!
Of course if it HAPPENS to make money, I’m not mad at that!!
yes to sustainable, self-funded indie building!! lfg!!!