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The Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives / Materials / Records / Inventories |
| Inventory of the Records of The Body Politic & Pink Triangle Press | |
| Page 17 of 40 / Appx 450 words / 1 image |
Page 17 / Inventory Series 9
Subscriptions
No subscription order information appeared in the first issue of The Body Politic (though an address was published). A small box offering six issues for $2 showed up in the second, but it was not until # 4 (May / Jun 1972) that there was a form on which a potential subscriber could fill in his or her name and place an order. The first major ad soliciting subscribers appeared as the back cover of # 12 (Mar / Apr 1974). Later sub ads are noted under Series 11: Promotion.
Subscription renewal mailings were not instituted until after the mid-'70s, when membership in the Canadian Periodical Publishers Association taught us techniques that were standard practice for other magazines.
Despite this, The Body Politic quickly developed a committed and geographically widespread base of subscribers. At its peak there were more than 3,000 of them, a third living outside Canada.
TBP also made its way by subscription into many university and city libraries in Canada and quite a few outside the country. Many other gay and small- press publications, the media, politicians and prisoners received subscriptions free of charge.
Subscription records, at first handled manually, were eventually maintained in a series of outside computer facilities: first through early collective member and long- time volunteer Don Bell; later through Terry Farley and Ward Beattie at the University of Toronto; and finally through a commercial service offered by Saturday Night Publications.
As with Series 8 (Classified advertising), substantial weeding of order forms has been done. The criteria for keeping material were: to show a variety of forms in use; to maintain notes constituting correspondence or indicating internal procedures or personnel; and to preserve material related to people who later became significant in the history of The Body Politic, Pink Triangle Press or the community as a whole.
Note: The Body Politic tried to protect the identity of its subscribers: the seizure of subscription lists (among much else) in the Dec 30, 1977 police raid caused great concern. In keeping with this, the Archives may at its discretion restrict access to some of the records listed here.