Happy Birthday To… US!

Way back one whole year ago issue one of The Skinny hit the streets, meaning that this October we're one year old and to celebrate we are throwing two massive parties: Liquid Room in Edinburgh on Sat Oct 21, then Glasgow at the Art School on Sat Oct 28. We've booked some of Scotland's hottest bands and like all Skinny parties we've kept prices low to encourage as many of you along as possible. See Lifestyle for more details.

Last October we began by printing 20,000 copies of a 64 page paper; this month we've printed 40,000 copies at 80 pages, with reams of content exclusively online. Our website has been growing rapidly as well, during August we had nearly two million hits, and also during August we produced 12,000 copies weekly of a 64 page paper called SkinnyFest.

All this with an army of volunteer contributors, full time staff who receive only slightly more than minimum wage for working ridiculous hours, and a total reliance on advertising revenue to survive. Quite an achievement, so, since it's our birthday, I'd like to send out a massive thank you to everyone who has been involved in making The Skinny, so far, extremely successful.

All our contributors – the photographers and writers – thanks so much for your time and efforts, I hope you've gained some excellent experience. Thanks as well to the designers who put together each section, without you the paper wouldn't look so wonderful. Probably the largest thanks should go to our editors though, who put in days and weeks of planning, commissioning, organising, editing, laying out and proofing their sections.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with distribution, even if you're working in a café and manage to shift just 20 copies a month, it's still a lot better than those copies been hidden away under less impressive magazines then binned – we print the paper so it gets read, and without our diligent distribution team and people to look after every beautiful Skinny it would never reach anywhere near the same amount of people.

To everyone who has supported The Skinny through sponsorship and advertising, thanks to you as well. We are always striving to provide the best possible value for money, but without your support we would not have a paper.

Thanks to everyone in the office. It is very difficult to explain that it's a lot more than words and pictures that goes into producing a paper packed with, well, words and pictures. Like any other company there are a multitude of administration and other not-so-glamorous jobs and without my colleagues being willing to put in so many hours for a lot less than they would earn doing a similar job elsewhere, for nowhere near the recognition they deserve, this paper certainly would not exist.

Lastly, one specific thankyou – to Stu Younger, Creative Director of the first thirteen issues of The Skinny - who is moving on to explore the world. Good luck Stu, The Skinny couldn't have got so far without you.

It's been a stressful and shaky start; if we are going to become sustainable we need to continue to grow. Every piece submitted to an editor on time, everyone who helps with distribution and every time you advertise, it all makes a difference. Every time your club night or band or book shop would like a bit of coverage we'll do our best, but remember that'll you will be dealing with volunteers, so have a think about ways you can support us in return – distributing the magazine, sticking the magazine article up in your shop window, carrying The Skinny logo on your posters and flyers, etc, etc. Oh and buy an ad! We're scraping by and every ounce of profit we eek out of The Skinny goes straight back into making it better.

So let's all work even harder so that in another twelve months I'm saying thanks to a whole lot more people, and these words are reaching even more Skinny readers.

Xavier Toby
Managing Editor