As Alanis Morissette would say, Isn’t it ironic?
We all know that print media isn’t so hot right now. With print publications seeing falling circulation and with plummeting revenue, it’s understandable that many of them are refocusing on their websites, apps and online subscription models.
The thing is, we’re already doing that pretty well. Our average viewership actually beats out a lot of those businesses, so it’s safe to say we’re doing fairly okay in online video.
However, when it comes to mainstreams old bread and butter – print – were an embarrassment. I mean we have a printer in the office, actually two, but we’ve never sold a newspaper or magazine in our lives.
So we’re going back and conquering the medium we skipped, we’re getting into print. Well kind of.
That’s because to commemorate another rotation around the sun, we’re publishing a one time newspaper called Too Long.
Too Long is our one off, professionally printed newspaper, printed on real news print, at actual tabloid scale – that’s something like this. It’s 28 pages and features a whole load of articles and pieces about the year we’ve been living through as well as some predictions and things to keep an eye on as we hurtle toward 2024. The good news too is that unlike newspapers like this one, it’s not just full of ads either – it’s actually got some real reporting on it exclusively in the newspaper and written by our team.
We’re also working hard on the design of the paper – so not only is it going to look like a newspaper, it’s going to look classically TLDR, featuring beautiful images and illustrations just for Too Long.
It’s not just about the content though – making this many videos and competing with mainstream outlets is expensive… especially when you’re not towing a political party’s line in return for money and don’t have shady billionaire owners or compromised sources of funding. Allegedly. Not that any of the mainstream outlets definitely do. Allegedly. What I’m saying is that it costs a lot to keep TLDR running, so if you’ve enjoyed our videos over the last year and want an exclusive (and maybe a little silly) collectors item then grab a copy of Too Long to show everyone quite how smart and informed you are. We’re also currently commissioning graphic designers to make sure the front page is stunning and worthy of proud display.
Now, I can’t actually show you the finished product yet because… well, it’s not finished. With the year not yet concluded we have started writing some of the pieces, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves with the print run only starting at the end of November – ready for Christmas deliveries if you have a TLDR fan in your life who might also appreciate a copy.
Despite it not being ready to show you yet, it’d be super useful to know how many copies we need to get printed, so we’re running a limited time pre-sale which will be open for 2 weeks from today. We will be selling them again later in the year, but if you want to guaranteed a copy then now’s the time to order… also it just saves us a headache guessing how many to order so we’d really appreciate it.
Also, as an exclusive bonus for this presale, if you pick up the editors package you not only get the newspaper you also get access to our fortnightly video podcast, the Bullpen, where we discuss the process of writing the paper and let you vote for the topics you want covered inside. Plus, as an editor, you’ll get your name printed in the finished edition as a special thank you.
Anyway, you can order either right now for £7.99 or £17.99 – a price which not only covers the surprisingly expensive price of writing, designing and professionally printing a paper like this, but also helps to fund our new content headed into 2024.
So enjoy a recap of the year, support the channel and get yourself a newspaper from a YouTube channel (yes that is a little weird) by clicking the link in the description.
Thanks for your support and for continuing to watch and back TLDR – as always it’s really appreciated.
