Finding dedicated and loyal readers one of the most important challenges faced by every magazine, which is why MastheadOnline has expanded its blog roster to include Circ Without Shame.

Written by Stacey May Fowles, this new blog will offer workable ideas on audience development for medium- and small-sized magazines, as well as unique perspectives and philosophies on small magazine publishing.

Stacey May is the current publisher of Shameless, a feminist magazine for teenage girls, and the circulation and marketing director at The Walrus. She has assisted in circulation and business development projects for Descant, Magazines Canada, and Hive Magazine.

She’s also an accomplished writer, having published two novels Be Good and Fear of Fighting and contributing to numerous online and print periodicals, notably Open Book Toronto, Torontoist, Broken Pencil, SubTerrain and Prism International.

In her first post, Stacey May explores how small, independent magazines are always "succeeding in hard times," regardless of headlines:

Big magazine folks often look at the small mag world with sympathy, disdain, or even confusion.  You had a party to launch an issue? There’s no seven -series renewal coming at expiry? You do this for free? Truth is the Web has been an easy, cheap, DIY fix for small maggers for years; we’ve been pulling in subscribers via MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, BCC’d emails, and busy high traffic blogs because that’s all we could afford to do. As a result we’ve gotten very good at it. It’s hard for us not to chuckle when all of a sudden the bigger side of the business is embracing it in the face of hard times. (The web is not the only thing we’ve managed to master. We’re also damn good at relationships. We love our giveaways, contests, contra, sponsorship and strategic partnerships.)