As we approach Christmas, the festive season, and the New Year, I would like to wish our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. To our subscribers and donors, we extend our heartfelt gratitude. Your support brings us great responsibility, which we take very seriously as we strive to remain a trusted, independent, and critical news source.
The Maltese Herald is a product of Dar Camilleri, my publishing house. I am the full owner of The Maltese Herald and Dar Camilleri and I also own the intellectual property and trademark. Few in the local media landscape can say that they are the sole and single owner of their media house, and the plan is to keep it that way.
My aim is to build and sustain a publishing business that serves as positive agent for the cultural, intellectual and educational development of society. Our values are strongly in favour of human rights, free speech and social justice. We are based in Malta, but we have a worldly outlook and we believe we are operating both in a local and an international market.
I’m having the time of my life building a publishing business of my own, however, building the business as a single and sole owner is, as you can imagine, very grueling. My blood, sweat and tears don’t show in this very nicely designed page (a new updated design is also in the pipeline). Luckily, I’m capable to pay four part-time employees and we are doing relatively well for a startup (we haven’t died). Our content is improving and so is the volume and the quantity. We plan to keep going and to grow even more. We will increase our book publications, investigations, reporting and even audiovisual content.
Donations and subscriptions to this website are a significant source of income of our revenue (around 15%-20%). Then we have book sales and adverts, and I still put a lot of my own money into the business. It will take some time for the business to become fully self-sustainable without my financial aid, but we are slowly progressing towards this target. On the other hand, like any start-up, we also lack capital for further capital investment which is essential to increase our revenues and add new revenue streams (books are also very costly and barely profitable). As always, this capital will be sourced in two ways: from personal savings that grow slowly, and by tapping new credit opportunities that have always significantly boosted our activities and resources. Despite the fact that overall, the publishing business is not profitable, cash-flow is increasing slowly, the readers keep increasing, our book inventory is growing, and our reach is increasing. Personally, I’m in a good financial position without much debt and enough resources to survive, but I can’t say the same for the publishing business which is yet not profitable. I also live a very humble life to make this happen, so being fine, doesn’t mean I’m festively fine.
Keeping everything together requires a lot of work and basically, I spend most of my time writing and working on Dar Camilleri and The Maltese Herald. We are in a constant struggle for survival but we are also in a positive course of growth, so all we need to do, is to survive the next three years while we keep expanding our resources and business. Eventually, if we survive long enough (my estimate is three years) we will be in a position where the business starts “growing by itself”.
Your help is essential for us to reach our targets. Remember to donate and subscribe to support our work.
Revolut: +35677007909
Paypal: markcamilleri@autistici.org
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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