Full Disclosure: 1996-present

This could be used against me. So what?

If you read enough of my crap, you’ll hear over and again that:

1. I’ve bought all my own tools. There are no free tools in our shop.
2. We’ve never taken money to promote a good or service.
3. We have never participated in any affiliate, pay-to-play or sponsorship schemes.¹

But a few months ago, a reader gave me grief because Lee Valley Tools and (to a much lesser degree) Lie-Nielsen Toolworks sell our books. Isn’t that a form of “sponsorship?” And didn’t Lee Valley Tools sponsor my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine for several years?

I hate whisper campaigns.

This piece is a full disclosure of my financial activities with toolmakers and other business entities since I started making money as a woodworker in November 1996. This entry might be boring/fascinating. It might be used against me by people who don’t like me. So be it.

I would rather answer a tough question from a reader instead of you assuming I’m a giant cock-chugger.

Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM) 1996-2011

At reputable magazines, the editorial and advertising departments have a firewall between them. Ad reps aren’t allowed to pressure editors or inquire about reviews or coverage. At Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM), this was almost always the case.

Only once were we pressured to write a positive review. And it was for a company called Great Tools. (Spoiler: Their tools sucked.) After writing a “meh” review of their drills, the company went apeshit and threatened to pull their ads if we didn’t “correct” the review.

The word came down that we had to French kiss Great Tools. I refused, but another editor took the bullet. From that moment, I got a reputation as a Boy Scout on staff, and it wasn’t a good reputation. More like I wasn’t willing to play along. Because I wasn’t. And I took a heap of shit about it.

When we reviewed tools, we borrowed them, used them and then sent them back. If the toolmaker didn’t want them back, we would sell them to the employees of F+W Media (about 300 people) and send the toolmaker the money. If the toolmaker didn’t want the money, it went into an account that paid for glue, screws and wood for the magazine’s workshop.

When I began reviewing hand tools for the magazine, I declined to borrow tools for the most part. I paid for them with my own money. Reviewed them. Then sold them to readers at a discount (you can find these sales on my old PWM blog and our own blog if you do some searching).

At some point, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks asked if I would do a few how-to videos with the company (hand-tool videos were in short supply). I agreed, but all the royalties went to the Roger Cliffe Foundation (the scholarship arm of the Marc Adams School of Woodworking). I paid for my travel to Maine and all materials for the videos. I lost money on those videos.

In 2011 when I quit at PWM, I started taking those royalties from Lie-Nielsen. I now make about $1,200 a year in royalties from Lie-Nielsen for those old videos.

On My Own: 2011-2017

After I left PWM, I was asked to be a contributing editor to the magazine, which I did for six years until they fired Megan Fitzpatrick (their loss, my gain). During that time, I was paid $1,000 a month to write four to eight blog entries a month for the magazine’s website.

Also during that time, the magazine changed the banner for my blog and said it was sponsored by Lee Valley Tools. I still have zero idea what that meant. They never told me, and they never told me what to write for my blog. Megan was the only one who reviewed my entries, and I wrote whatever I wanted to. No one directed what I wrote about or censored my writing.

The other event that happened in 2011 was I was asked by Lee Valley Tools to serve as an expert witness in a lawsuit the company filed against IBC, their former blade manufacturer. I was asked to provide commentary/insight on the history of the hand tool industry during the previous 15 years. I was deposed, and I had to write a report on some steel specifications. I think I was paid about $3,000. I didn’t enjoy the work and have shied away from it since.

Also during this period, Lost Art Press began wholesaling our books. We sell to several tool retailers and manufacturers. If you think this is a conflict of interest, please know two things:

1. We also buy lots of stuff from these retailers and manufacturers.
2. It is an almost-insignificant part of our business.

About 90 percent of our sales are direct to consumers like you. The other 10 percent are through places like Lee Valley, Highland Woodworking and a handful of others. Selling wholesale has never been an important part of our business. It is, frankly, a pain in our ass, and we have thought several times about discontinuing wholesale sales.

What stops us? Our international readers. Selling to Lee Valley and a few other overseas sellers is the only reasonable way we can get books over to Europe, the UK and Australia.

Sidebar: What About …..?

I get asked all the time why we don’t sell books through Woodcraft and Rockler. Here is the straight shit: I like Woodcraft, for the most part, but I’m salty that they copied Lie-Nielsen’s planes for their Wood River line, and they carry a lot of copycat products. We have sold books through individual franchisee owners, but we don’t work with corporate Woodcraft.

And Rockler? They approached us about carrying our books with the following deal. They would sell our books through their website, but we would have to fulfill the individual orders from our warehouse. They would give us 30 percent of the revenue from each sale.

It was the easiest FU I have ever said.

The Present: 2012-2024

We still sell wholesale to Lee Valley, Highland and (to a small degree) Lie-Nielsen. It’s still a tiny part of our business.

The one odd wrinkle to all this has been my old content from PWM. It’s now owned by Active Interest Media (AIM), which owns most of the woodworking magazines out there. They own my content outright. Please know that I’m not at all bitter about it. That’s what I signed up for, and they own it fair and square.

They can use it across all their platforms, and I have no control over where it appears or what it appears next to. So if you see my stuff out there with AIM, know that it’s not me. It’s AIM that decides where it goes.

The only financial relationship I have with AIM is they pay me a 10 percent royalty on the videos I made while at PWM. So far, I have made $1,200 total.

Lord, what else? Ah, the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Events. Who pays whom? No one pays anybody anything. Lie-Nielsen comes here for free. No money exchanges hands. (Full disclosure: I bought everyone pizza during the last event.) We do this because it helps both businesses, and customers love it. (It’s an enormous PITA.)

Handworks? We have no financial interest. We pay the same booth fee as everyone. The Benchcrafted folks do all the work to put on the event. In exchange, we bring them a cooler filled with Cincinnati sausage (not a euphemism).

Advertising? We advertise on Facebook, Instagram and Criteo. All that is dollars leaving LAP. We do not accept any advertising dollars from anyone. Never have. We don’t have BS ads on our blogs. And never will.

So that’s the whole story. If anyone tells you different, let me know. Because they are damn liars.

I won’t say I’m unbiased as a writer, because that’s impossible. We all have our biases, and I try to be clear about what mine are. To review:

1. I dislike copycats.
2. I like to help my neighbors, so domestic goods are appreciated.
3. I don’t think venture capital is a force for good.
4. I dislike companies that use the “hard sell.”
5. I don’t like companies that crap on their competitors.

So that’s it. Congrats for making it to the end.

1. I have nothing against any of these programs. They keep many content creators in business. Everybody gets to choose how they run their own business.