SO here we are. Four elections and a referendum later, we’ve just become the latest Scottish newspaper to make it to four figures. Will there ever be another? Right now, you wouldn’t bet on it.

Then again, who would have bet on us making it this far? They told us print was dead, and our brilliant readers have proved them wrong.

Since we published our first edition on November 24, 2014, without the faintest idea whether we’d last beyond the week, we’ve done more than many newspapers do in twice that time. We’ve launched The National Roadshow, visiting nearly 40 Scottish towns and cities now (mostly with the Wee Ginger Dug), from Dumfries to Kirkwall, Eyemouth to Fort William.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon sends 1000th edition congratulations to The National

We’ve added a Saturday edition and a successful monthly partnership magazine with Bella Caledonia. We’ve launched our new YesDIY section, publicising the great work being done by Yes groups up and down the country.

We’ve got Gaelic and Scots columns, video columns and cartoons. We celebrate Scottish artists, writers and composers. We’ve fought a long-running battle with the Home Office on behalf of ordinary people who want to call Scotland their home, and told stories from our country’s rich history.

We’ve done glossy front pages, design-your-own-front pages, blank front pages, iconic front pages, angry front pages. Some front pages we probably shouldn’t have done …

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed coming along on this journey with us.

And now today, 1000 editions and millions of words in, it feels like a pretty good time to take stock.

So, how are we doing?

Well, the good news is that digitally we’re doing really well.

We’re only halfway through the month and we’ve already had more than 600,000 unique visitors to our website. The National is comfortably among the best-performing social media news pages in Scotland, punching miles above our weight.

Our subscriber numbers also keep growing, and we’ve got more than 5000 people signed up.

The truth is that we are being read by more people than ever before. The National, no matter what happens over the next couple of years, will be a digital force to be reckoned with.

The bad news is that sales of the paper aren’t quite so good. The latest ABC figures showed we averaged about 7800 copies a day last year. Of course, we’re not immune to the pressures of the print media market and we’ve got to acknowledge that most newspapers are facing similar problems.

But some of those problems are felt more acutely by The National than others. As a title without a natural base (The Herald in Glasgow, The Scotsman in Edinburgh etc), we’re spread evenly across nearly 5000 shops, all over Scotland, and it can be difficult for us to put enough copies in each newsagent to meet demand. We know we’ve got a problem there, and one that’s not easy to fix.

But the biggest single thing that has affected our sales in the last year was June’s General Election result and the perception that it was a setback for independence. In the four weeks following the result, we lost more than 1000 readers.

That’s pretty stark.

But it’s worth knowing. Because we need our readers to stick by us in the hard times. If you want a newspaper that’s able to provide a counterpoint to the rest of Scotland’s Unionist press when that second referendum campaign begins, then we need you to help us get there.

Judging by the number of copies we sold when we last did a big special edition like this one, there could be as many as 2000 of you reading this article who have just bought the paper today to see what this whole 1000-edition thing is all about.

You might be trying it for the first time, or might have given up buying it regularly at some point over the past three and a bit years. 

If that’s the case, and if we’re not doing something right, get in touch at community@thenational.scot and we’ll take it on board.

We want to hear your views on the paper, what you want to see as we continue to move forward.

Over the past week, we’ve been running a front page competition on our website, letting our readers have their say on which of our 1000 covers they liked the most. We’ve revealed the winner today on page 16, and you can flick through a gallery of all 1000 on our website this morning.

But we haven’t yet published the front page which would be the surefire winner in any contest. That’s the one that reports the news that Scotland will be an independent country again.

When that day comes – and it will – we’ll definitely have a story on our website. It’ll be read by hundreds of thousands of people. It’ll be seen on social media by millions of Scots.

But will that historic print edition of The National be in the shops? That’s up to you.