This article appears courtesy of WhatTheyThink.com.
According to the web site of MagCloud, a site for self-publishing magazines, there are 16,000 magazine titles in America today. I’m not sure if that is an exaggeration, but I am sure there are a lot of magazines. In my personal survey last month at the local Barnes & Noble store, I found over 500 individual titles.
How and where are these magazines published? Are they run on the big web presses at Donnelley and Quad Graphics? No, in fact most of them are sheet-fed. Do they enjoy lavish circulation? No; most magazines have a small number of subscribers — several thousand is considered a success by small magazine publishers.
Even “big” national magazines like the New Yorker have only a few hundred thousand subscribers. Considering that there are about 10 million people in metropolitan New York, that circulation is a reasonable fraction of the available readers.
About eight weeks ago a friend of mine approached me to write an article about something local. I have lived in San Luis Obispo, California, for 41 years and have seen the city’s population almost triple in that time. I agreed to write an article about a Chinese candy maker I knew in the 1970s, a fellow who made an impression on me when I was a young man.
The article, she explained, was to be published in a new local magazine called San Louie. (Normally the s in Luis is spoken: Loo-iSS). The magazine, she continued, would be an arts magazine with local flair, an homage to a city that locals love for a variety of reasons.
The first issue of San Louie magazine, published by MagCloud, a thinly disguised subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Labs in Palo Alto, California. Click here to preview the issue online.
We have seen two new local business magazines this year (an interesting event during a bad economy), both colorful publications that promote small business and local tourism. (Our economy is dependent upon tourism.) In both cases I wondered why, and especially why now? I have not seen the second edition of either one yet.
After I submitted my article and photos I gave it little thought, except to inquire occasionally about progress.
Last week San Louie hit the street (in a manner of speaking). It is spectacular.
San Louie was printed at HP Labs in Palo Alto by their subsidiary printing organization called MagCloud. It is the finest printing from an Indigo press that I have seen to date. (But, coming from HP Labs, why would it be less than stellar?) The business model is interesting: Publishers — anyone with a magazine idea — send finished PDF files to MagCloud, which they archive and print on-demand. The magazine publisher is given a small share of the retail price of the magazine for each sale.
I ordered a copy of San Louie to test the system. It took about five days to receive my copy in the mail. The return address was 1501 Page Mill Road, an address that I have visited a few times to tour HP’s research labs.
The magazine is 8.25 x 10.75 inches in size, allowing for bleeds in a U.S. letter-size template. Every page has the ability to be full color. Interestingly, MagCloud prefers that color images be sent as RGBs, which saves transit time, and allows the MagCloud people to process the RGB files through their own profiles to get to CMYK rather than to have the customer (inevitably) send poorly processed CMYK files. The result is lovely.
MagCloud also has an iPad app, which allows some of the many magazines in their catalog to be downloaded for free. I loaded this app on my iPad and tried it, and it is similarly lovely. I have now downloaded a number of new magazines available from the MagCloud catalog, and I am really wowed by one called Photoblur.
My individual copy of San Louie cost $8.30, on sale in July (normally $10.60). It’s 48 pages, saddle-stitched. At the newsstands a 48-page magazine would sell for about half that price, so this is premium-price territory.
If San Louie chooses to post their beautiful magazine on the MagCloud site or iPad app, it must be free. Though MagCloud promises to offer a for-pay magazine site in the future, that’s not an option now.
The benefit of publishing with MagCloud for my friends is that they have no up-front cost for publishing their magazine, and there is no minimum order. So far, about 100 copies have sold, which means that my friends’ gross sales are $100. They are not doing this for the money (it’s a good thing!); instead, they will be donating the money to the local animal shelter.
There was also the cost of editing, illustrating, and producing the InDesign document and the PDF, which will not be recouped by the artists and illustrators who made San Louie.
So, why do they do this? An answer will be forthcoming. The inaugural issue party is scheduled for Friday evening, and I will ask all involved.
An area where HP/MagCloud could be more helpful to the publishers who partake of their service: When a buyer orders a printed copy of the magazine, MagCloud charges the buyer for the printing and mailing of the magazine, but they will not give the buyer’s name and contact information to the publisher. That’s a shame, because a buyer would be an excellent prospect for a subscription, and that information is lost to the very organization that needs the information the most.
Even if MagCloud provided access to customers as a blind transaction (publisher sends new issue announcement, MagCloud forwards the announcement to previous buyers), it would be more helpful than the current model. If one follows the adage about existing customers being the best prospects for new business, this is a great opportunity for both MagCloud and the publishers involved.
In a world where more and more “successful” businesses have no visible revenue stream, MagCloud provides an opportunity for both MagCloud and many independent publishers to make money.
And, in the end, I suspect that HP labs has the vision of taking MagCloud out to their impressive base of Indigo owners, and offering it as a franchise for distribute-and-print services to the independent magazine publishers of the world. I would do that if I were HP Labs! All that is necessary is strict quality control, workflow process perfection, and it could be launched in months. With that model (which is like PrintingForLess.com) numerous HP Indigo press owners could profit from business coming in to the MagCloud site. Distributed production would mean shorter turn-around, and closer-to-the-buyer production.
I’m thinking up a magazine to publish… Disorganized Desk Monthly, perhaps?
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on August 5, 2010
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