Mr. Magazine

Remember the old saying, “the freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press!” Well, the folks at MagCloud want you, not only to own the press, but to write, edit and design your own press. A product of years of research at the HP Labs, MagCloud wants to “ease the pain” of magazine publishing and give the opportunity to everyone with an idea, any idea, to become a magazine publisher. MagCloud’s own take on things is as such,

“MagCloud is an HP Labs research project evaluating new web services that will provide small independent magazine publishers, online content owners, and small businesses the ability to custom publish digitized magazines and economically print and fulfill on demand.”

Derek Powazek, whom I first interviewed when he helped launch JPG magazine, serves as a consultant to HP Labs on this project. I have asked him few questions regarding MagCloud. After a brief intro, Derek answered my seven questions regarding this new venture that wants to make YOU a magazine publisher overnight…

He wrote, “Before I begin, I want to stress that MagCloud is a project by HP Labs, currently in beta, to which I am a consultant. It was not my idea – it’s been percolating for years within HP, actually – but it happened to dovetail wonderfully with my interests, and I came on board to help guide it forward. The core members of the team are Udi Chatow, Andy Fitzhugh, and Andrew Bolwell – all brilliant HP Labcoats. I can introduce you if you like. With that in mind, here are some thoughts….”

1. MagCloud promises to make magazine publishing as easy as
photocopying at Kinko’s. Is this the future of magazine publishing or
the return to old memo-graphed underground publications?

I’ve run a magazine out of Kinko’s. It’s not that easy!
My personal hope is that MagCloud kickstarts a new generation of zinesters, people raised on the ease of publishing on the web, but who still hunger for the beauty and permanence of print. The last creative explosion in zines was kicked off by copy machine. The next will be powered by print-on-demand coupled with the internet.

2. Do you view MagCloud as a publisher, printer or distributor?

If I had to pick one of the three, MagCloud would have to be a distributor, because we partner with printers, and our goal is to enable our members to become publishers themselves.
But, really, MagCloud is is a connector. We connect publishers to their audiences, printers with magazines, readers with magazines, etc. We see an enormous opportunity to breathe new life into the magazine biz, if only publishing was as easy and accessible as the web.

3. When would a magazine produced by MagCloud reach the status of a
real magazine (i.e. mass distributed magazine)?

We’ve got a pretty loose definition of what a magazine is. But, in general, if you print on paper, on a schedule, to subscribers, we think you’re a real magazine.

The whole idea of mass distribution comes out of embedded expectations about the economy of magazines. You can only make money in traditional magazines at scale, because it’s just not cost-effective to do small print runs. But that’s a technology problem – traditional offset printing is just too expensive to do in small batches. But what if it wasn’t?

If you look at the cost per page of printing, traditional offset printing is actually getting more expensive because of rising paper costs, but the cost per page of print-on-demand is getting cheaper/better/faster ever year. As price points merge, and it will cost just as much/little to print a single copy as a thousand. That change is happening now, and the industry is just beginning to notice.

4. After your experience with JPG and moving it from lulu.com to a
regularly published magazine, are you looking for an encore with the
titles coming through the pipe line at MagCloud?

Absolutely, only this time, we want to empower other people’s magazines. The math here is simple: If it was easier to make magazines, more people would do it. More magazines means more potential breakout hits. Too many great magazines don’t get made today because the business of printing and distribution is so hampered by inefficiency.

5. How do you view the future of magazine publishing and what is the
biggest challenge you think it is facing?

Young people are abandoning print magazines for the web – they have been for years. The way to bring them back is to put them in charge and see what they make. It’s easy for the pros to scoff at this idea, but remember that groups of amateurs have made some pretty amazing things online (insert inevitable Wikipedia reference here).

And remember, MagCloud is not just for the amateurs. The pros are bound by the same difficulties. Show me a dozen editors and I’ll show you a hundred magazine ideas that would exist if only it was a little easier. Not to mention all the content remixes and short-run editions professional publishers could put together on a system like MagCloud.

6. Will technology help print and add more printed products to the
marketplace or technology will replace print?

I think that we’re still figuring out what kind of stuff belongs in print, and what doesn’t. Remember that, for years, if you wanted to find out what the weather was like in a certain place, you bought a book. A Farmer’s Almanac. Putting that kind of variable data on paper seems crazy now, because we have a better way to do it.

So, yes, technology will drive some print products to their grave. Personally, I would not want to be running a traditional news weekly right now.

But I we both know that print is not dead. There’s content that really belongs in print. Look at the success of Make Magazine, photography journals, recipe books. We just need to figure out how print and web can stop competing and start collaborating.

7. What do you consider the single most important selling feature of MagCloud?

That someone who’s fanatically into a topic area could create a magazine, build an audience, and actually make money selling it, without ever having to stuff envelopes. Hasn’t that always been the dream of independent publishing?

So, magazine dreamers of the world there is no need to unite anymore for each and every one of you can have his own “cake” and eat it too… you are indeed on cloud nine with your ideas now, or should I say you are on MagCloud.

“Is God Dead?” was the question on the cover of the April 8, 1966 Time magazine. My late brother Khalil was three years ahead of me in our high school, Tripoli (Lebanon) Boys School. Time was required reading for the 11th and 12th grade students at the school. When I saw his copy of the magazine I could not wait for him to finish reading it so I can read it. (I was not allowed to touch it until he is done with it). That issue and that cover left quite an impact on me back then.
Well, last week, visiting the newsstands in Memphis, I had a big flash back to 1966. I saw what looked like the cover of Time from 1966, but it was, in fact, Christianity Today (another magazine I got to know during my high school years in Lebanon thanks for a visiting pastor from America to our Presbyterian church in Tripoli). The cover of the July 2008 CT had the answer for the 42 year-old question Time magazine asked in 1966. In a similar take on Time 1966 cover (same color and design) the CT cover answered the burning question Is God Dead? CT’s answer “God Is Not Dead Yet.” Issue settled for now… but that “Yet” may make room for a more definitive answer in the future, so stay tuned…maybe for another 42 years. At least we are making progress.

My friend Rex Hammock has promised on his blog today that he is going to offer his opinions on the issue of split covers between single copies and subscribers copies of the same magazine. Just for the sake of giving him more examples and points of reference for his comments, here are the two editions of Harper’s Bazaar for July. A stunning and sexy Gwyneth Paltrow image graces the subscribers’ cover that jumps from every mailbox and coffee table (always keeping subscribers on their toes, so to speak), and a run-of-the-mill single copy cover that reflects the habitual look of the magazine so newsstands’ buyers will not be confused whether it is the same magazine they buy every month (Think Cosmo, same cover design for how many years now?)…

However this ever expanding trend is not only limited to the newsstands vs. the subscribers, but also continues to spread among different newsstands’ geographical locations testing different covers and different images. Ladies’ Home Journal’s July issue offers a split newsstands distribution with two cover photos, that of the celebrity Kathie Lee Gifford and the hot and sizzling summer cookout. It is fun to note that the ribs image did not make it to the Gifford cover, but Ms. Gifford was able to make it, albeit, in a very small inset on the ribs cover…go figure!

The summer double issue of National Geographic Adventure lives up to its tag-line: Dream It, Plan It, Do It. The subscribers’ cover is a relaxing beauty to look at; an invite without words to get you into the magazine. The newsstands’ cover, with its usual cover lines, maybe un-relaxing in its design and typography, but extremely relaxing with the choice of topics. Whether you are a single copy buyer or a subscriber this issue of NG Adventure is a must to have, to enjoy, to relax and to live it up. It also adheres to the basics of human memory recall skills: people see and remember color first, pictures second and type third… That is why I always tell my clients not to change the color and pictures when having a split edition between the single copy and subscribers’ editions so the readers will not be confused….as for the type, by the time our memory cells are at work, the color and the photo image already tell us it is the same magazine, so there is no room for confusion.

Some magazines have declared the winner when it comes to the presidential elections and some are still waiting for the public to decide. Others have decided on their dream team working together. Here is a quick snap shot of some magazines and the way they treated the Democrat and Republican candidates.
For Rolling Stone there is no question about their choice (and no cover lines, as in what more can we say?) Barack Obama is the choice and for the first time in a long long time RS has a cover with no cover lines… (last that I can remember are the John Lennon and Yoko Ono cover in 1981, the Demi Moore cover in 1995, and George Harrison in 2002. As in the Obama cover, there was nothing but the name of the magazine, the date and the picture…not even a caption identifying the pictures.
Fortune magazine on the other hand opted for giving the people the choice between the candidates. A split cover on newsstands offers readers the two candidates (each on his own cover) with the coverline How I’ll Fix The Economy. The editors at Fortune told min newsletter that they will let us know the result of the single copy vote at a later date.

Newsmax magazine opted for the person who is ready when the Red Phone rings at 3:00 am. With the Red Phone being the big picture on the cover, the coverline informs readers that McCain is ready to take that call.
My choice of the presidential election covers is that of New York magazine (which, by the way, has become my favorite magazine of late). Why decide when you can have the dream team…McCain and Obama joining hands and working together…Maybe that will be the dream team for the future…but wait a second, who will be the Presidential Candidate and who will be the VP? Oh, well, just a minute detail…

Enjoy the summer and look for more presidential covers coming soon…

BPA, along with about 10 other association and auditing bodies, including ABC, has ramped up a campaign to combat ad buying in un-audited titles. Called Buy Safe Media, the program targets client-side buyers in b-to-b markets that spend $250,000 or less on advertising.
The program, initiated two years ago by BPA at the request of member publishers, has emerged from a testing and research phase and the 11 associations and auditing bodies have begun to reach out to their constituencies in earnest.

The aforementioned quote is nothing but the intro to an article by Bill Mickey titled BPA and Friends Turn up Heat on Un-Audited Magazines… This so called campaign of Buy Safe Media tries to convince advertisers and ad agencies not to advertise in un-audited magazines (that is almost 6,500 consumer magazines alone out of the 7,000 plus on the market place). Both Bob Sacks and myself were horrified to say the least on how low some folks in our industry are willing to sink in order to make their business flourish. Unknown to them, or so it seems, is with their action they maybe bringing the temple on their competitors and themselves at the same time.
It is needless to say that people who are willing to advertise in a magazine that gives you 52 issues for $10.00 because it is audited, but not in a magazine that will charge you the same price for one issue but is not audited, are not in the business of customers who count, but rather they are in the business of counting customers…customers in most cases who do not count.
What follows is what my friend Bob wrote in his electronic newsletter today including my comments:

BoSacks Speaks Out: BPA-ABC’s Unwise Attack on Magazines

The new pathology detailed below actually disgusts me. There are over 18,000 magazines printed today and of that number 7,000 are newsstand titles. There are approximately 1,000 new titles started each year. This report and the campaign against legitimate magazines listed below is an attack at the heart of the entrepreneurial publishing business. ABC, ABM, BPA, and the Association of National Advertisers have a very minor fraction of the titles published in their bullpen, yet they wish to crush all who stand in their way or choose not join their exclusive clubs.

I am not alone with these feelings. Samir Husni wrote to me in an email last night that:

. . . it is about time for magazines to start looking at customers who count and not just counting customers . . . those folks who publish great magazines like Good and Flaunt do not need an auditor to tell them how many people are receiving their magazine. Their customers, both the advertisers and the readers know the relationship that they enjoy between the reader and the magazine . . . It is a pure case of jealousy and greed to launch such a campaign. When are we going to learn not to attack each other and focus on other media. Advertisers who want to reach that unique upscale audience of V magazine are not interested to see either the ABC audit or the BPA audit . . . When are we going to learn . . . I have no earthly idea . . .

It is unconscionable to attempt to crush the rest of the industry. It is attacks and stupidity like this that will tear down the very industry that they are attempting to prop up with self-serving dogma. Like chastity, auditing is/and should be a choice. A pox on all your houses; but I cannot wish harm on my industry by wishing that ye reap what ye sow.
BoSacks
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