Digital Magazine?

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Permalink Reply by Donaville Herrick on January 13, 2009 at 4:59pm

There are numerous eco-friendly solutions out there, from using 100% recylced paper, to using inks that do not contain VOC's. Are you looking to go exclusively digital or plan to go digital first then expand to print?

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Permalink Reply by crissy on January 13, 2009 at 5:08pm

I would eventually like to go print, but because of the economy right now, and global warming I would prefer going digital at first. If my publication does well I would go to print but also have digital to build my brand online.

Donaville Herrick said:

There are numerous eco-friendly solutions out there, from using 100% recylced paper, to using inks that do not contain VOC's. Are you looking to go exclusively digital or plan to go digital first then expand to print?

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on May 6, 2009 at 2:44pm

There are plenty of online-only magazines. "any way"--every way! What do you want to do? PDF? website? flash? The sky's the limit. ;) You just have to have the design sense and the skills for whatever medium you're looking to publish in... or find and hire someone who does. :)

-kaolin fire, GUD Magazine

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Permalink Reply by Chris Patmore on May 8, 2009 at 5:40am

For our magazine (www.filmandfestivals.com) we use www.yudu.com for the digital version. They have several options including a free version, a Plus version that allows you to add things like video and audio clips (at £99 per year), or there is full pro service - with full pro prices. There are other similar services out there, but they seemed the best way to go, especially if you have no money to start with.

We also use www.magcloud.com to produce a print-on-demand version. At the moment they only ship to the US, Canada and UK. Their prices are very reasonable, you can set your own profit margin, and best of all there are no set up charges or overheads. So it is both ECOlogical and ECOnomical because there is no wastage.

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on May 8, 2009 at 11:39am

Magcloud looks interesting but I wouldn't necessarily call them economical. You're set to a fixed width/height, and $0.20/page is a bit much, imo, depending on what you're publishing. And they don't offer any digital distribution at the moment (though a birdie tells me that's a popular request that they might be considering). That said, $0.20/page is nice in that they handle subscriptions and all _that_ jazz. But still, just print.

crissy--any more details on what the magazine is going to cover, what you want the production level to be, what your skillset is ...? :)

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Permalink Reply by Chris Patmore on May 8, 2009 at 12:58pm

I did quite a bit of research into print on demand and other self publishing, such as Lulu and Comixpress, and MagCloud is by far one of the cheapest solutions. The 20c per page is paid by the customer so there are no up front costs for the publisher, and they take care of distribution and everything. It is a bit expensive per issue for the enduser, but it does mean you can produce a print mag without having to rely on advertising or any form of financing that traditional print solutions demand. Most of the PoD solutions are limited to standard sizes, with MagaCloud only offinr one at the moment. It is still in fairly early stages of development so who knows how it will change.

It would be nice to have the digital and PoD in the same place but at the moment using Yudu for our digital and MagCloud for print is working fine for us.

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on May 8, 2009 at 1:08pm

I just don't think there's a prayer in hell of GUD getting an end-user to pay $40 for a magazine. ;) We do digital-press short runs (very economically but high quality with Green Button) that come out to ~ $0.03 - $0.04/page.

Comixpress I'll agree is really pricey, though I've liked what I've seen of their stuff (one issue of "Poe Little Thing")--they also offer more variety than MagCloud.

I need to look into Yudu some more, though I worry about their "no adult content". We publish the occasional artistic nude, and we don't censor the fiction/poetry we publish. GUD's not "smut" by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time we don't shy from pushing people's comfort buttons with the occasional piece. ;) I read their detailed guideline "ponder these", but people live in different worlds...

Also looks like you have to pay them $100/yr in order to be able to charge for your content and have an actual cover/back cover?

For digital distribution, our best experience has been with Fictionwise, by far (well, outside of our own site which we promote). Very limited success with Kindle.

I'd love to hear how Yudu is working for you in terms of whether you're charging for your magazine, and if so if you're seeing an ROI against the yearly... (or if I'm misreading something)

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Permalink Reply by Chris Patmore on May 8, 2009 at 1:52pm

It is horses for courses. For a start MagCloud don't do 200 pages, so for your mag they won't work. We started as a traditional print mag, selling through Borders in the UK, and indie cinemas. We also gave away a lot of copies at film festivals to try and raise our profile. We got lots of positive feedback but it was losing money on every issue, which is why we opted for the digital/PoD route in the end.

If you use the free version of Yudu, it does everything the Plus version does (including covers) except allow you to charge or add interactive elements such as film clips or audio. We have opted to keep the digital version free (for the moment) and absorb the annual fee as an expense so we can offer potential advertisers interactive ads. We would probably lose quite a few readers if we started charging for the digital mag to make a bit of extra money. Not paying for things is ingrained into the UK indie filmmaking culture, so battling against it could be hard. It's something we discuss a lot and still haven't come up with a firm decision on the best plan. We're not making money at the moment, but we're not losing any either.

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on May 8, 2009 at 2:07pm

Fair enough re: free. I understand how that goes (and we do give out a lot of promotional PDFs). Different crowds--we're looking to keep advertising out of our end-product entirely (though we've got ads on our website). We're not going the traditional distribution method, either, because of too much money lost by friends we've known that went that direction. Trying to keep our costs down (our biggest outlay is paying contributors), and hoping to grow slowly from there.

All very good points, and makes me wonder even more what crissy is looking to do. :)

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Permalink Reply by David Wills on May 15, 2009 at 5:26am

I used Pagemaker to make the second and third issues of Beatdom Magazine, which were successful. However, a pro designer made the first one for me, and that was way more popular... It's worth paying for it...

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Permalink Reply by Marcus Coleman on May 19, 2009 at 3:17pm

I actually design websites and can create an online mag for you cheaper than the "big guys". Reply if you're interested. I actually did an online mag for a local company here in Cleveland.... i'd love to work with you

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on May 19, 2009 at 3:31pm

Cheaper isn't necessarily better. Come on, samples of your work? :) What do you provide as an "online magazine"? Submissions system? CMS? Do you just skin wordpress, or...?

Marcus Coleman said:

I actually design websites and can create an online mag for you cheaper than the "big guys". Reply if you're interested. I actually did an online mag for a local company here in Cleveland.... i'd love to work with you

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