Gene Curtis Blog

Part C

There are other costs such as paying the contributors that will bring the maximum per page ad dollars needed to around $400, but even so that still makes an eighth page add very affordable at $50 - $62.50.

Acquiring & assembling quality magazine content month after month is no easy task. Make no mistake, it is the content that builds a subscriber base and without a number of people to actually see the ads a print magazine is doomed to failure. With that in mind I’m going to take a look at a hypothetical example of how a real life group might launch a magazine.

Rebecca Miller runs the Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy Blogtour. Her goal is to promote the genre. Her niche market is Christian SF & Fantasy readers. An old marketing axiom is: have something others need or want, be where they are gathered and let them know how they can get it. Her market not only gathers online but they also use church libraries. These libraries are interested in knowing what’s available and what’s good, not only for SF&F books, but other faith based entertainment as well, such as: other book genres, music and film. I suspect that if Mrs. Miller (or anyone else for that matter) were to provide a concise, one stop source for church librarians on what’s good in the Christian entertainment arena that that would be something they would want. The last time I checked Church library personnel had to pull from many sources in order to determine what the library would stock and what they would recommend for entertainment.

On the flip side of the coin, faith based entertainers whether authors, music groups or film producers are looking for cost effective ways to promote their art. That means there is likely to be an abundance of material for magazine content in the form of reviews, interviews and advertizing.

Why a print magazine and not just an ezine, blog or website? Credibility and readership. While not the most effective in most markets for advertisers (TV takes that position), it carries the most weight for trustworthiness. A print magazine also tends to stick around, being read on average an estimated 4.9 times per distributed copy. A single Internet website simply lacks trustworthiness for the simple fact that just about anyone can throw up a website or blog and say anything they like. Not to mention that competition for visitors is fierce.

I’m not one that gives up easily. The next model I studied was rather interesting and I plan to implement it this summer either myself or by helping a couple of local ezines do it: Discover Southside and SoVaLife.
To understand what I discovered you need to understand the standard structure of a magazine. A glossy, newsstand style magazine is usually comprised of about 50% editorial content (text and graphical elements) and 50% advertising content. The percentages will vary slightly from issue to issue but that is the usual breakdown. Of the advertising content about half goes to cover the cost of production (printing, paying the contributors and whatnot) and the rest is profit. A 64pp magazine will have about 32pp of advertising, sixteen of which should cover the cost of production.
The numbers I used to construct the chart were from Print Pelican’s automated cost calculator. I chose Print Pelican after an extensive search for magazine printers. They have the best reputation and price structure for short-run magazine printing of any printer I checked out and there were many. They also have an excellent quality product; I ordered samples and was very much impressed. The numbers were collected in mid January 2009, and are based on an 80# Gloss Cover, 80# Gloss Text, Saddle Stitched, Subscription Card-black. The numbers may have changed some since then, but it doesn’t change the concept.
In the chart, the dotted lines represent the cost of printing and mailing (using Print Pelican’s mailing service) minus a two dollar per issue subscription charge ($24 per year). The surprising thing was how few subscriptions were required to negate the need for high priced ads.
The highest per page need for ad dollars doesn’t go above $320 for the 64pp magazine (16pp of ads to cover costs). That makes an eighth page ad come to forty bucks. ($319.74 per page @ 64pp, $310.70 per page @ 48pp, $265.13 per page @ 32pp) Mind you now, that is the highest need for ad dollars per page for 64pp magazines and under. Ad dollar needs fall off before and after the points indicated on the chart.
Most printers use an 8-up (& 8 down) printing method so you’ll probably notice that it is sometimes less expensive to print a magazine, excluding mailing costs, with page counts that are multiples of sixteen. For example, try 1000 copies of 64pp vs. 68pp on Print Pelican’s calculator. That’s why the chart shows 32pp, 48pp and 64pp. The 128pp is there for comparison.

click to view larger image

Part A

One of the most interesting things I’ve done over the last several months is to try to start a print magazine. After reading everything I could find on how to start a magazine I tried the approach that other print magazines in the area were using: no subscriptions plus inexpensive distribution, i.e. drop points.
I was able to put together an experienced and dedicated group of editors and writers, experienced layout and graphic design artists, a consulting team of former magazine publishers and a reliable printer (Print Pelican), but the one thing I couldn’t do was generate funding for the project. This model required about $20,000 per month for each issue of the magazine just to cover costs. I understand why so many magazines are going totally online.
The cost of actually having 20,000 copies of the magazine printed required the ad rates to be too high for this area with a standard full page ad at $2400 for a one time insert or $1750 each month for twelve months. These rates were lower than other area magazine’s rates (Showcase for example-pdf), but after contacting more than two hundred area businesses that regularly advertize in local magazines and not getting a single ad, I gave up on this model. The rate card I was using is below.

Rate Card

I haven’t given up on the idea of starting a print magazine. I discovered something remarkable that I’ll discuss in the next installment.

It’s hard to believe that I haven’t posted to this blog since July 2008. A lot of things happened last summer that required more time than I had to give so I had to give up a few things for a while in order to take care of them.

First, the director of the Writers Studio, Scott Foran moved to California and left me in charge of the group. That was a lot of responsibility and required time to get adjusted to. A great deal of things goes on behind the scenes that have to be coordinated. Even as the assistant director, I had no idea how much was involved.

Next I was recruited to a meeting of local artists to help start a regional artist guild and ended up on the board of directors. Helping put this group together, conducting fund raisers, doing research and attending meetings was and still is very time consuming, but the project is coming together nicely. It’s such a great group of creative people and we have two towns actively striving to have us locate in their downtown areas. They’re actually giving us buildings to use rent free.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be writing about our progress, what we’re doing for fundraisers, research I’ve conducted on how to start a print magazine on a shoestring budget and a behind the scenes look at the details of how some books got to be best sellers.

The art guild’s website is: www.convergenceartguild.com

Sorry I have to be brief. I wanted to do a cartoon for DragonLight of a tiny dragon sitting atop a huge egg with a couple looking on and the woman saying “Well, she’s got high hopes,” but I haven’t had the time to draw it. A lot of things have happened in my life over the last month or so that require a lot of my time and I just don’t have the time to devote to this blog. For the next few months I’ll be taking a sabbatical from it.

This month’s participating CSFF Blogtour members are:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Mark Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Terri Main
Magma
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Steve Rice
Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

Okay, it’s the first book in a series. I, like just about every other reviewer, feel the need to say I also was disappointed that I didn’t know that from the start. I hadn’t read the reviews. I didn’t think I needed to. After all, this was a Kathryn Mackel book. Having said that, Vanished is as fast paced as a maglev train, action packed as a supercollider experiment gone awry, suspenseful as waiting for bombs to explode, as emotionally charged as confronting the guy your wife left you for and as chilling as watching monstrous creatures crawling out of your floor drain, all of them coming after you.

I made the mistake of starting to read Vanished as soon as I returned home after being awake for more than 24 hours. I finished the story in one sitting, two pots of coffee later. Mrs. Mackel is an excellent story teller and is a master at writing page-turners. Fore told is forewarned.

Other reviewers compare the story to the television series Lost. I can’t comment on that comparison since I don’t (didn’t?) watch the series. I did find the story to be strangely familiar though; reminiscent of several Twilight Zone episodes I remember. I think of it as if Stephen King had teamed-up with H. G. Wells to write a seriously evil SciFi version of the popular computer game Myst; an excellent game by the way and Vanished is no less an excellent story as-well-as a magnificent start to a series. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Participating CSFF Blogtour members include:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika
Mir’s Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

What a great name for a spec-fiction magazine. I also like the fact that Double-Edged Publishing, Inc. has merged two magazines, Dragons, Knights, and Angels and The Sword Review, into one super-zine: MindFlights.

I think the coolest innovation is their implementations of skins. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s great. I’m on dial-up and have little patience when it comes to waiting a half an hour or so for a website designed for broadband users only. Their skin selection #8 looks really great and makes the site super fast for those of us with slow connections. Thanks guys, I really appreciate that little feature!

The only thing I might suggest is adding a place to sign up for an email notification when a new issue has been released. My bookmarks list is really long and to tell the truth, I get so involved with other things that I just plain forget to check back. A simple reminder that you exist and have new content would be most helpful.

Check out what this month’s participating CSFF Blogtour members have to say about MindFlights:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika
Mir’s Here
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

1 isn’t the loneliest number anymore.

I occasionally use iWebtools to keep up-to-date on popular search terms and to get ideas to write about. I noticed what I thought was an anomaly a few months back and didn’t bother to dig any deeper than just noticing it. A ton of people were (are) typing just the number ‘1’ into the search box to do a search. I could understand it if the search was for world war 1, formula 1, air force 1, stargate sg 1, or even algebra 1, but on average there are 184,159 searches a day (more than 5 million searches a month) for solely the search term ‘1’.

I can’t make sense of it. I seriously doubt that many people are making a typo. About the only thing a typo could be is someone missing the letter ‘Q’ and as anyone that has ever played Scrabble™ knows, ‘Q’ is very infrequently used. It would make more sense if the number was ‘3’. That would likely be a shortcut for a search on ‘MP3’, a very popular music format on the net.

When I Googled ‘1’ nothing with remotely enough interest returned in the search results to ever justify the popularity for that search term. Same results with Yahoo! and Dogpile. I haven’t a clue why that search term is so popular. In fact, just searching ‘1’ should be counterproductive. Numbered lists always begin with ‘1’ and how many of those are on the web? Pages talking about computer stuff abound and are loaded with ‘1s’.

This it isn’t just a passing fad. I’ve been noticing this phenomenon for several months and ‘1’ is now the 11^th most popular search term; it’s even more popular a search term than ‘yahoo’, ‘music’, ‘britney spears’ or ‘mp3’.

Does anyone have a clue? I’d truly like to be enlightened.

I’ll post links below to other blogs about this as I find them.

Cemetary Road 1 0 1

The Begotten

Author Lisa T. Bergren

The most intriguing review at Amazon.com begins, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve really had enough of Templar knights, Papal conspiracies, and secret documents that threaten the foundations of the church… Then I received a sample chapter of the book through the Chapter-A-Week Yahoo group. And I was stunned. Captivated. Rendered speechless by the power of Bergren’s prose.

I went out and got the book immediately. Not because the plot interested me even then, but because the writing in that sample chapter was so breathtaking I couldn’t resist. ” -Kelli Standish

I have to agree with her on that point, and I also agree with another reviewer, “I highly recommend this book for those who are fans of this genre, and for anyone who enjoys a really good story.” -Deborah

[synopsis] At the height of the Inquisition, a secret half a millennium old is about to be exposed-a lost letter said to have been written by Paul and part of what was to become the foundation of the Christian canon.

Participating CSFF Blogtour Members

Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Karina Fabian
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

The Master Gardners received their next shipment of bags, started selling them at 8:30 am the next day and sold out again by 11:00 am.