September 17, 2010 at 12:26Epic fail or bad magazine publishing experience
I thought of writing a short comment in response to the habratopic. We invite authors to create an electronic journal for .NET , but in the end an entire article was born.
So, - I will
share my experience in publishing a magazine on the topic .Net.
I'll start first - somewhere in 2000, I decided to switch from Borland Delfi to something, because it was already clear (he was a holivar) that Borland was over, and therefore Delfi, in the form that we knew and loved him, too (holivar off). I then closely watched the news in the IT industry (yes, however, as now), and somewhere slipped information that Anders Heilsberg has long been working at Microsoft, because he was offered there for 1 million cu more than Borland could offer. He is engaged in the creation of a certain C # language on a certain .Net platform there. As a result, as soon as Visual Studio.Net appeared, I convinced the management of the enterprise to pay for the training of a group of programmers, which we did with success. I really liked the language and platform, and by the end of 2003 I decided to release a newsletter on this topic “.Net Interlocutor”, on December 26 its firstnumber , and by the end of 2004, more than 4000 people had already signed up for it. 2004 and the first half of 2005 were generally the golden time of this newsletter - I can be proud of almost every issue, the issue has got a clear breakdown into sections, and it’s still nice, but it might be useful for someone to read (here is an example of another issue ) . I’ll make a digression - the newsletter has not been released for about 2 years, you should not subscribe to it. Links are not advertising, but simply confirmation of my words.
The lyrical digression is over, now about the magazine itself. Somewhere in the middle of 2005, I had the idea to somehow make money on this. Advertising in the newsletter itself seemed to me a frivolous affair, maybe at that time it was so, and I decided to turn to the classic version - the paper edition. I proceeded from, as it later turned out, the following incorrect premise: I figured that I have 4,400 subscribers. Well, I thought, let every 5 sign up, and even every tenth, 440 numbers of circulation will quite suit me, and there things go. I registered the magazine in Ukraine, and was unpleasantly surprised when there were just over 50 subscribers. It turned out that for subscribers from Russia at that time the magazine would cost an order of magnitude more expensive, that is, no one had signed up from there. Over time, I found out that, among other things, it was necessary to register with Rospechat, and then it would be possible to place ourselves in Russian catalogs, but time was lost, plus the price of the question did not suit me at that time. However, there was one interesting point that I missed - there were people who wanted to subscribe from abroad, there were 20 of them, on the one hand a little, and on the other hand, it was quite comparable with the circulation. But there was another misfortune - the complexity of payment, the high cost of sending a hard copy (in the end, I started selling electronic copies of the magazine, but since I took ridiculous money for them with small volumes, there was no sense from that). which I missed - there were people who wanted to subscribe from abroad, there were 20 of them, on the one hand there were few, and on the other, it was quite comparable with the circulation. But there was another misfortune - the complexity of payment, the high cost of sending a hard copy (in the end, I started selling electronic copies of the magazine, but since I took ridiculous money for them with small volumes, there was no sense from that). which I missed - there were people who wanted to subscribe from abroad, there were 20 of them, on the one hand there were few, and on the other, it was quite comparable with the circulation. But there was another misfortune - the complexity of payment, the high cost of sending a hard copy (in the end, I started selling electronic copies of the magazine, but since I took ridiculous money for them with small volumes, there was no sense from that).
Conclusion No. 1 - It is necessary to seriously approach the assessment of the audience of subscribers. Pay attention to their geographical location and the possibility of delivery to those countries in which their potentially significant number lives.
Conclusion No. 2 - You must be prepared to provide the journal not only in paper but also in electronic form to those people who, for various reasons, cannot receive a hard copy of the publication.
Conclusion number 3 - You need to be prepared to accept money from different sources. For example, on the account, on electronic wallets of several types, etc.
So, the magazine was registered, an index was received, published in the catalog of Ukrainian print media, an approximate number of subscribers was received, and the question arose about the first issue itself. I planned to make part of the materials myself; some authors had to provide some of the materials.
And so it happened - the materials were received, the next step was to be layout, then printing and sending to Ukrposhta. My brother, who by that time was engaged in it, according to him at a professional level, agreed to help me with the layout. Unfortunately, in reality this turned out to be completely wrong and after I received the layout from him, it simply caused genuine horror and disappointment in me. Hence -
Conclusion No. 4- No relatives in the project, if they really are not real professionals in this particular case. This, of course, does not apply to relatives - it is necessary to approach the selection of a layout designer responsibly, because it will be he who will create your journal, and, as practice has shown, the quality of information is a necessary thing, but not enough for success. Appropriate feed is also needed.
By the way, I must say in fairness that at the moment my brother has become a real professional in his field, which can be seen by looking at the materials that he puts out for review in LJ . His skill would be at that moment - maybe everything would have turned out differently.
So, the first issue was done up.
It’s bad, but there was no way, for a long time it was necessary to give the number to the press and send it to subscribers, as well as to people who could help in promoting the magazine. In our city at that time there were several companies that were engaged in printing. I won’t bore you with the details of communicating with these guys, I’ll just immediately draw the following conclusion -
Conclusion No. 5 - No matter how rushing you are (but in general, rush is the last thing in everything except catching fleas, as Kozma Prutkov said), study as much as possible in the print market. Sometimes the price is different at times, and the quality of the final product as a result, may turn out to be better where it is cheaper. Strange as it sounds.
The number was printed, sent, received a variety of reviews. Both positive - mainly in content, and negative - mainly regarding appearance. There was a question about the next issue. And then it turned out that the authors, like all people, need money. Moreover, the price of the question for the article, which could be called the "article of the issue", was around 100 cu Now, based on the foregoing, I already understand that these were quite fair requirements. But, since I had an overrun of printing, registration, forwarding, etc. etc., as a result, I did not hold back the authors. But it’s they who are the creators of what they call content, and it, in Russian, is called the spirit of the magazine, that is, in fact, for the sake of which, including, they buy it. Or they should buy, that's how to look.
Conclusion No. 6 - Authors, creators of truly valuable content, need to be kept. The possibility of self-promotion, money or something else - but to hold, otherwise the magazine will lose interest, no one will need its own spirit and simply. Due to what - this is the second question. But I can do it -
Conclusion No. 7 - you should not invest a lot of money in printing.
For example, Visual Studio Magazine- A very bad example of a magazine for programmers, in my humble opinion. This is a small number of interesting articles on glossy paper, very diluted with advertising. Much better, in my opinion, the other way out is to print a magazine on plain paper, and advertisers can print on tabs, and on glossy ones, if they have enough money for that, of course. And the emphasis is precisely on the high-quality submission of articles, with normal code formatting, highlighting the main points, etc. Try to avoid such options as a red code on a black background, or God forbid, dark blue text on a black background. It is almost impossible to read such an article.
There is a whole science called typography. The basic essence - design and layout with fonts, is a very interesting thing, and if you decide to do publishing, at least having some idea about it will not hurt you. And by the way, on the Russian market there is a whole series of magazines that, as for me, are close to the ideal of presenting information for programmers and administrators - this is “C # Programming”, “Using Visual Studio”, etc., their whole series. True, the articles there are mostly translated, but again, well-chosen. I will not give links - you want, google and find.
So, something I was distracted. Let us return to the main issue, namely, daily bread. As you know, any enterprise should be profitable. If this is not a charitable organization, of course, although here there are some nuances. It turns out this: we have expenses for authors, for full-time employees (for example, the same typesetter), for printing, for mailing the magazine to recipients, etc. etc. And who will pay for the banquet? There are actually several sources. At first, I thought it would be subscribers and advertisers. In fact this is not true. It’s hard to find good advertisers, and whether the advertiser wants to pay the entire circulation with advertising is a question. There are still subscribers. And here there are nuances. Subscribers are divided into individuals and legal entities. And if for an individual the issue of the price of the magazine is important, then there is a difference in the price of the magazine in 2 cu can already be decisive, then for a legal entity it is often that 10 cu per room, that $ 50 - usually does not make any difference. This implies the following conclusion -
Conclusion number 8 - carefully approach the pricing. It may be possible to find a way to sell the magazine at one price to individuals, and at another to legal entities. In fact, this is a very delicate point, which is worth paying attention to.
And one more thing is the relevance of the materials. If you go out 1 or 2 times a month (as RSDN now comes out), the materials must be long-lived and valuable so that a person wants to put the magazine on a shelf like a book or a reference and periodically refer to it. That is, in this case, your competitors will be books. If you go out once every 2 weeks or more often, the Internet will become your competitors in the first place, since most of the space you will be occupied by news and small articles. Hence one more, the last conclusion -
Conclusion No. 9- try to carefully evaluate the need for your publication on the market, your physical and financial capabilities. Maybe it's better to do something else?
As for me, I have to release 2 numbers and then I close. And I can say one thing - I do not regret anything, and it doesn’t smell of any epic fail'om - I learned a lot, did an interesting job, grew up professionally, even earned some, albeit small, money. And so I tried to share part of my experience with you in this short article - although I have made much more conclusions than these 9, I hope that I have outlined the main points.
But life should be interesting, right?
So, - I will
share my experience in publishing a magazine on the topic .Net.
I'll start first - somewhere in 2000, I decided to switch from Borland Delfi to something, because it was already clear (he was a holivar) that Borland was over, and therefore Delfi, in the form that we knew and loved him, too (holivar off). I then closely watched the news in the IT industry (yes, however, as now), and somewhere slipped information that Anders Heilsberg has long been working at Microsoft, because he was offered there for 1 million cu more than Borland could offer. He is engaged in the creation of a certain C # language on a certain .Net platform there. As a result, as soon as Visual Studio.Net appeared, I convinced the management of the enterprise to pay for the training of a group of programmers, which we did with success. I really liked the language and platform, and by the end of 2003 I decided to release a newsletter on this topic “.Net Interlocutor”, on December 26 its firstnumber , and by the end of 2004, more than 4000 people had already signed up for it. 2004 and the first half of 2005 were generally the golden time of this newsletter - I can be proud of almost every issue, the issue has got a clear breakdown into sections, and it’s still nice, but it might be useful for someone to read (here is an example of another issue ) . I’ll make a digression - the newsletter has not been released for about 2 years, you should not subscribe to it. Links are not advertising, but simply confirmation of my words.
The lyrical digression is over, now about the magazine itself. Somewhere in the middle of 2005, I had the idea to somehow make money on this. Advertising in the newsletter itself seemed to me a frivolous affair, maybe at that time it was so, and I decided to turn to the classic version - the paper edition. I proceeded from, as it later turned out, the following incorrect premise: I figured that I have 4,400 subscribers. Well, I thought, let every 5 sign up, and even every tenth, 440 numbers of circulation will quite suit me, and there things go. I registered the magazine in Ukraine, and was unpleasantly surprised when there were just over 50 subscribers. It turned out that for subscribers from Russia at that time the magazine would cost an order of magnitude more expensive, that is, no one had signed up from there. Over time, I found out that, among other things, it was necessary to register with Rospechat, and then it would be possible to place ourselves in Russian catalogs, but time was lost, plus the price of the question did not suit me at that time. However, there was one interesting point that I missed - there were people who wanted to subscribe from abroad, there were 20 of them, on the one hand a little, and on the other hand, it was quite comparable with the circulation. But there was another misfortune - the complexity of payment, the high cost of sending a hard copy (in the end, I started selling electronic copies of the magazine, but since I took ridiculous money for them with small volumes, there was no sense from that). which I missed - there were people who wanted to subscribe from abroad, there were 20 of them, on the one hand there were few, and on the other, it was quite comparable with the circulation. But there was another misfortune - the complexity of payment, the high cost of sending a hard copy (in the end, I started selling electronic copies of the magazine, but since I took ridiculous money for them with small volumes, there was no sense from that). which I missed - there were people who wanted to subscribe from abroad, there were 20 of them, on the one hand there were few, and on the other, it was quite comparable with the circulation. But there was another misfortune - the complexity of payment, the high cost of sending a hard copy (in the end, I started selling electronic copies of the magazine, but since I took ridiculous money for them with small volumes, there was no sense from that).
Conclusion No. 1 - It is necessary to seriously approach the assessment of the audience of subscribers. Pay attention to their geographical location and the possibility of delivery to those countries in which their potentially significant number lives.
Conclusion No. 2 - You must be prepared to provide the journal not only in paper but also in electronic form to those people who, for various reasons, cannot receive a hard copy of the publication.
Conclusion number 3 - You need to be prepared to accept money from different sources. For example, on the account, on electronic wallets of several types, etc.
So, the magazine was registered, an index was received, published in the catalog of Ukrainian print media, an approximate number of subscribers was received, and the question arose about the first issue itself. I planned to make part of the materials myself; some authors had to provide some of the materials.
And so it happened - the materials were received, the next step was to be layout, then printing and sending to Ukrposhta. My brother, who by that time was engaged in it, according to him at a professional level, agreed to help me with the layout. Unfortunately, in reality this turned out to be completely wrong and after I received the layout from him, it simply caused genuine horror and disappointment in me. Hence -
Conclusion No. 4- No relatives in the project, if they really are not real professionals in this particular case. This, of course, does not apply to relatives - it is necessary to approach the selection of a layout designer responsibly, because it will be he who will create your journal, and, as practice has shown, the quality of information is a necessary thing, but not enough for success. Appropriate feed is also needed.
By the way, I must say in fairness that at the moment my brother has become a real professional in his field, which can be seen by looking at the materials that he puts out for review in LJ . His skill would be at that moment - maybe everything would have turned out differently.
So, the first issue was done up.
It’s bad, but there was no way, for a long time it was necessary to give the number to the press and send it to subscribers, as well as to people who could help in promoting the magazine. In our city at that time there were several companies that were engaged in printing. I won’t bore you with the details of communicating with these guys, I’ll just immediately draw the following conclusion -
Conclusion No. 5 - No matter how rushing you are (but in general, rush is the last thing in everything except catching fleas, as Kozma Prutkov said), study as much as possible in the print market. Sometimes the price is different at times, and the quality of the final product as a result, may turn out to be better where it is cheaper. Strange as it sounds.
The number was printed, sent, received a variety of reviews. Both positive - mainly in content, and negative - mainly regarding appearance. There was a question about the next issue. And then it turned out that the authors, like all people, need money. Moreover, the price of the question for the article, which could be called the "article of the issue", was around 100 cu Now, based on the foregoing, I already understand that these were quite fair requirements. But, since I had an overrun of printing, registration, forwarding, etc. etc., as a result, I did not hold back the authors. But it’s they who are the creators of what they call content, and it, in Russian, is called the spirit of the magazine, that is, in fact, for the sake of which, including, they buy it. Or they should buy, that's how to look.
Conclusion No. 6 - Authors, creators of truly valuable content, need to be kept. The possibility of self-promotion, money or something else - but to hold, otherwise the magazine will lose interest, no one will need its own spirit and simply. Due to what - this is the second question. But I can do it -
Conclusion No. 7 - you should not invest a lot of money in printing.
For example, Visual Studio Magazine- A very bad example of a magazine for programmers, in my humble opinion. This is a small number of interesting articles on glossy paper, very diluted with advertising. Much better, in my opinion, the other way out is to print a magazine on plain paper, and advertisers can print on tabs, and on glossy ones, if they have enough money for that, of course. And the emphasis is precisely on the high-quality submission of articles, with normal code formatting, highlighting the main points, etc. Try to avoid such options as a red code on a black background, or God forbid, dark blue text on a black background. It is almost impossible to read such an article.
There is a whole science called typography. The basic essence - design and layout with fonts, is a very interesting thing, and if you decide to do publishing, at least having some idea about it will not hurt you. And by the way, on the Russian market there is a whole series of magazines that, as for me, are close to the ideal of presenting information for programmers and administrators - this is “C # Programming”, “Using Visual Studio”, etc., their whole series. True, the articles there are mostly translated, but again, well-chosen. I will not give links - you want, google and find.
So, something I was distracted. Let us return to the main issue, namely, daily bread. As you know, any enterprise should be profitable. If this is not a charitable organization, of course, although here there are some nuances. It turns out this: we have expenses for authors, for full-time employees (for example, the same typesetter), for printing, for mailing the magazine to recipients, etc. etc. And who will pay for the banquet? There are actually several sources. At first, I thought it would be subscribers and advertisers. In fact this is not true. It’s hard to find good advertisers, and whether the advertiser wants to pay the entire circulation with advertising is a question. There are still subscribers. And here there are nuances. Subscribers are divided into individuals and legal entities. And if for an individual the issue of the price of the magazine is important, then there is a difference in the price of the magazine in 2 cu can already be decisive, then for a legal entity it is often that 10 cu per room, that $ 50 - usually does not make any difference. This implies the following conclusion -
Conclusion number 8 - carefully approach the pricing. It may be possible to find a way to sell the magazine at one price to individuals, and at another to legal entities. In fact, this is a very delicate point, which is worth paying attention to.
And one more thing is the relevance of the materials. If you go out 1 or 2 times a month (as RSDN now comes out), the materials must be long-lived and valuable so that a person wants to put the magazine on a shelf like a book or a reference and periodically refer to it. That is, in this case, your competitors will be books. If you go out once every 2 weeks or more often, the Internet will become your competitors in the first place, since most of the space you will be occupied by news and small articles. Hence one more, the last conclusion -
Conclusion No. 9- try to carefully evaluate the need for your publication on the market, your physical and financial capabilities. Maybe it's better to do something else?
As for me, I have to release 2 numbers and then I close. And I can say one thing - I do not regret anything, and it doesn’t smell of any epic fail'om - I learned a lot, did an interesting job, grew up professionally, even earned some, albeit small, money. And so I tried to share part of my experience with you in this short article - although I have made much more conclusions than these 9, I hope that I have outlined the main points.
But life should be interesting, right?