Bare Magazine staff
It looks like HP is releasing a print-on-demand web service for magazines. From the description, it sounds like the new service MagCloud is similar to lulu.com, where a publisher creates the publication over the web and customers order it directly. The new service looks good–because HP is the king of printers, the service is capable of producing high quality glossy magazines.
It’ll be interesting to see if this takes off. My thoughts are that it’s going to be hard–people might buy a self-published book, but it’s a lot harder to justify buying lots of magazines. I guess a person could buy just one magazine to commemorate “their daughter’s volleyball season,” but in that case, why not buy a book? I guess we’ll see. The print industry could definitely use a lift, and it’s good to see companies experimenting with different business models.
Related posts:
But here is an...
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
As someone who raves about self-publishing books and DVDs, even I would say that self-publishing a magazine is not likely to take off.
Bare at UC Berkeley is of course in this. They have a lot of facilities, and have been around for at least a few years. I wonder if the $6.40 cost of buying an issue is worth the wait. I mean, KoreAm was suffering and still barely hanging on, but it serves a purpose to the greater good. I think if a magazine serves a greater good, then it will have supporters. If, on the other hand, it only fills a meaningless void, then perhaps the magazine should reconsider why it’s being published in the first place. How many fashion magazines do we really need? I know that in south Florida alone, there are literally dozens of “south FL” fashion magazines that all look eerily similar. What’s the point then? And how are they maintaining all that advertising space when those companies are going out of business or cutting costs?
There’s probably a break-even point somewhere. If you’re Readers Digest, I’m guessing that it makes sense to own your production. If you want to do a niche market like KoreAm, maybe, in this economy, it makes sense to print-on-demand and just go on from there.
Note: I have no idea how KoreAm is published, so I may just be blowing smoke. I do know that they’ve run some pretty cool events like the 3 on 3 basketball tournament, so that’s got a lot of value, even outside the magazine. If the magazine is the foundation, then I hope people would still support it.
James, I know I’m flip-flopping a lot, but I’m on board with the magazine project. Not right now of course…