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Creating an ancient sites magazine |
amunptah
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|  Posted 16-03-2010 at 20:08
With the MagCloud service proving to be relatively popular and cheap, the prospect of an independent magazine focussing on ancient sites seems a very real possibility.
What do you all think of the idea?
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Runemage
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|  Posted 16-03-2010 at 23:00
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On 2010-03-16 20:08, amunptah wrote:
With the MagCloud service proving to be relatively popular and cheap, the prospect of an independent magazine focussing on ancient sites seems a very real possibility.
What do you all think of the idea?
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Interesting.
With my business hat on....
I'd say it would have to contain much more than you'd be able to read on the Meg Portal site pages, per site.
It would boil down to cost and content and what price people would be willing to pay. MagCloud state their charges so each buyer would know exactly how much per page was profit and decide if it sounded like profiteering. A buyer's idea of profiteering is very different to a publisher's idea of profit because the publisher knows how much blood sweat and tears went into creating the Mag whereas the buyer only sees the difference in costs per page and often thinks 'I'm not paying THAT!!'
How many would you have to sell to break even?
Would UK customers also have to pay shipping costs from the US?
Time and Mind is thought by many folks including me to be interesting, but far too expensive.
I'm not trying to be a wet blanket here, just trying to point out that in this day and age in a mega recession with so much being free online, people aren't necessarily going to want to pay for the time and effort involved in producing a slick hard copy mag.
If it would be a labour of love, you may get some satisfaction from it and who knows, a small profit. If it's a business venture, please be careful and research your market thoroughly before committing to any outlay.
Rune
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amunptah
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| Posted 17-03-2010 at 12:28
All some good points. MagCloud works in the same way as Lulu. You do not have to invest any money to get the magazine printed. It is all recovered directly from the customer when they purchase a magazine, and profit is gained from the markup. It costs $0.20 per page to print a magazine.
e.g. a 28 page magazine costs $5.60 to produce. Then you could charge $7 per issue, and make $1.40 as markup, which is about on a par with profit from a newstand magazine after licensing and distribution costs.
Mailing costs are about $1.60 in the UK, so no big problem! The cost is equal in America and Canada too, with Europe to follow soon.
So no upfront printing/distribution costs, just the time and expense to produce the magazine content, which you could recover much of through advertising. If it was still like the old days of magazine production, a project like this would not be feasible, but now it looks a lot more realistic!
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Runemage
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| Posted 17-03-2010 at 16:25
$10 to the UK customer = £6.60 in today's exchange rates.
Lots of people are twitchy about paying in a different currency too.
That's highly expensive for a 100 page max magazine including ads. More around the cost of a paperback book.
For comparison, Britarch retails at a lot less...
"If you wish to receive the printed magazine on a regular basis you can subscribe within the UK for only £21 for the first year and £27 for renewals (six issues). We have a secure online shop that can take payments by credit card. Overseas subscription rates are £28/€41 (first year) or £34/€49 (renewals) Europe airmail, and £34/US$63 (first year) or £40/US$74 (renewals) airmail outside Europe."
Translation - that's £3.50 per issue for the first year's 6 issues then £4.50 per issue for renewals.
If you're thinking of a one-off issue mag about your 'take' on Stones, circles, sites etc. then you may get a good run of sales because of peoples' curiosity, depending where you advertise it. If you think people would subscribe regularly at those prices I think you'd struggle.
It's a great idea, I just don't think it's economically viable. Sorry. 
Rune
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Andy B
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| Posted 17-03-2010 at 17:23
I think buyers of something one-off with nice photos in would want something more substantial, ie a book. How do the costs compare with http://www.lulu.com ? I know a few people who have used them.
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amunptah
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| Posted 17-03-2010 at 19:45
A 32 page comic book size mag would cost £3.89 colour, £1.26 black and white to produce on Lulu, plus £2.99 to post. Lulu prices are great but the delivery cost is a killer, which is why I haven't used them in the past. £1 to £1.50 for postage seems fair, but £2.99 seems like profiteering.
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Runemage
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| Posted 17-03-2010 at 20:20
but £2.99 seems like profiteering.
It certainly does. Is this the new-ish postal charges where it's not only based on weight, it's the package's dimensions that count? I'll let you fathom it out..
http://sg.royalmail.com/portal/rm/PriceFinder?catId=23500532&gear=pricingcalc&campaignid=pricefinder_redirect
Rune
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Andy B
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| Posted 17-03-2010 at 20:26
Yes the shipping from the US is cheap but aren't they are just lightly wrapped so there's a distinct possibility your lovely mag would get scrunched. International mail seems much more prone to getting damaged in my experience of sending things so I pack them extra well.
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Andy B
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 10:29
frogcottage42 writes:
The maths aren't likely to work for a mag, you're talking the price of National Geographic and I suspect that's setting the bar a little high?
I like the look and feel of a real magazine but if there is a need for a magazine just to allow people to contribute in more detail to current matters or expand on theories and discoveries then putting a magazine onto CD is by far the cheapest way of doing it.
Photos can be full size and quality, stories can be as long as required and numerous links and if necessary adverts can be added. The cost of producing and mailing a CD can be reduced to pence and it saves on paper!
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davidmorgan
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 11:40
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On 2010-03-17 17:23, Andy B wrote:
I think buyers of something one-off with nice photos in would want something more substantial, ie a book. |
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Yes, an annual sounds good.
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amunptah
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 14:50
Using CDs seems redundant now with fast web access available virtually anywhere, but what about PDF? Easy to deliver by website or email. Perhaps a print version as an optional purchase?
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frogcottage42
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 18:33
Yeah CD's might be the next Betamax but trust me there are a lot of places with lousy internet access. I can't download anything over 3 meg. and PDF catalogues just time out. Apparently they can get broadband in Soweto but not in many parts of Ireland!
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Runemage
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 19:23
Some of my friends in rural Ireland are also on Bogband and share your frustrations frogcottage42.
So, for optimum sales for a mag, we'd need a variety of presentations of the same thing. A physical mag/book/annual, a CD and a downloadable like PDF to ensure all prospective customers can have a copy
Rune
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Andy B
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 20:40
It's useful to be reminded of the lack of download speed, the rest of us tend to forget. I had someone who will remain nameless moaning the other day about my limiting the upload size of each of our photos to 280kb. This is more than enough for web viewing, it just take a couple of minutes to get photos down to a reasonable file size before uploading them.
[ This message was edited by: Andy B on 2010-03-18 20:41 ]
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amunptah
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 22:37
A CD version it seems would be a good idea then. I've noticed that the Jane Austen Centre in Bath publish their own magazine in CD format. It would have the added benefits of videos, programs etc
I was thinking of titles for the mag. "Off the Beaten Path", highlighting the mysterious status of ancient sites, and the almost anonymity they languish in away from the general public's consciousness.
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frogcottage42
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| Posted 18-03-2010 at 23:49
Would you expect to represent the whole range of interests which currently find a home on MegP?
I've seen some pretty hot debates developing over the differing views on what should be given credence.
Would the mysteries section feature as a separate article or a mag in it's own rite?
I personally like the idea of a broad spectrum, it stimulates debate and I believe that no one ever learns anything by agreeing! only argument creates the breeding ground for new questions.
It would be great to have a platform on which people could fully expound theories and report full research on sites of interest and a magazine could have it's own forum section on MegP to expand on articles.
I may have been biased suggesting a CD but lets face it you can get an awful lot on them and if you want bigger issues you can use more than one, after all they cost buttons these days.
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Andy B
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| Posted 19-03-2010 at 00:08
> It would be great to have a platform on which people could fully expound theories and report full research on sites of interest
Apologies if this is seen as trying to steal anyone's thunder, but I'm very happy to publish such things here to a very large regular audience, they are called 'feature articles'. However no one much seems to want to write them.
The recent exception being Angie's dowsing experiences, albeit this was in the Mysteries forum as I was concerned of the fallout if it had gone 'mainstream' as a full feature article. Perhaps I'm being too timid? However I think some archaeologists already think we're cranky. Then again they have plenty of conventional places to inhabit. We like to be a bit different and it's a fine balancing act.
Getting back to features in general, perhaps we need a 'best of both worlds' approach, with online publication of articles on the Portal, and also a glossy print version with layout and graphics, promoted by the exposure it would get here.
This is the model used by many print newspapers and magazines so it would be fun to try and make it work the other way. In terms of monthly readership we get over 60,000 unique visitors per month so we are up there with some of the newsstand magazines but don't get the sort of recognition that we would as a print publication.
I probably haven't given enough time to nurturing feature writers, perhaps it needs someone to champion this area. We could share content but the benefits in return in getting the magazine to its readers (online and in print) would be very great I'd say. All interesting food for thought.
[ This message was edited by: Andy B on 2010-03-19 00:40 ]
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frogcottage42
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| Posted 19-03-2010 at 08:31
Apologies to Andy if I gave the impression that MegP was not already providing such a service.
I was only referring to off-line publications but I agree that a fine line needs to be maintained in order to prevent the serious academics and genuine enthusiasts dismissing all of us as "weirdy beardys and stone huggers" even if we are!
Angie's plans were the example I had in mind, and I for one would be happy to read a feature article expanding on this seemingly contentious issue.
If a lack of feature articles is an issue maybe a regional update as a start could be sorted by a few key providers?
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Andy B
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| Posted 19-03-2010 at 08:58
You wouldn't have known as you're new to the site and we haven't run any for a while. I was going to do a separate 'box' to highlight the feature articles on the front page. Currently they sit in with the rest of the news when there are any.
We have the facility to do county by county introductions, which are also feature articles. We have added these for quite a few UK counties but they rather fell out of use and got forgotten about.
eg
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/search.php?query=&country=1&county=106&type=stories
By all means please submit an introductory article for Co Kerry and anywhere else you know about.
But back to the main thread about printed things...
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