Grafik (formerly Hot Graphics International, then Graphics International) has been a stalwart of the UK design scene since the 1980s. A more irreverent read than many other such magazines, it sadly closed last year… only to return this month with a brand new design, new structure and new business plan, as a bimonthly covering the global graphic design scene.

The Blogsplosion asked co-editor Angharad Lewis about what happened, what’s happening now, and what will happen next in the Grafik story.

Why did Grafik stop?
To cut a long story short, our previous owner pulled the plug. He had a lot of other businesses and fingers in pies – he decided that he no longer wanted to carry on funding Grafik so he closed Adventures in Publishing (the company he had created to own the magazine).

As anyone who is passionate about publishing knows, you’re never going to make a million bucks unless you sell your soul and we were never prepared to do that. For us it’s always just been about trying to make a great magazine. So… when Adventures in Publishing was liquidated Caroline and I had the chance to bid on the assets and got the Grafik name with corresponding lock, stock and barrels.

After all the years of work we’ve put into Grafik, there was no way we could stand the idea of walking into a shop and seeing Grafik on the shelf made and published by someone else. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

We set up a partnership called Woodbridge & Rees to buy and own Grafik and we’re working with publisher Design Flux, which is part of a larger French publishing company. Design Flux has been set up in the UK to publish Grafik.

While Woodbridge & Rees owns Grafik and produces the design and editorial, Design Flux handles the magazine’s printing and distribution. We wanted to be able to concentrate on the bit we’re good at rather than have to deal with number crunching.

Our editorial office is based on Back Hill in Clerkenwell, where we also have a small gallery space. As well as producing Grafik, Woodbridge & Rees is hosting design-related exhibitions and events and creating editorial content for other clients. 

Why “Woodbridge & Rees”?
We wanted quite a straightforward, traditional title for the company (no faddish design studio-esque titles!) and to use our names in some way. Our surnames Roberts and Lewis sounded a bit blokey though, like a firm of plumbers! So we chose maiden names from our respective families (Woodbridge is Caroline’s Grandmother’s maiden name and Rees is my Mum’s maiden name). 

Weren’t you and Caroline co-owners of Grafik before?
We had been part-owners between 2005 and 2009. We had set up Grafik Ltd with another partner in 2005 after a management buy-out from previous publishers Archant. Grafik Ltd then sold the title to Adventures in Publishing in 2009 because we were struggling through the recession. AIP owned the title until it liquidated in June 2010. 

This time around it’s different because Caroline and I (as Woodbridge & Rees) are sole owners for the first time. Of course we still have to work with a publishing partner, but we are reshaping the model of how we publish.

The aim is to cut down on wastage and sell to people more directly. We used to spend a lot of money and waste a lot of copies being stocked in WH Smith. They take a massive percentage of the cover price and pulp about half of all copies they stock. So we’re aiming to replace WH Smith and newsagent sales with direct online sales. You can buy a single issue online and have it delivered the next day. 

We’re also distributing via Central Books, which targets art gallery and specialist book shops, where we know we’ll reach our core audience. 

You can still subscribe, of course, and we’re now publishing 6 times a year instead of 10-12. The magazine is nearly 30% bigger and designed and structured to hold much more content. 

We will also be doing a lot more online, with a lot of content published on our website feed. 

What happened to existing subscribers of Grafik? Will they receive the new edition?
We’re very conscious of the fact that people who had live subscriptions when AIP liquidated will have lost out on copies remaining on their subs. Sadly it’s just impossible for us to pay off our former employer’s debts by honouring all these copies. But we are making a gesture to all former subscribers by giving them a code to redeem a free copy of the first issue.
 

How is the new Grafik different from the old one?
Firstly, there’s more of it: 128 pages. We have also had a redesign, courtesy of Michael Bojkowski. Part of his brief was to emphasise and maximise content. In our previous incarnation we always felt that our content sometimes played second fiddle to the layout, so this time around it’s all about foregrounding our text and images, while still having a design with personality. We hope we’ve got it about right, but it’s a very tricky balance for any magazine, let alone when you’re designing a magazine about design. We’re very open to feedback and will keep evolving. 

There’s also a completely new editorial structure to the magazine. For example, we no longer have a ‘Showcase’ section at the front of the magazine – by the nature of their frequency, magazines can’t compete with the immediacy of blogs, so we didn’t want to try. Instead we’ll be showcasing new work online.

The magazine is a space for longer, more in-depth and visually rich articles. We have made the structure more fluid too, so we’re able to respond to our content rather than fit it to defined article lengths and themes. At the same time, we’ve kept firm favourites like Letterform and Logofrom (which have now been joined by Pictoform and Cover Shot), Talent, Six Books and Profile. We’ve also added new regular features like Graphic Design Heroes, Industry People, Live Brief, Future Classics and a regular illustration Profile.

The front section is now called Kaleidoscope, which is packed with new exhibitions, events, products, publications and dates for your diary. A continually shifting pattern…

We hope the magazine feels more lively, journalistic, visually rich, informative and generally packed with more stuff. 

Will you be interacting with readers online more than before?
Absolutely – as well as what’s mentioned above, there will be regular competitions and much more audio, video and interactive online content than before. We will always be in love with print but we’re also excited by how we can interact with people online. It’s a brilliant medium for creating a sense of community, and our biggest audience is our Facebook community, where we now have over 135,000 fans. 

What makes Grafik different from other design magazines?
This is a difficult question because it’s a bit like asking what makes one individual different from another.

Any magazine is a reflection of the people who work on it, so Grafik is a product of the editorial team, the designer and the extended family of contributors who make each issue. Perhaps we’re the slightly renegade younger sibling of the UK graphic design publishing family. I think maybe we have an independent spirit that comes across in the pages.

What are your hopes for the future of Grafik? 
It feels like very early days for us at the moment, in our new incarnation, but we want to re-establish our audience, sell lots of copies, expand our family of contributors and readers, reach more people around the world and keep our pages (both print and digital) exciting. 

Can you give us any sneak previews of forthcoming content in future issues?
The second new issue will have a special feature about publishing. [Disclosure: I've contributed to that. -- Ed] Profiles on Mind Design and Magnus Voll Mathiassen, features on non-Format, Yohji Yamamoto, Tony Forster, James Goggin, Gaite Lyrique and lots more! It’s published 24 March. 

Anything else you’d like to say about new Grafik?
Mainly a big thank you to every one who has supported us along the way, by buying and contributing to the magazine. And – our new one-word mantra – onwards!

There is currently a launch offer available for the latest edition.
www.grafikmagazine.co.uk

Q: What do you get if you cross the internet and magazines?
A: Ivan Pope.

Pope is a former zinester who created the world’s first internet magazine, The World Wide Web Newsletter (later 3W Magazine), in 1993. He later went on to help launch the first consumer magazine about the web, .net, and also invented the cybercafé as part of an installation at the ICA in London.

He’s now turned his entrepreneurial zeal to creating Magazero, an online magazine store dedicated to “gathering the best, freshest, strangest, most inaccessible, juciest, loveliest independent magazines from around the world and bringing them into your life.”

Magtastic talked to him about the future of magazine selling, setting up a competitor to Stack, and the glory of the magazine ecosystem.

What made you want to set up an online magazine shop?
I’ve wanted to open a magazine shop for about fifteen years now. In the nineties, I had an internet business with an office in New York (domain names; I sort of invented that industry). I used to spend a lot of time there and one thing I loved were the magazine shops with floor to ceiling racks of every magazine you could imagine. I always thought it would be a great thing to open something similar in the UK.

I have a background in fine art and publishing, so I was always more interested in the independent and creative end of mag publishing. I never did anything about opening such a shop, but last year I realised that since Borders had closed, there was nowhere for me to go and browse the independent sector. So it just sort of happened. 

The name just came from thinking about the subject. I’m always keen on memorable names that have some relation to the business – and the domain name has to be available!
 
Why don’t mainstream shops stock independent magazines? 
It is a two-way street. The traditional newsagent distribution network is a dreadful, historic monopoly and most newsagents only stock the top sellers. There’s never going to be space for more than a few independents and I think the mags themselves have to think laterally a bit. Even Borders only stocked a smallish subset of the available mags.

Of course, some mags are brilliant at ferretting out retailers, and there are some outstanding stockists out there. But on the whole I just don’t think enough effort has been made historically to get the right mags to the right stores.

Is there still a future for a vibrant bricks-and-mortar magazine shop?
I love the idea of bricks-and-mortar magazine shops and I’ve always wanted to open one (or a few), probably with a coffee shop integrated.

I’m a fan of the mag nation shops and also of Motto and Do You Read Me?! – I’m hoping to make a world tour of magazine shops early next year as part of my research and then think deeply about it.

In the meantime, I intend to take the shop in physical form to various markets and festivals, both to sell stock and to publicise the brand. It’s a sort of halfway house to having a real store – and along the way I’ll learn about how to sell this stuff.
 
What makes your selection unique?
My aim is to create an online browsable shop that stocks as many independent magazines as I can lay my hands on.

I don’t really have any strict criteria. Although I throw the term ‘independent’ around a lot, I would not hesitate to carry magazines that are not strictly independent – and I believe that all magazines have a duty to be hugely ambitious, though this often kills them.

I believe that it is the richness and variety of the magazines that I stock that will bring success. My aim is to find magazines that are not really known or widely available, and to stock them. Then I have to bring them to the attention of potential buyers – that’s marketing. I take the view that there is a huge untapped market for magazines, and that work I undertake to bring mags to the attention of new buyers will be repaid.

I have an initial target of stocking 300 mags, which I think I’ll hit by the end of next year. It’s a slow business, but at the moment I am in the very early stages of building a system, a brand, customers, the lot. It can’t be done overnight – largely as each magazine has to be sourced separately.

That of course is a difficulty and a benefit. Each magazine that is unique to me brings me in new customers. I hope that when the shop is filled, when I hit a certain volume, I’ll be able to identify how and why people buy certain magazines, and to encourage them to buy more.

I see this as a two-way street. I’m here to bring magazines to consumers, but I’m also here to help publishers find new markets. If we can work together, much is possible. It’s hardly a secret that many wonderful independent magazines are run by people who are not that interested in marketing them – if I can help with that, it will make me happy. 

How many of each title do you keep in stock?
It’s early days, so I only keep a small amount of each magazine in stock. But I hope to increase this rapidly as I reach out to my markets. There is an interesting issue here that relates to the historic method of distribution (I started my internet entrepreneurial life as the publisher of a magazine in 1993, so I’ve seen this from both sides). I can take every magazine that, for example, Central distributes, on sale or return. And I can take more than I can sell without risk. So, of course, I will stock everything that Central distributes.

But I would rather buy direct from the publishers and pay them cash without an option for return. To do this, I need to understand what I can sell. Also, I need to be prepared to carry stock, back issues, until they find a buyer. Maybe I need to discount stock, things like that. Over time, I hope that I can build relationships with the publishers that are valuable on both sides, that allow a more logical method of distribution. That is, of course, an ambitious hope, but the internet holds out certain possibilities in this regard. 
 
Do you hope to make this your main profession?
It is a serious business proposition and I believe it has a lot of potential. I am already seeing orders from around the world, which encourages me.

I don’t expect it to make money for a while, but things are encouraging so far. I think the marketplace for magazines is certainly big enough to support the business, and the numbers are large enough so long as I can be efficient in my practices. 

What title would you love to stock that you currently don’t?
As I mentioned, I have a lot of titles that I intend to stock over the coming year. I have a fast growing database of titles, though of course some are more interesting to me than others. I’m very excited by too many magazines to mention, but among others I hope to have Teller, Post Modern Ink, Eat Me, Tickl, Incongrous Quarterly, Letter to Jane and roomservice available in doublequick time.
 
You mention on your site that you’re about to start Magazine Club subscriptions, similar to Stack. Is serendipity rather than loyalty the future of magazine buying?
I love Stack and it was one of the inspirations to actually get this thing up and running. I think I sort of thought, I wish I’d done that. Then I thought, hey, just get on with it.

I think there are many ways that need to be tried to get people consuming more mags, to get things in front of them. To me, Magazine Club will be a way of creating connections between the publishers and the consumers with a range of ideas and offers to put in front of members. I am keen to try random subscriptions of various kinds.

I think one problem magazines have with loyalty is that they often have long gaps between issues and the buyers either have to chance on them in a store or buy a subscription. So I’d like to fill in the gaps by creating regular mixed subscriptions, things like that. Serendipity is certainly a huge part of the mix – who would ever go out looking for It’s Nice That or Fire & Knives, for example? But once you’ve found one, often you yearn for more things like it. 

I also think we could do some work on defining what a magazine actually is. We think we know, but of course most people don’t have a good idea of where a quality indie mag fits in their lives. So I’d like Magazine Club to talk about how magazines fit, how they are not books and not newspapers and not websites, but somehow transcend all of those things, to create a more specific need in the buyer.

I also think it is incumbent on us to talk up the whole idea of quality magazine publishing to the press, to create stories that get the word out. The music business does this constantly, but the magazine business is sort of hidden from view to a degree. So I would like to be part of a movement that creates a new generation of buyers, and hopefully a new generation of publishers (if that is necessary, possibly not!).
 

Describe your perfect magazine.
I often buy magazines and don’t read any of them at all. My perfect magazine is a package that attracts me, something lush and arty but not too lush and not too designed. The content offers up the potential for finding out something new about the world, maybe gives me an opening, an opportunity to participate or create something of my own.

My perfect magazine is maybe a bit like a book only it’s not a book, it’s disposable but I won’t dispose of it. It would maybe contain a crosssection of the books on my bookshelf, some art, some architecture, some history, something about literature, great images. Maybe it’s unsettling or freaky, but not unpleasant.

I always thought Re/Search publications were magazines. I have some issues of Atlas magazine, which came with bits and pieces attached, I loved that mix. 

Anything you’d like to add?
It’s a great ride, I’m loving every minute of it so far! My view is this: to the publisher, editor, funders and staff of every indidvidual magazine, the survival of that mag is paramount and they pour their souls into it, which is just as it should be.

But to me, I can’t get too invested in any single magazine. To me the glory is the magazine ecosystem in total, the glorious life cycle, births and deaths of all the magazines. In total, they seem like a representation of all that is good in the world. Some will always fade away just as others will always be created. That’s what I love, the entirety of it.

Magazero currently offers a coupon worth 25% off all magazines here. UPDATE: coupon has now expired.

“The idea was to find a solution to the problems plaguing the magazine industry”

To finish up my roundup of the launch of MYMAG (parts one, two and three), I’m delighted to offer a Blogsplosion magsclusive interview with its creator, Magnus Greaves, where he reveals how the idea began with ‘make your own’ magazines, explains how he’s trying to take the risk out of publishing, and tells us exactly what he looks for in a guest editor.

According to the website, idea came about in 2007. Why did it take two years to put together?
The initial idea behind MYMAG was to find a solution to the many problems plaguing the magazine industry. We had a vision of individuals creating their own print magazine using content from established publishers. We pursued this for a long time — looking into the challenges of technology, on-demand printing, how to acquire the content and so on. One day we realized that MYMAG was not about magazines in general; it was about personalized media in a way that takes advantage of the print-magazine format.

Once we made this shift in our thinking, we decided to focus on working with people who already had a following, as opposed to people making magazines purely for themselves.
 

Why print magazines? Why not books, websites, iPhone apps, something else? 
MYMAG is about the connection between a tastemaker and their fans, and creating a print magazine adds something new to the tools they use to do this. Plus, our limited-edition approach adds a certain level of intimacy that those other formats don’t offer. We use Web sites and apps and Twitter and the rest to promote each issue, but there’s just something special about the tactile magazine experience, especially when you’re deeply interested in the individual who created it.

 
How often will MYMAGs come out? Will they always appear in batches of three?
We decided to launch with three to emphasize the diversity and personalization aspects of MYMAG. Readers seeing just one magazine at first wouldn’t get the full picture of how different tastemakers can use the platform simultaneously to reach completely different audiences. We will continue to launch in series of three for a while, and then we’ll simply add individual tastemakers as they come onboard. As a company, we have no set schedule for when we’ll release each MYMAG, although many of the tastemakers we’re speaking with want to time their participation to coincide with other projects they have going on.
 
 
How much start-up capital did MYMAG require, and where did it come from? How many full-time staff work on MYMAG?
The initial capital came from me personally, and I continued to fund the business for the first two years. I then asked several of my friends to participate — which was great, as it allowed our little team to have outsiders to bounce ideas off and to share in all the excitement. We have four full-time staff — me; our COO, Phil Rugile; our creative director, Warren Noronha; and our marketing-and-sales coordinator, Vanessa Fuller. We also have an incredible group of experts who work with us on art direction, production, PR and logistics. And, of course, the amazing printing team at Fry.
 
 
What did the experience of Doubledown Media teach you about magazine publishing?
Doubledown was my first experience in the media business, so it taught me a lot! Probably the most meaningful lessons, in terms of the subsequent development of MYMAG, would be what I learned about the inefficiencies of the magazine business and its awful financial model. We actually had a pretty decent model at Doubledown — as far as magazines go, anyway — but I was able to witness how crazy magazine publishing is when it comes to building an audience, the painful distribution models (both newsstand and subscription) and the suicidal dependency on advertising income.

The MYMAG model aims to address all three of these problems — we work with tastemakers who have an existing audience; we use their existing channels to reach that audience and sell them the magazines; and we create a high-quality product that the fans are willing to pay $10 for.
 
 
What do you look for in a MYMAG guest editor?
We’re looking for well-known individuals who have something interesting to say, and an existing fan base that wants to hear it. We’re not looking purely for the most famous people, as popularity alone is no guarantee that they’ll create an interesting magazine. It’s also important that the tastemaker have a direct channel to his or her fans, whether through social media or live events such as concert tours. When we do the series of three, we might occasionally try to group the tastemakers so that the fans of one will presumably have some interest in the others we’ve selected. But those connections will be subtle.
 
 
How exactly does it work? Does the editor simply send a list of what they want, or does MYMAG work with each editor make their choices? And do they choose the individual articles or just the magazines themselves?
Warren sits down face to face with each tastemaker to hear what they want to communicate to their audience. He then finds out what their favorite magazines are and, specifically, which content they want included. Each tastemaker has 100 percent control over their MYMAG, and the more detail-oriented they are about the articles, the better. After the initial consultation, we work with the tastemaker and their team to establish the marketing plan and our sales strategy. MYMAG does most of the heavy lifting, but the process ends up being so personal and enjoyable that the tastemakers are willing to give us a lot of their time, which is how we can create great experiences for the reader.
 
 
I read that you don’t pay the publications that are featured. Is it easy to get the magazines to say yes? Was it easy to get the reprint rights for Spy, a now-defunct publication?
I’m happy to say that the overwhelming majority of the magazines we have approached have been very enthusiastic about contributing content. Given that we’re approaching each publisher on behalf of a well-known tastemaker, receiving such a personal, celebrity-driven endorsement of their magazine is obviously very appealing to them. We then continue to work with the publishers to promote their involvement in the project, and we see them as partners.

The only problems we’ve encountered so far have been trying to get to the right person at one of the major magazine companies — they seem to have so many people on staff that they don’t know who’s responsible for participating in an innovative project! In the case of Spy, we dealt directly with the gentleman who now owns all the rights to the content, and he was terrific in helping us out. For me, seeing the final Spy pullout in movie director Brett Ratner’s magazine has been one of the highlights of the entire MYMAG journey.
 
 
Are the intros actually written by each editor? How about the handwritten covers?
Every word you see comes directly from the tastemaker. We are not interested in working with anyone who doesn’t want to write their own intros and letter, as it defeats the purpose of MYMAG and would result in a magazine that the fans right away would recognize as inauthentic. The handwriting was a great feature for the first magazines; it really helped highlight the intimate and personalized nature of the project, although I’m not sure we’ll necessarily do that every time.
 
 
How do you decide how many copies to print of each magazine?
We agree on the issue’s print run with each tastemaker. MYMAG is a premium product in terms of content and quality, so the goal isn’t to sell as many as we can. Also, the brand sponsors we work with love the association with the tastemakers — that is, the ability to reach their most enthusiastic fans — so it’s not a numbers game to them, either.

Sales have been very strong across the three magazines. Fortunately, each MYMAG is about the tastemaker and not a collection of time-sensitive news items that will be stale in 30 days. This allows us not to be panicked about selling each magazine before the end of the month.
 
 
Why aren’t you distributing more widely?
Our job is to get the magazines into the hands of each tastemaker’s fans. Given that we select tastemakers who have existing channels to their audience, we have a very efficient distribution model. We’re having interesting conversations with tastemakers about leveraging their wider networks — tying in with their fashion labels, for example — and brand sponsors are interested in doing in-store sales of the magazines.

We will explore anything as long as it doesn’t involve putting 10 copies on a newsstand, hoping to sell three of them and collecting a tiny fraction of the revenue six months down the road! We ship internationally as well — and we’ll be launching in the United Kingdom within the next few months, so that will expand our visibility.
 

Magazines generally rely on a regular subscription base, in order to make money. Your model seems to be completely the opposite, with each magazine aimed at a completely separate audience of your editor’s fans. Doesn’t this repeated uncertainty bring with it great risks?
Personally, I feel the deeply discounted subscription model is much riskier, as is using that subscription base to try to sell more than 40 ads every month! When we start working with a new tastemaker, we do so on the assumption that they will create just one MYMAG, and we’ll later determine whether an opportunity exists to create another. It would therefore be very hard to sell a subscription.

Before I got into magazine publishing, I was a futures trader, so I always look at the risks — and how best to reduce them — before anything else. Here’s what we’ve done: First, we work with tastemakers who have an existing fan base, so there’s no time or money wasted on trying to figure out who the audience is and how to reach it. Second, we print a limited run of issues — a number, whatever it is, that’s a fraction of that tastemaker’s known fan base, so we don’t have to convert many of them in order to sell out the print run. Third, we’ve specifically avoided creating a business model that’s advertising-dependent, as that route is difficult even in the best of times and would be nearly impossible with a limited-edition product.
 

What are your ambitions and hopes for MYMAG in the future?
We just want to keep working with interesting people to help them connect with their fans. Our goal is to work with as wide a range of tastemakers as possible, from athletes and actors to academics and politicians. It’s also going to be fun to explore how we adapt our approach in other countries. Finally, we’ve been creating an amazing database as fans purchase issues on our Web site, MYMAG.com. That could lead to many interesting opportunities in the future.

Suraya Sidhu Singh from Filament (pictured above, photo by Gerard Harvey) has written to The Blogsplosion about her magazine’s plight, explaining what happened and putting to bed (ahem) a few assumptions:

“Yep – we’re a tiny little magazine that struggles to sell 328 copies during a three-week period. Overall our circulation for our first issue will probably be under 2,000 – however, this is still higher than a lot of independent magazines, particularly those run by one person in a bedroom in North London. We had to get 3,000 copies that we’d planned for distribution shredded after distributors gave us all sorts of reasons why they wouldn’t distribute us, which mainly had to do with not being like other women’s magazines. I always thought the point was to produce something new and different, but however! We have addressed as many of their ‘issues’ as we feel we reasonably can for the second issue, and now that we’re going to be on the top shelf, the UK’s main top shelf distributor seems very interested. I hope it comes through.

“Elaborate PR stunt” – I wish. If it had been, it would’ve been in more than one paper. Plus, then I wouldn’t have pissed off our very nice former printers, who are merely among the majority who adhere to the long-held print and distribution industry standard that only “erections, penetrations and ejaculations” count as “hard core pornography”. It all happened because supporters of Filament, the Erotica Cover Watch blog writers, heard about our struggles (which I had been quietly blogging), and decided to start a campaign, which was a bit of a surprise to me. I mentioned it to Zoe Margolis on Twitter, and the whole thing snowballed. We quickly worked out how many copies we’d need to sell to change printers, put up the campaign page and started spreading the word. It was pretty slow going until yesterday when we sold about 70 copies. Today we’re back to our usual handful.

I do this because I think the women’s magazine market currently presents a depressing model to young women as to what they’re going to grow up to be. If there’s just one title on the market, obscure or not, that shows that sex is not all about you being admired physically, and thinking means working out how many calories are in your snack, then I would’ve done a good thing. I just decided to stop whinging about women’s media being crap and do the one tiny thing I could do about it. And consequently, one panelist on a television talk show said that I “should be shot” for doing this, and a wide variety of other vitriol has been hurled at me. But actually I’m not complaining because it’s that important and I get emails from women every day thanking me for what I’m doing and asking how they can help.

The alternative is that women really truly don’t want anything better than that, which is fine if that is true, but nobody’s tried it before, so who knows?”

[Ed's note: All power to Sudaya and to Filament, for trying to do something brave and different in the area of considered eroticism in print; there's a long and often difficult history of such attempts, including one of my favourite old magazines, Eros. I certainly hope that Filament's story ends happier than theirs.]

You can support their campaign here.

Rather a lot to catch up on…

Wired UK launches today
The general view seems to be “better than expected, but good luck in this climate”. My friend and erstwhile colleague Hammersley puts it in his own inimitable style: “You might not like it, and that’s fine with us, but you will have to admit that it’s good. In any case, we’re not producing a mediocre magazine for the general reader. We’re making something great specifically for the Wired audience. As David Simon once said, ‘fuck the average viewer.’” (Disclaimer: I have a small piece in issue two). Speaking of tech…

Magazine to feature RFID chip
In fact, a Ztamp, to place on your Mir:ror. It’s from the makers of the rather cute “it’ll read your email while you’re sleeping” Nabaztag. I’d expect Spektacle to watch this intently, as it’s the kind of thing they’d do. What’s also interesting is the mag itself – I have the current issue of Amusement next to me now, that I’ve been meaning to review on here for yonks. It’s rather good. Speaking of video game magazines…

Edge celebrates 200th issue with 200 covers
All polywrapped in a bag with an image of issue one on it. See all the covers full size here

Little White Lies tries digital
Now non-UK viewers can enjoy its graphic monothemed loveliness

Conde Nast switches to digital flowers
Because physical objects are no longer symbolically important at CN Towers. Wait a minute, what’s the date on that piece again? While we’re on the subject…

As good an excuse as any to visit Sans Seriffe
There’s no Fool like an old Fool

The Folio 40 is unveiled
Worthwhile reading featuring movers, shakers, innovators and a blogger. Maybe next year

How Esquire tore strips off its cover stars
Compare with this month’s Flaunt (click here) who had a far lower-tech solution. That’s a real rip they’ve put in – each issue’s is slightly different, a rather brilliant way to both save money and still keep up their reputation for distinctive covers. I wonder if they perforated it slightly at the factory, or just had a line of rippers? And what did they do with all the bottom halves?

A new men’s “style bible” just launched
The preview pics look to me rather like the revived Man About Town with all the words cut out

Colophon interview with KasinoA4
“I bet our magazine would look a lot different if we were based in Miami”. Also reveals previously unnoticed nod to 1970s Playboy. Speaking of whom…

KasinoA4 releases wearable magazine rack
Is it just me, or is this “KasinoA4 X Designer” actually a subtle Monocle pisstake?

Last week’s Economist cover – explained
It made much more sense in the original. They’ve also started to release their magazine audibly – will Economist Radio follow?

Editor blames plagiarism on staff shortages
And thinking shortages

Why our books are the future of fashion photography
Which is nice. Goes on a bit though

And finally… some more Colophon links…

We love you too, Slanted
Patrick’s snaps
The official photographer
Stylink reports (kind of)
Stereo loves Karen

“I guess I started a magazine because I knew almost nothing about print.”

It may not sound like the best time to buy an entire magazine, but that’s just what Lothar Eckstein has done. Twice.

The founder and editor-in-chief of sleek magazine, in November he bought two of his favourite independent magazines, Qvest and Luna, from German company Mediakom, to create a stable of three fashion magazines under the umbrella of B20 Publishing.

He talked exclusively to the Blogsplosion, sharing tales of independence, economies of scale and the future of magazine advertising.

Your background is in advertising – what made you first want to get involved in magazines?

I started in advertising 20 years ago. But in advertising, you are always working on someone else’s baby. In the end, the client builds something, not you. Fifteen years ago, I moved into working in television and then the internet.

I guess I started a magazine because I knew almost nothing about print. I knew all the risks in television and the internet, and didn’t dare [create my own venture]. In print, it was the opposite.

When did you think you could make independent magazines your main business?

When I was working for big German publisher, Axel Springer.

Describe your magazines.

Luna is the only high-end children’s fashion magazine in Germany.

Qvest shows forward-looking fashion in a visually distinctive way, and will include some exciting new features with the launch of issue 37. With a circulation of 80,000, Qvest is by far the biggest serious magazine in its segment, in the German market.

Sleek is unique in exclusively combining art and fashion. Each issue has its own theme.

Why did you decide to acquire Qvest and Luna?

I always felt that it would be worth trying to strengthen independent titles by giving them a chance to profit from economies of scale. Like: Buy paper together. Print together. Distribute together and sell ads in Italy or France together. But remain editorially fiercely independent.

How much did you pay for the titles?

We paid too much, of course! What else can I say as a buyer?

Is B20 owned by you alone? Why the name B20?

I have two partners, Matthias Düwel and Marcus Meyer. The name? We wanted something modest. The brand is just a vehicle for business to business affairs. B20 stands for the 20s in Berlin, a time and place that the three of us are impressed by.

Did you change the editorial teams after taking over?

Yes. Annika von Taube moved up from Managing Editor to Editor in Chief for sleek – she replaces me. Adriano Sack will be in charge of Qvest as of Edition 37 together with Clark Parkin. They will take over from Tamara Rothstein and Ashely Heath, who I want to thank for what they achieved for Qvest over the last two years, very impressive work.

Have you made any changes to the magazines themselves?

There will be some changes linked with the new teams. But it is too early to tell what they will be.

Have you started to gain the economies of scale you had hoped for?

There are amazing savings, more than we expected.

Are you planning to create any new magazines? What kind of magazine would you like to add to these three?

Yes, we are. Or rather: Yes, we were. But given the financial crises, who knows what will happen…

What is the future of magazine advertising?

It helps to have a good online model to go with the print model. Being visually driven and using “haptics” to the max also helps. The most important thing is being small, though. The market will shrink, but it will continue to be big enough for small players to continue for a long time to come, especially in high-end, quality niches.

“Bottom line is, we didn’t handle it right. We took bad advice, and followed it.”

A quick summary: in July last year, a website called Mygazines launched. It allowed registered users to upload scans of any magazine, and then share them for free. Faster than you could say “copyright infringement”, the site had more than 130,000 registered users, and everything from The Economist to Time was being scanned and shared on the site.

Opinions about Mygazines ranged from “theft, pure and simple” to “an idea whose time has come”. Various publishers contacted their lawyers to have it shut down, with the backing of the Magazine Publishers of America. Meanwhile, attempts to find who was behind the site met with digital obfuscation – the url was registered to the somewhat dubious name of John Smith in the Caribbean island of Anguilla. As one hosting service shut it down, it moved to another, travelling the virtual server globe, with lawyers in hot pursuit.

At least that’s how the story was told at the time. As speculation gathered, John Smith emailed various media outlets, including this one, defending the site, and denying it was a new Napster by promoting copyright theft through sharing.

Smith’s argument seemed to be based around two basic ideas. First, they weren’t doing anything wrong in allowing sharing:

“If you were to take all of the offices in the world that purchase magazines for the sole purpose of providing entertainment for their clients, is the same as sharing. Furthermore, these offices see different people everyday, so the sharing is constant and consistent and usually includes many back dated issues as well as new. By virtue of the fact that these groups change everyday makes it like a free magazine store.”

Secondly, there was more to Mygazines than met the eye.

“The true future of the industry lies in the final stages of our site concept. We can easily transition to the final revenue model quickly with the co-operation of the publishers. We cannot however reveal the full concept at this time as we are saving that discussion for the publishing industry directly.”
…
“The competitors have missed the boat. Even the sites that think they have come up with the future online version for magazines, they have not! Publisher friendly or not! There is a final stage missing that can’t be seen unless one has the freedom to think outside of the limitations of the industry as is.”

The lawyers soon had their day in court, and a swift settlement was reached in the US, and then upheld in Toronto. Soon after, the Mygazines website closed, citing lack of funds.

And then, earlier this month, it came back. No John Smith, no Caribbean islands, new funding (from “silent investors”) and a team working full time on making Mygazines 2.0 a commercially viable company, working with the magazine industry to produce digital editions of print magazines.

The site is now registered in the name of Yoav Schwartz, a former Microsoft manager originally from Israel, and Mygazines’ head of programming. John Smith, whose real name is Darren Andrew Budd of Ontario, Canada, remains as CEO of the company, and they’ve now hired Pierre Bisaillon – who set up digital magazine company ZMags Inc in North America as a franchise of Danish-based Danish-based Zmags ApS – to be Mygazines’ “VP, Corporate and Business Development”. The company is based in Ontario, quite a distance from their erstwhile Caribbean hideaway.

In a Magtastic Blogsclusive, I spoke to Darren and Yoav on the telephone about file sharing, being the industry’s pariah and those mysterious revenue models.

Who came up with the original idea of Mygazines?

Darren Budd (DB): I came up with the idea about two and a half years ago. I was standing in a magazines store and thought, gee, I want one article from that magazine, two articles from that, and I only have a limited budget – and even if I have an extended budget, I’m going to have too many magazines to carry, I’m not going to get around to them all.

So now you’re buying your biggest payoff. You’re not buying, say, Architectural Digest or a bunch of other things that might have one or two articles in [that you'd like] and are 12 dollars. You’re buying the biggest payoff for the smallest amount of dollar. What you do is buy the same week after week and not expand your reading.

The idea was that you need to have a place that you can choose, page by page, article by article… in Mygazines, that was one of the first things we created.

I was pretty specific with some of the technical things, not that I understand the deep-down technical aspects on how to get it done. All of that was formed with Yoav to bring it to reality.

I feel he’s as much responsible for the progress, and the company being able to be robust and alive now is because of the fact that he saw the vision, and was able to help with that vision. And Hamid [Hamid Abbas from Dubai] was very keen in programming that vision, technically speaking. [Abbas is now a shareholder of Mygazines].

Yoav Schwartz (YS): My role has been in bringing Darren’s vision, and quite a vision it was, to fruition. At face value it looks like another digital newsstand, but what separates our system is that the very basic core of what we were trying to achieve was to base everything not as a whole magazine but as its parts, which are pages. It’s like saying that a CD is just a CD whereas really it’s comprised of a bunch of songs.

DB: There’s a key thing that then changes. If you click on the table of contents in a digital magazine, you can jump straight to that page. So you can charge by article, or you can offer a subscription, some content will be free, some won’t. And then the key is the community around that.

So let’s say you’ve got a community, and you’re going on there because you want to reference a recipe, type up a topic, I want to put 5 pages together and send it to my 5 groups of friends who are working in the same office. It’s not just how do you read, it’s how do you make it better for people.

I’m gong to spend the same budget [on magazines] anyway, so maybe I’ll be a member of three different sites with that budget, but what I am now is part of that community, I’m getting information, I can reference it I can purchase it, use it as a daily tool.

That also gives you advertising possibilities. Is the first page the most expensive? The middle, the end? You can offer advertisers to be where they want to be, on the most popular article or whatever.

You can also offer dynamically generated ads, which can be embedded into the publication. And these ads will bring you closer, because they’re database-driven for each member. You’ll get similar ad rates as you will in a regular magazine, as opposed to the current sidebar ads, whose revenues are not commensurate with print.

Why will digital ad rates change to be more like print?

DB: One thing must change before the other thing changes. So the page manipulation will come together first, to let the ads be specifically focused. On our site we have notifications, and we were the first guys to do that. “If an article is published on health or finance, let us know every five days”. So now you have push advertising. If these are dynamically generated ads, then you’re getting specifically targetted spaces, which is what the whole advertising industry is based upon.

How much of what happened with Mygazines 1.0 did you foresee?

DB: I think that we would say this: we were more technically oriented and creative people. We were a little bit out of our range in dealing with the legal aspect. What we really wanted to do was to reach the industry. We didn’t know what would come in the open upload.

We had some uploads from publishers who wanted their information up, and some turned out not to be [the original publishers]. And instead of going with our instinct, which was to get back to the publishers and say “if this isn’t you, how can we work with you?”, we listened to what was PR-based advice – probably not the best advice – to continue and show the publishers the way.

I think that was arrogant and probably misguided. Well, it was misguided. I take full responsibility for how we approached the industry, because I think they might have been more than amenable to speaking about our new way of looking at it. But once we tried to get through to them [after launch], we were dealing with their lawyers, so it wasn’t even possible to speak to them directly.

Even before we settled, if any individual publisher was saying “please take these off” we were scripting against it, but what they wanted – and rightly so – was “we don’t want to come to you individually when someone uploads something and say ‘take it off’, you should make sure in general it doesn’t happen.”

Bottom line is, we didn’t handle it right. We had a great technical idea, we had a very good site that could be good for the industry, but we didn’t handle it properly, and the way we’re approaching it now, we’ve brought on people who are experts in their field, who know the industry a lot better than we do. And we can stick to what we’re good at, which is vision and technical, and not try to be PR people.

At the end of the day, you can blame anybody you want. We took bad advice and followed it, and I will take responsibility for it.

YS: We are now as legitimate as we can be. We’ve proven ourselves in terms of the technical ability of our software, and very shortly we plan to prove ourselves in terms of reaching those publishers and moving forward with our entire vision.

We’ve basically taken a lot of what we had in terms of technology, which was geared more towards the consumer, and now we’ve put just as much focus on publishers, to provide them with the tools and the metrics, and the control that we now understand they require. So what you might see on Mygazines.com is a full 180 degree turnaround from what we had, now geared towards publishers and providing them with tools, but there’s more than meets the eye, and the two will be merged quite soon.

DB: We’re not blaming the industry. We handled it improperly and that’s the bottom line. We now understand how the industry works, and you can’t paint every magazine with a broad stroke. Every publisher has a different way of making money, so you have to build the site around their ability to do what they need to grow.

Why did you hide behind the name John Smith?

DB: It all came pretty quickly. You’re trying to raise money, you’re trying to design a site, you’re trying… really we were just a bunch of technical guys. With the open upload – honestly I thought people would make their own magazines and upload those.

You have to understand, when this was going on, all the lawyers and lobbyists and anyone involved in the business who might have helped us all opted out because they’re all part of the industry. So the viewpoint that we kept ignoring these things is not looking into the situation, which was us calling everybody, and not having the ability to get advice from any of these people because none of them were willing to work with us.

So it was both inexperience, and inability to get that experience, that led to… just not handling it properly. It’s our fault regardless, because we should have foreseen people uploading, and we should have had a way of getting hold of the industry.

YS: That’s our past. Everybody makes mistakes. We’re trying to do everything we can to move forward and maintain the vision and bring it in a way that publishers will really appreciate and come on board.

DB: And that’s why we all settled fairly quickly – there was no quiet secret, it was between us and them, here’s what you need to do to make us secure, and we were amenable to that. We made a mistake and we needed to deal with it.

Mygazines 1.0 was based around the idea of a single newsstand of titles and articles, and you seem to be suggesting this will return. Why would a magazine want to be on an open newsstand, alongside their rivals, rather than creating their own branded digital space?

YS: Among our main products are our Express, Pro and Enterprise options. The Enterprise is a self-branded newsstand for an individual publisher or group of publishers. Mygazines will still have a global newsstand for publishers who want to be a part of it, but we’ll also offer publishers their own spaces that have nothing whatsoever to do with our newsstand.

DB: If they want to have a separate e-commerce solution via their own newsstand, that’s available. Paying by subscription, by article – it’s all up to them.

YS: That’s part of our new upgraded software. It looks like the reader is the same as it was before, but it’s not – the resolution is much higher, full screen, you can print at high resolution if the publisher allows it, download for offline reading if the publisher allows it, embed rich media, streaming videos, Flash files… there are also other key features, such as clipping, which is perfect for coupon flyers – you could select all your favourite coupons and then print them out as a batch.

So we’ve really taken the other side, saying ‘ok, we know what consumers want and we have that. Now let’s make sure we have everything publishers want.’

DB: We are in discussions with people constantly. It’s not just pie in the sky things. In some cases, some of the things we’ve come up with are specific customisations for clients that we find will be useful for the publishing industry as a whole.

Will I still be able to share articles with people who haven’t paid for them?

YS: That’s a technical decision that we’ll come to when publishers decide how they want to share. Given our system, we’re able to do almost anything. So it really comes down to implementation, not the system.

DB: Let’s talk about the free model – let’s say that dynamically generated ads have now kicked in and the publishers are getting as much or nearly as much for an online ad as in their printed magazine. The answer would be that you can do everything, it doesn’t matter, the concern is to get readers. You only must join the community to read the articles – we have to know who you are so we can make money off the community.

If the model is not free, there are many different ways to do it – and that’s why we’ve tried to provide the infrastructure. A publisher could have two tiered levels – say, $5 for all archived material, and one new subscription of a digital magazine, and I can share with everybody on that tiered price level. There may be another package which is $9.99, and allows me access to all the magazines on a newsstand, and I can share with anybody in that pricing level.

YS: Every newsstand will have its own community, and the marketplace will choose. If most people want a paid-for newsstand, that’s what will happen. If dynamic ads bring enough dollars, maybe you’re charging a dollar a month, and it’s going to be an unlimited reading of everything. The market will end up telling you which of those models it prefers, and it might be different for different magazines or publishers.

———

Mygazines claims to have many clients already signed up, including non-magazine clients. My own doubts are around the sheer complication of so many communities, pricing models and sharing ability. If iTunes has taught us anything, it’s that simplicity and ubiquity will win. I’m also not sure if ad rates for online magazines will match their print equivalents – there are several reasons why that may never happen.

As for the deeper question, ‘Are magazines nothing more than collections of articles?’… I’ll leave that for another day. It’s not going to go away.

The picture’s her, not me, btw.

Amelia’s Magazine has long been a reference point for the independent magazine world.

Founded in 2004, each book-thick issue has been painstakingly put together by a gang of talented interns, illustrators and Amelia herself, to the acclaim of fans around the world. And the latest issue, number 10 (now available to pre-order) is its last.

Though the pop-culture/fashion articles mixed with illustration (and occasional free stickers) have always made its pages distinctive, Amelia’s is probably best known for its cover innovations: scratch and sniff, encrusted with Swarovski crystals (before Harpers Bazaar did it), covered in flock, glow in the dark, printed on metallic foil (before Interview did it)… the last issue’s logo is covered in lime-green glitter, ending a visually striking sequence.

The website will apparently continue, but the print is no more. Though some have blamed the financial situation for its demise, in fact Amelia decided to stop at the beginning of the summer, before the credit crunch really hit. In a Magtastic blogsclusive, she shares stories of ongoing financial hardship, fighting mediocrity and why she always suspected that ten might be enough…

Did you have a particular vision for Amelia’s from the beginning?
Only in so much that I have very much pursued my own vision, without much regard to whether it will be a financial or critical success.

Was it aimed at a particular audience?
No, I’ve never been that way inclined. The magazine is purely based on the things that I like and think should be promoted, in the hope that others will appreciate what I have to say – it seems to have worked!

Why the printing innovations?
Because I am a very tactile person, and since the start I always wanted to produce a magazine that was desirable because it was special. In a sea of mediocrity I wanted to stand out – and I feel that if printing is to survive in its current form then it needs to adapt – information can be easily imparted on the internet but to hold something in your hands should be special. And yes, I think it has been part of my success and also my downfall because it hasn’t been cheap to do.

Was Amelia’s Magazine ever profitable?
No, it has been a total labour of love and I have barely eked a living for five years now, but it has got a lot worse recently – there is a lot more at stake now because my print runs are so much bigger, and because most of the magazines are sold on sale or return I am constantly chasing money that is owed to me to pay my printer, and in some cases I never get it. So my printer is constantly chasing me for money and it’s just too stressful. Plus I now have hardly any advertising, which I never anticipated, but I guess it is the times and I can’t survive without it. So the decision to stop making the magazine is partly financial but also creative – there are so many other things I want to do and I just don’t have the time at the moment, so I want to free up that time to pursue other avenues.

What do you wish you’d known when you began Amelia’s?
That the ability to get advertising revenue has nothing to do with how well your magazine is known or loved. If you don’t have your foot in the advertising world then you are screwed.

Is it possible to make money from publishing your own magazine?
No, probably not unless you are a total workaholic lunatic (I’m not, I have a life) or are willing to compromise your values to make money (again, I’m not)

How much has it cost you to publish Amelia’s?
Oh god, I’ve never added it all up – I dread to think! All I do know is that issue 9 has cost me in the region of £40,000 just to produce, and that’s not including any overheads or salaries. And I still owe money for the production of issue 8…

Is issue 10 a retrospective?
No, it will be like all the rest – I always planned to do 10 magazines and then go out with a bang if I felt like it at that point – which it turns out I do. So the 10 issues should stand as entities on their own – I would rather Amelia’s Magazine was remembered with fondness as a great design magazine of its time than petering slowly out into nothing.

What’s next?
At the moment I have so many ideas churning around that I am not quite sure where to start – I would hate to leave the world of publishing altogether as I love producing something tangible. I am toying with the idea of producing an Amelia’s Annual, sort of based on those annuals that kids used to love, but for adults. It will be a creative, ideas-based publication, and would encompass anything that I am interested in.

However, at the moment I have no idea how I will be able to fund it, and as publishing lead times are so long I may look at a different publishing model based on my reputation – I may only print what people order online before it goes to print, thereby decreasing all the usual risks! (but probably not selling very much either)

I might also start working with illustrators to produce environmentally friendly, high-quality notebooks, or I might work with a music company on the idea of bespoke limited edition USBs like the one that comes free with issue 9. I also want to start work on a book about sustainable communities and ecovillages around the world, which may mean that I do a fair bit of travelling next year and blogging en route. I am not sure how my website would run if that happened because at the moment I have 8 interns helping me to run it and it seems that is barely enough!

So maybe I will downsize everything, I don’t know. I want to start running the sustainable arts camps that I had hoped to start running this year, whereby artists and environmentalists and activists will get a chance to work together on ideas to improve our world.

In the end so much of my time has been taken up with other projects like helping to run Climate Camp at Kingsnorth that I just haven’t been able to get the idea off the ground yet. And I have lots of other ideas but they are all a bit up in the air – I am trying not to do too much as that is my usual default setting and I think I need to chill out a bit! But in the long term, I want to set up a sustainable arts community somewhere in the UK, and I need to learn a lot more about how to do that first…

I am also working much more towards the Climate Rush – and it looks like I might produce a book with illustrators and climate change thinkers (well, it’s an idea anyway!)