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DEBT from Dustin Grella on Vimeo.
I’m spending today/night/morrow helping out on Longshot, the 48-hour magazine that I like to think of Stranded‘s more famous half-brother.
The theme of this issue is Debt, and there are five simple challenges you can complete to participate here. Be quick though, the clock is ticking…
(Image: an Indigo digital printing press by HP)
The last ten years or so has been a remarkable time for personal publishing. The rise of online is very well documented; however, we’ve also seen a huge reduction in the barriers to entry for self-publishing in print.
Desktop publishing software has become affordable (or even free), print-on-demand suppliers such as Lulu and MagCloud now remove much of the financial risk of short-run creations, and The Newspaper Club has made newsprint available to everyone. All you need is some design knowhow, and some words.
Some interesting news from MagCloud, the HP-run service that offers print on demand for magazines. As of today, they’re offering a few new services:
Firstly, and long overdue: worldwide shipping. (UPDATE: only for single issues though. If you want to buy more than one mag, you have to pay separate shipping each time.) Not sure how cost-effective the rates are, but if it’s affordable, it makes the entire service far more attractive for publishers all over the world. Recommended purchases for those new to the party: Strange Light, Onè Respe, and the Life Woodstock reprint (sadly without the ads of the day). Even custom publishers are using it.
Secondly, perfect binding. For a flat rate of $1, on-demand publishers can now perfect bind any mag (only saddle-stitching has been allowed until now). I’ve not seen a sample yet to know how it holds, but it’s an important step towards making professional-feeling magazines. Publishers can upload their own spines, or let the MagCloud system generate it for them. Minimum page count is 20; it also increases the maximum size of a MagCloud mag to 384 pages, and means that magazines no longer have to have page counts in multiples of four.
Thirdly, and most left-fieldly, an iPad application. An opt-in for all publishers on MagCloud, readers can download the free MagCloud app, and then select the magazines they want to read, which are downloaded for offline reading within the app. They’ve created an interface that allows for portrait and landscape viewing, with a simple zoom function, and downloads are a fraction of the size of the print pdf. And if you want a printed copy, you simply hit the “Buy in Print” button at the top right, and an iFrame opens up to a shopping cart on the MagCloud website.
Though I haven’t played with it yet, the app sounds pretty basic. There are no functions to copy/paste text or to share pages with anyone, and you can’t transfer your downloads to read on any other device. There’s also no option to sell digital editions within the app – right now, all those who opt in have to offer their iPad editions for free, though I’m told that a pay-for option is in the works.
When it first launched, I mentioned that a tie-in with Issuu would make sense for MagCloud. Seems like they’re simply making their own competitor. If HP only made printers, I’d say that this was a curious move. However, as a huge company with so many fingers in so many technological pies, perhaps only a company like HP could offer such a joined-up selection of publishing possibilities.
By the time that the iPad app reaches its second or third iteration, and with a few tweaks to their print service, MagCloud could just be the best thing that ever happened to small magazine publishers, in whatever format they want to publish in. Right now, it’s certainly well on the way.
From the moment that the idea was first mooted, 48 Hour Magazine, aka 48HR, got a lot of people talking (including the lawyers). The premise was simple: “As the name suggests, we’re going to write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days.”
Created by a team that included a Wired contributing editor, a former senior editor of Dwell, and the founders of user-generated JPG magazine, it worked like this: on the first day, they unveiled the theme, and gave people 24 hours to submit their work. On the second day, based inside Mother Jones‘ offices, they edited, designed, proofed, uploaded. On the third day, they rested. HP’s print-on-demand service MagCloud then did the rest.
48 hours. One 60-page magazine. So how did it turn out?
Perhaps my favourite magazine of last year was Strange Light. It was a beautiful, elegiac magazine made up of images from Sydney’s dust cloud storm. Most remarkable, however, is how, and how fast it was put together.
It was created in the USA by Derek Powacek, founder of JPEG magazine, from photos he found on Flickr – he identified the owners, got their permission, and had a lovely little magazine on sale via print-on-demand service MagCloud, less than 48 hours after the storm hit.
More of the service’s potential is on view with Onè Respe, a magazine made of archive photojournalism from Haiti, showing its vibrant population pre-earthquake. A group of photojournalists donated some incredible images to the mag, all proceeds from which go to the American Red Cross International Response Fund for Haiti relief. The magazine contains a couple of articles as well as some fantastic full-bleed double spreads.
Its title is Haitian creole for “Honour and Respect”. You can see a preview and buy the thing here. It costs $16, $12 of which goes straight to the fund. $12 – I assume the price change means that all monies go straight to the fund (well done, HP). UPDATE: yep.
The idea for the magazine was photographer Lane Hartwell’s, and it was designed by Powacek. It looks like it’s been really well put together, and fast. There’s a Q+A with Lane here. Now go and buy it.
As newspaper publishers struggle with the problem of making new media journalism pay, and daily news habits migrate online, it’s easy to think that the newspaper itself is about to disappear.
Just as radio disappeared when TV was invented. Or the horse completely died out after the invention of the car. Or why vinyl is something you only now see in museums. Read the rest of this entry »
No sooner do I blog about zombie magazines being revived through their archives than Life gets together with MagCloud to reproduce their original Woodstock issue (though it seems from the preview that the ads have been removed).
The pair are also apparently teaming up to allow users to compile their own magazine using images from the Life back catalogue – the one major restriction seeming to be that they all have to come from the same date. You’ll be allowed to add in images of your own too, for the perfect ‘Dad’s Christmas present’ win.
I do wish they’d be a little more adventurous with it all. I’d love to have the chance to put together my own re-editing of Life‘s archive, Lilliput style.
