Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:04:00 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@reedmedia.net> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD Magazine Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0009131025470.30616-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> In-Reply-To: <200009131709.NAA04451@sjt-u10.cisco.com>
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On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Steve Tremblett wrote: > How about the best of both worlds? A proposal could be made to > Daemonnews or some other online publication to generate printable > versions of their publications. Of course that would move the focus Some online publications have writing contracts and purchase the articles. This may be difficult to change because the parent companies may not want to pay more or support other media. > These slashdot-style sites all have automated architectures - I doubt > it would be a big deal to run an article set through some formatting > templates and generate a printable newsletter to co-incide with the > online version. Yes, I agree this is easily possible. But as a reader, it would be nice to have different, unique content in the print publication compared to online. (And then maybe the online and print publication -- and readers -- could benefit if there was additional and related information at a website.) > It doesn't put it on a newsstand in front of Joe Average's face, but > it is a start. Maybe computer stores with a BSD affinity could print > a bunch and stack them with other free computer papers. Sounds like a good and easy way to start. From personal experience[1], publishing print newsletters is a lot easier than publishing magazines and is a good way to start. I am interested in helping with a print publication (but I am not sure how much since I have a conflict of interest -- I already edit a BSD-related online publication owned by a company that sold its print interests a couple years ago). One problem I see is finding good writers who also KNOW BSD. (Or in other words, BSD gurus that know how to cleanly write and share their knowledge.) As we know, publishing online is a hundred times cheaper and easier. Nevertheless, the basic editorial work (finding and working with freelancers and other departments) is the same. Can anyone quickly set up a mailing list for discussing the "BSD magazine"? Jeremy C. Reed http://www.reedmedia.net/ 1) For a few years, I published several (maybe 15) print newsletters ranging from four pages to 16 pages covering high school basketball recruiting. I researched and wrote about 95% of the content -- this took me well over 25 hours per issue. At first, I designed the newsletter with MS Word and then later when I started working on my journalism degree I used Quark Express. The layout of each newsletter took anywhere from four hours to 30 hours. For printing, I basically printed the originals with a laser printer on 11x17 inch paper. Then used a normal copier service to make copies on both sides of 11x17 sheets. I folded them, addressed them and stamped them. (Some newsletters I also printed on 8.5x11 and I faxed them.) Printing (copying) and mailing newsletters took less than two hours per issue. The newsletters were very cheap to publish and profitable. Then I decided to publish a print magazine (same topic). For several months, I searched for freelancers. I spent at least 100 hours researching for my own content. I spent about 100 hours editing freelanced articles and laying out content (Quark Express). Then I printed on 11x17 inch sheets with a laser printer, and took the pages to Kinkos who photocopied all the sheets. Kinkos also used some special photocopier to copy on gloss cover stock for the magazine cover and they binded and trimmed the magazine. (This took a couple days.) Publishing the magazine (less than 50 copies) was definitely a money loser. Of course, I don't mention the hundreds of hours I spent in marketing! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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