Magazine Staff-Revisited

        So, I have spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about what I am going to talk about in the blog this year. Last year I wrote as we were going through things so you might notice a sort of progression of the ideas. This year there may be a progression in the end, but I actually worked on a list of topics for the year. They may or may not follow the year’s progression. I hope to get these posts out around the time that you might need them.
        I also want to encourage you, the reader, to interact with the blog. I look forward to seeing comments posted from readers. I had one person, who I have never met, post comments and start a discussion in the blog. I can’t even describe how exciting it was. It really encouraged me to keep up with this project. I want more encouragement. Won’t you please help me out.

        So on that note I am going to ask you to contribute to the first official post of the year.

        In one of the first posts to this blog dealt with the organization of a literary magazine staff (http://litmagcreation.blogspot.com/2007/09/organization.html). Boy, when I look back over it I see that there isn’t a lot there. So it’s a good thing that I start with this again. The organization of your staff may be the most helpful thing for a successful magazine. If no one knows what anyone else is doing then nothing gets done. The question that I have been wrestling with is, “Is there such a thing as too much organization?”
        We all know that there is definitely such a thing as not enough organization. A lot of us deal with this in our everyday lives. Little or no organization leads to so many problems that it is often enough to bring down an organization, group, or even a publication. Nothing gets done and things are rushed. The details that refine a magazine are lost in the mix. This is a sure way to turn out a mediocre publication. My concern is that I, personally, may fixate too much on the organization of the staff and not on what the magazine needs. This stems from the fact that I can spend hours developing a staff organization, but that certainly doesn’t guarantee that the jobs will be performed to expectation. As an adviser, I should be concerned with keeping the structure there, but I have found that by the end of the publication cycle for the year, the staff miraculously dwindles to a handful doing the work. This makes me think that we should whittle the staff down to the core of people that we are left with at the end of the year. This is where the idea of “too much organization“ comes from. I hate to see members get positions in on the staff, but not take initiative to get their part of the job done.

        This is the dilemma that I am going to pose to my co-adviser as well as the editor-in-chief for the coming year. How can we more effectively run the magazine? This is where you, the reader, comes in. I would like to know how you organize your staff? How do you get people to do what they sign on for?

Summer Message

I wanted to wish all of your a restful and rejuvenating summer. I am going to be working on the blog over the summer. I am hoping to get a post or two up over the summer, but I will mainly be working on a list of articles and topics to write about this coming year.

Sales

"I was wondering if your group sells copies of your magazine once they are printed to raise money? If you do, how much do you charge and how successful is it? In the past we've tried to sell some but never sold more than a few copies at graduation." -Lars

Yes we do sell the magazine. In the two years that I have been involved in selling the magazine we have sold it for $5 and then the following year $7. This year we are talking about selling it for $10. Our problem has been, and always will be, No matter what we sell it at we will never reclaim the cost of publishing. This year's price is an attempt to maximize the amount of money that we can get.
We print 200 to 250 copies of the magazine. We sell 60 copies on average. We feel that we can sell the higher quality magazine to the same 60 people at $10 instead of $5 or $7. In this way we can gain a little more revenue to put towards next year. This is only a theory. Time will tell if it works.

I can't remember where I heard the idea, or who mentioned it; however, there is an idea floating around about the possibility of selling the magazines on Amazon or eBay. We haven't seriously pursued the idea, but it is an avenue that we are going to be looking into. At this point in the game, we (As lit mag people) are going to have to come up with some creative solutions to this problem.

Unfortunately, I cannot ever see a high school literary magazine being published and paid for through sales. Sponsorships, patrons, and donations are always going to have to be a part of the equation. I hope that I will be proved wrong in the future.

Printing Time

So we have gotten to the time of year when the printer comes around. I would be interested to here from you how your magazine is printed. Do you do it yourself? Do you use an Internet printer? Do you use a local printer?
Our philosophy (The advisers) is to use a local printer. We feel it is important to keep our business in the area. In the past, we have had problems with a local printer, only to have another local printer come to our rescue. After that company was bought out we found another local print shop and we are now working with them for a second year.
We met with our account representative from the printer last evening. He came to the school to talk with us. We outlined our ideas with the rep and looked at samples. I cannot tell you how important it is to be able to have a face to face. We were able to see and touch actual samples of the cover stock and text stock that we wanted to use in this years mag. We were able to talk about the paper size and the colors we wanted to use.
The other benefit that we found, with our present printer, is the technological aspect of printing. We are able to work on our file in Adobe InDesign CS at school, burn it on a CD and send it to them. They pull it into their system and we have a proof in a few days. Now it's gotten better! The have an FTP site that we can upload the file to! That means that when we are finished we send it to their server and they pull it down. The amount of time that this saves us, from even two years ago, is staggering. Going from printing our magazine completely ourselves, to sending the file electronically, in less than three years?!

Find a printer that will talk to you. Better yet find a printer that will sit down and show you printing and paper samples. The printer has probably done this for a while and can help you with problems as they arise.

Pushing the Envelope

How far can you push the design envelope? Is it possible to have the concept of your magazine's layout go over the reader's head?
Before I go on about this topic I want to make two things perfectly clear: I tend to design on the conservative side and this topic came about because of our scores in this year's competitions. I don't want you to think that this is anything other than constructive criticism/reflection on my part.

Two and a half years ago, when I first joined Charisma, we crated Surfaces. The magazine had a fairly conservative layout. There were a few twists, but not many. The major twist was the fact that we chose to layout the magazine on 8 1/2 x 11 paper in the landscape orientation. That meant that the magazine was bound on the short side (I would not recommend this due to printing issues). The spread was divided into either four or six columns or a combination of each on a page.
Last year's magazine ! (that's right "!"), went in a completely different direction. There wasn't a spread that was similar. The only thing that tied the pages together was the folio, and the use of an exclamation point in some manner. We went from 4 color ink-jet printing on Surfaces to Duotone professional printing. The print quality was extraordinary and the magazine looked good.

The second magazine that I was involved with was hard for me to get my head around at first. It went against my philosophy of design, but I came to love it. Now that we have gotten three of our four competition results back, we have been less than thrilled.
As my colleague and I have let this sink in and we have discussed it, we are coming to the realization that the design concept for ! may have been too much. There are a lot of things that are happening from page to page and even on the page. For some this may be too hard to get their head around, and can end up overwhelming the reader. It distracts them from reading or enjoying the art.

So the moral of the story here? Take risks in your layout, but make sure that what you are doing does not overpower the content. I am by no means saying that conservative is the way to go. After last year's magazine I have begun to appreciate less conservative layout ideas. I have, however, come to appreciate that the cutting edge can be dangerous.