[plug] starting a linux mag?

[Peter J. Nicol]

Shayne's advice is excellent.

I may add the following (from having published a mag before, and been
involved in the graphic design biz for a while also).

Ad sales are the engine of any magazine.  Without this, just about
everything else is moot.  So you need advertisers, and ad salespeople.  Good
ones are out there working already ... so it may be an interesting task to
convice people to join your effort.

The other road is to find a financier, and having been involved in a venture
funded business previously, I can attest that this is also an interesting
task.

There are a few local success stories.  WA Style went successfully for
years, and then became Australian Style and I think is still going.  Scoop
manage to put out I think 4 magazines a year.  There are a couple of local
Bride magazines.  Pete Collins and crew got out quite a few years worth of
issues of REVelation Magazine out of Perth.  Of course, there is Xpress and
such as well.

Design Graphics is an excellent graphic design magazine that comes out of
Australia and is read internationally, so it can be done.  A really great
team and a really great product is the key.  Does anyone know of any great
Australian Computer/IT websites with an international rep?  They may be a
good start for a print magazine ...

There is a chicken and egg thing with advertisers and magazines.  They only
want to put ads in mags that people read, and without the advertisers it is
hard to get the magazine out ...  So you have to be going for a while before
they will come on board ... unless you want to give the ad's away at the
beginning.

The other way is to put a team together, and go to a publisher.  But there
is little to stop them stealing your idea outright and starting up with
their own team.  In this instance also, you would lose a degree of
independence.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your
opinion (regular wages=good, loss of independence=bad).

I could be talked into helping out a bit, depending on how serious the
effort is.

>  I'd suggest the first thing to do is to work out the demographics.
>  (A) Identify Audience. You have to work out WHO the mag
>  is targeted at, in terms of (A) Broad demographic [linux heads]
>  and (B) Specifically [IT commercial sector, IT hacker sector etc], and
>  if multiple targets, how compatible are they in terms of aust market.
>  (B) Just how many of these people exist, and do they have the
>  disposable income to buy such a mag.
>  (C) Advertising targetability. If the mags gunna be cheap, will the
>  target market be responsive enough to advertising to allow advertising
>  to subsidise costs.
>
>  Then you need to work out a cost analysis. Based on your demographic
>  figures (research research research!) , how many do you intend to put out
>  each edition, and whats the production cost.
>  Factor in;-
>  (A) Writers. $100 a pop an article will be a good figure once the mags
>  established, until it is, perhaps you can rely on goodwill from
>  Pluggers etc.
>  (B) Artists / Layout. A bit harder cost wise, but keep in mind
>  the market is
>  always flooded with desperate unemployed graphic designers.
>  (C) Printing costs. Is the standard mag format do-able, or
>  perhaps a small
>  newspaper/broadsheet format is the go. Doing it this way may
>  bring end price
>  down to $2-$4 bucks a pop. Plus a newspaper format is novel.
>  (D) Plant. Factor in 2-3 linux boxen, plus a mac for the artist.
>  (Reality
>  check;- Artists love macs.. So OS.X stacked with gnu-goodies + standard
>  adobe toys is the go. Gimps fun , but it's no illustrator/photoshop) And
>  location.
>  You will need at least one machine at good spec to fiddle with ,
>  and sadly
>  it's probably got to be red-hat flavored as opposed to Debian. Make sure
>  to pressure suppliers into giving samples to play wi^H^H^H review.
>  (E) Admin.
>
>  Maybe the trick is to put together a sample edition to give you
>  an idea of
>  logistics, and start BOMBING publishers with the proposal. Do you know
>  any marketing guys? They will be GOLD in helping you pitch the idea.
>
>  Anyway, I'll be happy to help out and GOOD LUCK!
>  Shayne.