Why don’t we buy magazines?
My first professional work in design/printing was in magazines and newspapers. My first fan work was publishing a fanzine. My entire life I’ve loved flipping through printed materials, and I am constantly finding myself wishing for cool magazines and feeling a bit of sadness that magazines are becoming so very rare. There are plenty of websites and blogs devoted to toys these days, but is there a regular printed magazine that we can buy?
The internet is awesome, but the immediate access to news has devastated many newspapers and magazines, and even virtual magazines don’t often collect enough support to be cost-effective and profitable. In a recent comment here at BattleGrip the creator and publisher of littleplasticmen, a free online magazine, reported that the toymakers didn’t step up to advertise in the magazine. That’s pretty sad, because if you’ve seen the magazine you already know that it’s a neat, professionally-designed work that should have collected at least a few ad dollars from Mattel and Hasbro.
I’d love to receive a magazine all about toys in my mail every now and then. A quarterly publication would be just fine with me, but there are many days I feel as if I’m the only one who would even subscribe if a magazine was launched. The decrease in interest combined with increase in shipping makes it unlikely we’re going to see a magazine, but I just can’t stop wishing that there was time in my schedule to craft and publish a magazine.
The printing cost, compared to all of the other expenses of such a project, would be minimal. Going through a site like Print Ninja we find that print cost for 5,000 copies of an 8.5-inch by 11-inch 44-page magazine using high-quality cover and interior stock it’s only $4,500 to print the magazine . . . and then another $2,800 to get those magazines to me. What is worse is I’d then have to turn around and spend approximately $3.50/magazine to get those out to all of the readers. All of a sudden we’re looking at about $25,000 to print and distribute (direct) 5,000 magazines. Insane! And if you want to cover costs for your time to do the work and show a profit? Nope. Not gonna happen.
There would be another way to tackle such an idea, but it’s so far out there I don’t think this idea would ever succeed. Basically, run each issue of the magazine as a Kickstarter project AND coordinate each issue with an event or online retailer. Let me explain.
Say I’m putting together an issue of the magazine and decide that this issue’s focus is mostly Transformers toys. I price a single issue on Kickstarter at $10, of which $5 goes to printing and shipping costs. The other $5 is applied to printing and bulk shipping two magazines . . . every one magazine a backer receives through Kickstarter generates two more magazines that are then given away. How do we give it away? Well, for the Transformers issue I talk to sites like TFSource and Toy Dojo and convince them to include the magazine free in orders.
A superhero action figure issue would be released around SDCC or NYCC and we find a retailer/exhibitor at the show who would be willing to hand out magazines at the show . . . again, free to those attending.
Yep. That’s why this would never work. It’s unlikely we would find 2,000 to 2,500 people willing to buy a magazine that is then given away free. The distribution method I think could be workable (online retailers and free at conventions), but the approach to generating funds is set to fail from Day One.
IF we could convince Hasbro, Mattel, NECA, Mezco, and others that a magazine is a wonderful thing and great for the community then it’s possible there would be enough advertising revenue to make the idea work, but that seems hugely unlikely.
Damn. Magazines may really be dead for toy collectors. I am sad.
Related articles
- “Deck the Halls with Squads of Robots” (battlegrip.com)
- Skeleton Warriors at the Glyos Transmission Web Log (battlegrip.com)
- Morning Rush: NY Toy Fair 2015, What Are You Excited For? (thefwoosh.com)
Hey Philip, have you been looking through my notes? With the issue of Cool & Collected that I put out, I did exactly as you mentioned, but with a print run of 1,000. I used PrintNinja and the printing cost was manageable, but their production time is not conducive to a time-sensitive publication — it took over two months to get the printed books in hand.
What killed me was the shipping costs. If I was smarter and had a solid subscriber list, I might have been able to enact a bulk mailing permit, but as it was, I had to ship each issue as first-class mail, which was over $3 per magazine. When all was said and done, I came out slightly ahead thanks to the Kickstarter funds, but without an affordable, solid distribution plan, a second issue has never been produced.
@Brian (Cool & Collected) – Distribution is the greatest challenge. Shipping costs these days are ridiculous.
If I could find a way to fund the printing costs I would take a shot at the idea of a free magazine that’s distributed through online stores. I’m betting a few online stores would be willing to drop magazines in with orders in exchange for some advertising.
Philip, I’m like you, I like to flip through a nicely designed and produced magazine. But the problem is, at least for me, cost and space. Anything worth my money these days is so expensive. Even when I was still buying design magazines 12-15 years ago, they were expensive. Eventually it became a space issue.
As for anything news related, the Internet makes it worthless. In the day and age where many expect things 5 minutes ago, printed magazines are losing the fight.
As much as I’d like to see your model work, I see Cool & Collected tried something similar, I just don’t see it working with the shear number of websites covering the world of collectible toys publishing daily.
I do contract work for Reader’s Digest — though it’s still a big magazine over here and Australia is a big magazine-reading country, print in general is struggling big time. The biggest magazine in the country at the moment is Better Homes & Gardens, which has the support of a high-rating weekly TV show!
That said, maybe some kind of e-publication could work?