The Profit Equation

The final lecture of So You Want to Start a Magazine was devoted to the steps necessary to determine a magazine’s potential for profitability. As I have suggested, the utility of the class for me was diminished by the fact that my neo-socialist literary magazine—despite all its certain dash and drive—is unlikely to be supported by Lexus, Tag Heuer, and Ketel One ads. And when I told “Steve” the instructor (who had graciously agreed to take phone calls) that my four-year subscription goals were 2000 copies, I could tell from the descending lilt in his voice that he agreed. Though I should say that Steve is not only very successful in the field but also a truly supportive instructor. Ultimately, the class was valuable for the insight it provided into the practical realities and processes that must attend the impulse to start a magazine (profitable or otherwise) and for the business plan template that was essentially the superstructure of the lesson plan. And, on the upside, I have spared myself a fortune in market-testing and branding consulting fees.

The only downside to the experience was that it revivified my long-dormant school-related anxiety and its attendant dreams. I had one the second week of class that I had returned to my alma mater the University of Wisconsin to attend a reunion of the cast of the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School that was filmed in Madison while I was going there. The dream-event was held in a crowded lecture hall and had been going on for less than a minute before I remembered not only that I had hated the movie and been annoyed at having to walk around all the cameras and crowds as I went about my self-important way, but also that I was missing a math class I had registered for but hadn’t gone to since the first week. A school anxiety dream within a school anxiety dream, and all this while I was actually doing the online work for the class as it was assigned—unlike some virtual students I could name.

Colorado Review in the HuffPo

Anis Shivani has a great interview with Stephanie G'Schwind on Huffington Post. The Colorado Review, along with other stateonymic literary magazines, like the Missouri Review and the Alaska Quarterly Review, are excellent examples of journals with regional-sounding names that are actually the equal of any of the top geographically-ambiguously-titled counterparts.

Mumbai-based author Murzban F. Shroff , who’s story “A Matter of Misfortune” appeared in TriQuarterly 132, is facing obscenity charges in Indian for his outstanding collection Breathless in Bombay (St. Martin’s, 2008).

Read all about it here.

http://www.indiawest.com/readmore.aspx?id=1700&sid=1

In a recent email Shroff wrote to us: “Several writer-friends in the U.S., are taking this forward, at various levels. If you have any contacts with writers' guilds, networks, and organizations, please bring this to their attention. I would like to add that I am immensely grateful to International Pen who came in solidly and unconditionally to ensure that the literature of my city stays protected.”

One sure way to help would be to buy his book.

A Passage in India

I received word from TriQuarterly 132 contributor Murzban F. Shroff yesterday regarding the disposition of his indecency case in the Indian courts.

Good news, though it is a little chilling to think of what would become of a judge in the U.S. court system who praised a work of fiction for upholding secularism.

I'm reprinting a post from the old TriQuarterly To-day blog that contains a link that Murzban sent that explains the story behind the trial.

You can take the editor out of the NFP

The objective of the intro to magazine publishing class I’m taking is—unsurprisingly—to launch one’s own magazine. The online lectures are targeted toward creating a for-profit magazine, one supported not only by single-copy sales, subscriptions, and advertising, but also by product tie-ins and “advertorials,” in short, a magazine like most of the dwindling pool you see, and sometimes buy, at your newsstand. The introductory course lecture insists that while these are dark times for the magazine industry all is not gloom. Out of crisis comes opportunity—for that sighted entrepreneur with a brilliant and ruthless new business model.

So naturally I chose to start a Socialist magazine on the model of the Masses, or the Anvil, or the old Partisan Review. Worse, since I didn’t think such a venture could sustain itself in this day and age through sales and subs, I decided that Exposition magazine (I went meta) would be a not-for-profit, dependant upon institutional subventions and grants. One may be forgiven for concluding that I have learned absolutely nothing from personal experience (particularly given my guilty admiration for slick magazines that turn a profit). However, I worried the course would not be worth the tuition if I didn’t apply what I learned to something I might actually consider doing.

The instructor—whom we will call Steve (not his real name)—says that, thanks to the savage realities of the Great Recession, the editorial and business sides of magazines are closer than they ever have been, and I believe this is true. At TriQuarterly we didn’t necessarily think ourselves immune to economic reality, but rather believed that nurturing a literary culture that may not otherwise survive in a market subjugated to the bottom line was precisely the mission of a university-based literary magazine.

Cast to the barbarities of the market, one might conclude that magazines in this era cannot support themselves primarily on advertisement. Not necessarily true says Steve. Maxim once boasted a sell-through rate of 70%, thus inspiring a new maxim: it is not possible to support a magazine through advertising without feeling that one needs to take a shower at the end of the day.

When Margaret Anderson, the legendary editor of the Little Review, found—having embraced anarchism and published the likes of Emma Goldman and John Reed—that no one would advertize in her magazine, she began publishing brief inserts on pages where advertising would normally appear. Of this nature:

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company ought to advertise something, though I don’t know just what. The man I interviewed made such a face when I told him we were radical that I haven’t had the courage to go back and pester him for the desired full-page. The Carson-Pirie attitude toward change of any sort is well-known—I think resent even having to keep pace with the change in fashions.

It may be worth a try. Steve also says publishers need to be open to profitable new models or perhaps not-for-profitable new models.

Re-education and Its Discontents

Apologies for the gap between postings. I’ve been scrambling to meet several deadlines, the most intriguing of which is the course work for a course on starting online on magazine publishing.

A necessary and yet humiliating aspect of losing one’s job on the pretext of technological change is the sense that one needs to be retrained, reeducated to keep up with the changing job market. Of course, this notion is generally a byproduct of anxiety rather than reason because in the job market—insofar as such a thing can be identified—there is very little that can be accomplished in technical or vocational training for the vast majority of fields that couldn’t better be learned through the experience of an actual job. The fact is that in terms of sheer economic efficiency, shrimp fishermen are most productive when they are fishing for shrimp rather than sopping up oil and manufacturers are more productive when they are manufacturing rather than working as a hostess at Appleby’s. And, in my specific case, online editing is far less demanding and complex than print editing, so the idea that anyone with experience in the latter would be unable to do the former is absurd.

Just the same, having worked for only one magazine over the last thirteen years I have wondered, over the past few months, how universal and transferable my skills are. So, the email advertisement for this course that came through on a job site I subscribe to caught my eye. The instructor has a solid reputation in marketing and advertising for several glossy magazines in New York. I was reluctant, though, to pay the money for the tuition. The next day, however, I got an email telling me that I’d sold a short story for the exact same amount as the course cost, so I decided it was kismet of some sort and enrolled.

The course is designed with a conventional advertising/subscription for profit model, so not exactly my area of expertise, but, as I said, the idea was to see how magazine work is done for profit. Over the next few days, I will provide an account of what I have learned.