Late yesterday, viewership of my digital magazine Galaxis ("The worlds of science & science fiction") surpassed 1,000, all in about a month's time. Now, I know that 1,000 readers is a minor amount both in print and online publications. But for a free digital magazine that has had no budget – absolutely zero – and has spread only by word of mouth (and, I guess, word of Facebook and Twitter), it's a promising start. My one thousandth viewer is therefore a milestone.
If you haven't checked it out yet, click on it below to view it full-screen on your computer. You can also download it to your computer from my host issuu.com site (just look for the download icon beneath the magazine image on that page). And if you want an actual, paper-and-ink hard copy of the magazine, you can purchase it from my print-on-demand pals at MagCloud.
While I continue to welcome new readers to issue #1, I am hard at work on issue #2, which is shaping up to be even better. I've got lots of original, in-depth articles on new and classic science fiction and science from around the world. One reader commented to me that he likes reading a science fiction magazine that shows him stuff he doesn't already know about, that widens his base of knowledge and enjoyment of the genre. I feel exactly the same way, and I think this second issue will really establish Galaxis as the smart portal to the global SF field that we've been needing.
Look for issue #2 in a couple month's time. Until then, enjoy the premiere issue!
Showing posts with label magcloud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magcloud. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Complete Table of Contents for Galaxis: The Worlds of Science & Science Fiction
FEATURES
String Theory's Father: Q&A with Leonard Susskind, science rock star
Scientist on a Mission: In an exclusive interview, Michio Kaku talks about the future – that's being built today
The Long March of Star Wolf: David Gerrold's classic space war novels deserve to be filmed
The Paper Rumor Mill: How fans got their news before the internet
Remembering Moonbase Alpha
Heart-to-Heart Talk: Deepak Srivastava talks stem cells
When 14-Year-Olds Saved Humanity: How Gundam puts U.S. animation to shame
A Larger View: Photo essay on how NASA has broadened our universe
The Lathe of Heaven: Ursula K. Le Guin's brainy SF classic on TV
Michael Medved & Robot Monster
Real Space, Real People: It's finally happening: Real people in space
DEPARTMENTS
Viewscreen: Introducing Galaxis; science fiction and science are already everywhere
Launch Tube: Galactica back x2? Can America still be a futurist technology leader? And more news
Question Time: Author and anthropologist Mary Doria Russell
Discoveries: Where can you see a real dinosaur today? We've got the photos to show you.
Reviewscreen: Science fiction and fact from around the world: K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces, The Secrets of the Chess Machine. Plus: Potter, Kaku, and Eerie Publications
Next Issue: The future in Galaxis
All of that can be found in the July 2011 issue of Galaxis (volume 1, number 1!). It's easy to get your hands on it: You can view and download a free digital copy of the magazine at issuu or you can buy a print-on-demand copy from MagCloud.
Let me know what you think about the magazine. I am already hard at work on the second issue.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Printcasting: Turning Blogs into Magazines
Even I, stalwart defender of the printed periodical, was given pause by a recent article in The New York Times about Printcasting, a web site that lets people create print magazines from their blogs.
Supported by the Knight Foundation, the site is a free service for using a blog as a content feed for the online magazine creation system. You can also include blog items from other Printcaster users, and advertising is shared across the network. You can alert subscribers when a new issue is available and they can download it and print it out themselves. (A better description of the services is available here.)
It's an interesting concept. Yes, most people with blogs don't want a print edition. But let's face it: Lots of people create blogs because they can't afford to do a print publication; this service lets them have both options, so I think there will definitely be a customer base for Printcasting, even if the customers are just printing out copies and leaving them at coffee shops.
Though the designs of the publications are limited, it's still another interesting idea for merging the worlds of online and print. As I've noted here before about the print-on-demand magazine publisher MagCloud, by taking the distribution challenge out of the equation (and costs) of the prospective small publisher, the digital revolution could actually spawn a renaissance in magazines, and not be its death. MagCloud is different in that it is a printer service, where the publishers upload (at no cost) their magazine files to MagCloud, which uses its network of high-quality HP printers to produce the magazines on demand and mail them to the buyers.
Printcasting goes one step backward in terms of design quality but one step forward toward my prediction of direct-to-buyer printing, by which I mean the publisher creates the magazine, sends it in digital form to the customer, who prints it out on his/her increasingly professional home or office printer.
This revolution is starting to become fun!
Supported by the Knight Foundation, the site is a free service for using a blog as a content feed for the online magazine creation system. You can also include blog items from other Printcaster users, and advertising is shared across the network. You can alert subscribers when a new issue is available and they can download it and print it out themselves. (A better description of the services is available here.)
It's an interesting concept. Yes, most people with blogs don't want a print edition. But let's face it: Lots of people create blogs because they can't afford to do a print publication; this service lets them have both options, so I think there will definitely be a customer base for Printcasting, even if the customers are just printing out copies and leaving them at coffee shops.
Though the designs of the publications are limited, it's still another interesting idea for merging the worlds of online and print. As I've noted here before about the print-on-demand magazine publisher MagCloud, by taking the distribution challenge out of the equation (and costs) of the prospective small publisher, the digital revolution could actually spawn a renaissance in magazines, and not be its death. MagCloud is different in that it is a printer service, where the publishers upload (at no cost) their magazine files to MagCloud, which uses its network of high-quality HP printers to produce the magazines on demand and mail them to the buyers.
Printcasting goes one step backward in terms of design quality but one step forward toward my prediction of direct-to-buyer printing, by which I mean the publisher creates the magazine, sends it in digital form to the customer, who prints it out on his/her increasingly professional home or office printer.
This revolution is starting to become fun!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
The Last Print Starlog?
Starlog.com reports today that the April 2009 issue of Starlog magazine (#374, pictured) will be the last, at least for now. The magazine announced "the temporary cessation of the current run of Starlog as a print magazine. After 33 years, and considering the present state of the economy, we feel its time for a major revamp and will be temporarily discontinuing publication while the model and redesign of the magazine are contemplated and executed."
I know it's probably too early to get answers, and in this economic climate, answers might not mean much because conditions change constantly in the marketplace.
But since they're floating around in my head, I'll just write out my questions here: My assumption is that when a magazine "temporarily" ceases publication, it's usually permanent. So is this planned as a permanent print shutdown, or is it really a re-tooling? Also, I'm naturally excited about a revamping of the venerable magazine -- I've written here before what I thought needed doing, though I'm not so delusional that I think that's coming to fruition -- but what type of revamping is contemplated is something to wonder about. And will there be a staff changeover? Are longtime editor David McDonnell, managing editor Alan Dart, and art director Heiner Feil out of the picture?
For those of you not in publishing, you might feel tempted to be skeptical about the allusion to the state of the economy and think it's only an excuse, but the economy is very bad for publishing, and the printing and distribution infrastructure in this country for periodicals has -- in my humble opinion -- basically broken down. Even my own magazine has combined issues for this next year to bring our frequency down from 12 to 10 times, saving a lot of money in the process.
The Starlog.com report does state that the final issue in this run of Starlog will be available on its web site in digital format, which is a good move. It is a "modern" thing to do for a magazine that once called itself "the magazine of the future." But on a selfish angle, it's also what I've always wanted from magazines I've liked that have closed up shop (er, temporarily). In addition, the entire run of the magazine will be digitally available on the site at some point in the future, and that's also exciting news.
With the recent relaunch of Starlog.com, there's reason to hope that the outcome for the magazine/brand will be positive and bright, and I'm looking forward to it. There are many ways to launch/relaunch/continue a print magazine today, including one of my personal favorites, the HP-run MagCloud (basically a print-on-demand magazine that's no cost to the publisher). There are also magazines that are distributing only digitally (or digitally in addition to print). Publishers will have to decide whether the persistence of a print magazine on a person's coffee table or bedside can be replicated by an online-only product (and hence I think MagCloud may offer a good future, especially if they can bring down their high per-page costs). But that's their calculation to make.
As for me, I'll just keep anticipating the future.
April 10, 2009: Update.
I know it's probably too early to get answers, and in this economic climate, answers might not mean much because conditions change constantly in the marketplace.
But since they're floating around in my head, I'll just write out my questions here: My assumption is that when a magazine "temporarily" ceases publication, it's usually permanent. So is this planned as a permanent print shutdown, or is it really a re-tooling? Also, I'm naturally excited about a revamping of the venerable magazine -- I've written here before what I thought needed doing, though I'm not so delusional that I think that's coming to fruition -- but what type of revamping is contemplated is something to wonder about. And will there be a staff changeover? Are longtime editor David McDonnell, managing editor Alan Dart, and art director Heiner Feil out of the picture?For those of you not in publishing, you might feel tempted to be skeptical about the allusion to the state of the economy and think it's only an excuse, but the economy is very bad for publishing, and the printing and distribution infrastructure in this country for periodicals has -- in my humble opinion -- basically broken down. Even my own magazine has combined issues for this next year to bring our frequency down from 12 to 10 times, saving a lot of money in the process.
The Starlog.com report does state that the final issue in this run of Starlog will be available on its web site in digital format, which is a good move. It is a "modern" thing to do for a magazine that once called itself "the magazine of the future." But on a selfish angle, it's also what I've always wanted from magazines I've liked that have closed up shop (er, temporarily). In addition, the entire run of the magazine will be digitally available on the site at some point in the future, and that's also exciting news.
With the recent relaunch of Starlog.com, there's reason to hope that the outcome for the magazine/brand will be positive and bright, and I'm looking forward to it. There are many ways to launch/relaunch/continue a print magazine today, including one of my personal favorites, the HP-run MagCloud (basically a print-on-demand magazine that's no cost to the publisher). There are also magazines that are distributing only digitally (or digitally in addition to print). Publishers will have to decide whether the persistence of a print magazine on a person's coffee table or bedside can be replicated by an online-only product (and hence I think MagCloud may offer a good future, especially if they can bring down their high per-page costs). But that's their calculation to make.
As for me, I'll just keep anticipating the future.
April 10, 2009: Update.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
As I said: What Distributors Should Fear
The shift is already happening. I've written here and elsewhere before that I believe the biggest losers in the technological tsunami washing over the periodicals business will be distributors, not publishers. The publishers will still be able to make their magazines and distribute them digitally; the distributors are having their expensive business model fall apart around them. And now I've found a company that's making this shift happen.
It's called MagCloud, and it's a great first step. It's a service used by publishers (many of them small publishers who couldn't even dream of having the capital to publish a print magazine and get it distributed the traditional way) who upload their magazines in PDF format. MagCloud then does a print-on-demand service, printing the magazines and mailing them to readers as requested.
The per-issue cost is high (20 cents per page plus postage, plus whatever income the publisher would like to earn), but other than that, this is exactly what I have been talking about. It actually increases the ability of people to publish, to publish what they want in their own voice and design, and it drastically cuts production costs (which makes me wonder if some small publications that actually do have budgets might be able to take a portion of the money they're saving by not printing and mailing and/or going through the newsstand and use that savings to subsidize the mag's purchase price on MagCloud; they might still come out ahead of where they are now, financially).
Any of you using MagCloud? What are your experiences and feedback?
It's called MagCloud, and it's a great first step. It's a service used by publishers (many of them small publishers who couldn't even dream of having the capital to publish a print magazine and get it distributed the traditional way) who upload their magazines in PDF format. MagCloud then does a print-on-demand service, printing the magazines and mailing them to readers as requested.
The per-issue cost is high (20 cents per page plus postage, plus whatever income the publisher would like to earn), but other than that, this is exactly what I have been talking about. It actually increases the ability of people to publish, to publish what they want in their own voice and design, and it drastically cuts production costs (which makes me wonder if some small publications that actually do have budgets might be able to take a portion of the money they're saving by not printing and mailing and/or going through the newsstand and use that savings to subsidize the mag's purchase price on MagCloud; they might still come out ahead of where they are now, financially).
Any of you using MagCloud? What are your experiences and feedback?
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