I'm Shrinking

A couple years ago, I complained on this blog about periodicals that published miniature versions of their magazines even while they continued to publish the normal-sized versions of their magazines. It seems to be a thing that fashion magazines are doing, for no reason I can figure out.

And yet, here I am today, to show off the new miniature version of my print-on-demand digital magazine Galaxis. A little background: I use issuu.com, an online digital publications platform. On Issuu, people can publish, distribute, and read digital magazines, all displayed wonderfully in high-quality formats that even replicate the visual appeal of a physical magazine. At the same time, I use MagCloud, an online print-on-demand digital publications platform created by HP, to distribute my magazines to anyone who might wish to purchase a hard copy. Print and digital: friends, not enemies.

But upon logging into my Issuu account recently, I noticed a new option, one only available for me to use on my own publications: I could order a print-on-demand hard copy. Among the options were to have the publication perfect-bound (with a square, glued spine instead of staples), color or converted to grayscale black-and-white, and even to shrink the publication and print it in a smaller format. I chose the latter, with color covers but converting the full-color interior of the second issue of Galaxis to black-and-white.

The mini-Galaxis arrived a few weeks later, sent from Europe, where Issuu is based. (See photo above.) It looks fantastic. It is still a ridiculous extravagance to have a mini version of a full-sized magazine, but since my digital magazines are largely a self-indulgent extravagance anyway, I'm pleased to have it.

I continue to believe that these digital platforms are great steps along the way to reinventing and saving magazines (in both printed hard copy form and digital form), but for now, the per-page cost is simply too high for someone to launch a commercial magazine through the print-on-demand options. And launching a commercially successful magazine (in print and digital) is my goal. MagCloud charges about 20 cents per page, which adds  up pretty quickly to eye-popping prices; Issuu's print-on-demand service is even more expensive.

I still think that the long-term resolution will involve greatly evolved print-at-home capabilities, but for most people, that would be science fiction. Hence, I love it.

• View and even download the digital editions of my Galaxis and Magma magazines.

            or

• Purchase print editions of Galaxis and Magma from MagCloud's print-on-demand service.

Facebook and Orly Taitz and Chicago? Take the W2W News Quiz

Take my Week to Week news quiz over at Huffington Post San Francisco to see how much you know about the big events in the news.

This was a week in which Iran announced a social media strategy, of a sort; an entire political movement admitted defeat; boxers fought outside the ring and demonstrated why we don't ask them about anything other than boxing; and Chicago-style politics erupted in its usual sharp-elbowed, humorously nutty way.

Find out how much you know about things, and see if you can improve upon your score from last week.

Take the quiz

We're No. 2

According to the IMF and the CIA, in 2011 the GDP of the European Union was about $17.5 trillion and the GDP of the United States was about $15.1 trillion.

Digital Nomad

Anastasia Ashman Writer, Producer, Author
(Tales of the Expat Harem), Co-Creator of
Global Niche (photo: Steven Fromtling)

Website gremlins prevented me from posting this link to a profile I wrote in the April 2012 edition of Marina Times. It's a look at Anastasia Ashman, an old friend and former colleague from my Internet World magazine days. She has turned her interests into a successful "global niche" of creative souls:

Digital Nomad
Anastasia Ashman merges social media and global citizenship
By John Zipperer 

Some people lose themselves in the world. Anastasia Ashman turned herself into a tour guide to help people find themselves. A Berkeley native, Ashman’s life has taken her around the world, from the development hell of Hollywood to the ruling circles of Malaysia to the ancient streets of Istanbul. Now she’s back in the Bay Area, recently taken up residence with her husband in Russian Hill, and she’s able to say, “We didn’t come here knowing that much about what’s going on in San Francisco. We came here with the intention of finding out and treating it like a foreign country.”  

Foreign country? To a woman who grew up across the Bay?  

It’s a disconnect between location and identity that is intentional on her part ...

Read the entire article

Start Making Sense

The first panelists for Week to Week (from left):
Larry Gerston, Debra J. Saunders and Michael Fox
Photo: Steven Fromtling

Some website problems prevented me from posting this column last month, but you can now read my Marina Times Zippy column from the April 2012 issue:

ZIPPY
Start making sense
By John Zipperer 

Blame or credit Dorothy Crain. 

I was a teenage political junkie and Dorothy Crain – a longtime family friend – fed my habit by directing me out of the schoolyard-level discussions and arguments toward adult discussions of current events. While I was still in junior high school, she gave me a subscription to The New Republic, which became my political bible throughout the 1980s. When I visited the magazine’s offices in 1991, it was a tiny bit like touring Rome or Jerusalem. 

Nerd, I know.

Read the entire article

The Living Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge from the south side. Photo: Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

A feature events guide article of mine from the current edition of Marina Times:

The Living Bridge
Anniversary Events
May is full of things to do, see, and hear to celebrate the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary By John Zipperer

Three quarters of a century can change a lot, but they can also hide a lot, adding a gloss of fame and affection for what was a very controversial project. That’s the case for the Golden Gate Bridge, the iconic link between Marin and San Francisco that is the most famous visual shorthand for illustrating the city by the bay. Today, it ranks with the Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument, Sears Tower, and the St. Louis Arch as beloved symbols of specific cities and even representatives of the spirit of the country at large.  

Considering its modern fame, how many people know that the 1920s saw a vigorous debate within the Bay Area over whether the bridge should be built at all?

Read the entire article 

Blond Roots

My latest column in the Marina Times:

ZIPPY  

Blond roots

The Marina doesn’t deserve its rep

By John Zipperer 

Can you judge a neighborhood by its enemies? If you read what some people are saying online about the Marina, you can be forgiven for expecting the Marina to be a Beverly Hills-wannabe neighborhood filled with Stepford Wives. The mildest might be SFGate, which says that the Marina District’s “apartment buildings, shops and restaurants seem to be bursting at their seams with beautiful, young and fit 20- and 30-somethings.” Hardly sounds like hell on earth. But apparently it does sound like that to other reviewers ...

Read the entire article

Putin! Gay Marriage! Romney! Take My Latest News Quiz

It's been quite a week. Putin is playing hard to get; Obama's making the most of a Biden announcement; Mitt Romney's dealing with more men-behaving-badly behavior in his past. It's been that kind of a week.

See how up-to-date you are: Take my latest Week to Week news quiz on Huffington Post San Francisco.

Now I Really Believe in Evolution

New bumper sticker idea: "I believe in evolution, and I vote"

Because.

4,000 and counting: Galaxis Science Fiction and Science

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

This morning I woke up to a milestone – no, that's not something a doctor needs to remove. It's a marker of achievement. This morning's milestone was 4,000, the number of people who have read or sampled my all-digital magazine Galaxis.

Yes, 4,000 people is a small group compared to the tens of thousands or millions of big magazines. But for a magazine entirely written, designed, produced, and marketed by one person – me, with the exception of the cover painting – I think 4,000 is a good number for now.

"For now" because that number keeps growing. Have you read Galaxis? If you're into science and science fiction, you might want to take a look. (And if you're really into paper editions, you can purchase a print-on-demand copy from MagCloud.) Except for the print-on-demand edition, Galaxis is free to read online or even download to your computer/smartphone/tablet/whatever. Just look for the download link or icon.