Publisher's Corner

From Prague to Paducah, large cities and small towns around the world play host to 4,000 film festivals annually, attracting millions of filmmakers and cinema lovers eager to see their favorite artists unveil their silver screen masterpieces. While Variety and other mass media outlets cover the likes of Cannes and Sundance, only film and festivals magazine covers them all, even the smallest of festivals, spotlighting independent filmmakers who wouldn’t normally attract attention from the mainstream press.

“We were getting a good reputation for the quality of our coverage, so we decided to carry on,” Patmore says. “We opted for a digital format magazine, which happened to coincide with our already planned ‘green issue,’ in which we covered the environmental impact of film festivals and the movie industry. So we thought that would be a good tie-in as we relaunched the magazine in digital format.”

Recognizing the value of print, however, Patmore was hesitant to give it up entirely. When he searched the Web for print-on-demand resources, he found MagCloud.

“I thought it would be a good complementary option to the digital version because we could print with MagCloud without any upfront costs or any minimum orders,” Patmore says. “So we decided to give it a try, and here we are.”

Each issue of film and festivals features a specific theme, including that first environmental issue. Other topics so far have included filmmaking in Australia, Latin America and in Asia, children’s film festivals, microbudget British films and a spotlight on women filmmakers around the world. Thanks to the affordability of MagCloud, Patmore now publishes 10 issues a year instead of the original four.

A small team of writers and regular freelancers, along with guest contributors — usually indie filmmakers, themselves — provide the magazine’s content. Patmore solicits story ideas from them and makes assignments, tapping into each writer’s area of expertise. After editing the incoming pieces, he spends about five days designing the magazine and sourcing the photography. He then uploads the files to MagCloud for the print-on-demand version of the magazine, as well as to Yudu (yudu.com) for the digital version.

“I’m very impressed with MagCloud’s quality,” Patmore says. “I used digital printing for other jobs years ago. The technology has certainly improved. And you can’t beat having a magazine you can hold in your hands. I still feel the best way to read anything is on paper. I also like the archival advantages of print. However, I suspect that at the moment most of our magazine sales are to people who appear in the magazine and want to show it to others.”

And print publications, Patmore has learned, have higher credibility among publicists than Web sites. “It seems that the public relations companies still have far more respect for print — print journalists are always accorded more talent access despite the fact that we now have far more online readers,” he notes. “In those terms, it is important for us to remain in some sort of print format just to ensure we can get the best content for the articles.”

Patmore promotes the magazine by word of mouth, the film and festivals Web site (filmandfestivals.com) and through Facebook. And these days at festivals, instead of handing out free issues, Patmore and his team distribute promotional postcards detailing how to order copies.

The result? “The sales of our print magazine have been very slow to start with, but are increasing,” Patmore says. “And we’ve had nothing but positive feedback for both the quality of the content and the design. Since most of the feedback is coming from film professionals, it’s very heartening.

“The print magazine was never intended to be a major source of income for us, but to serve as an alternative to the digital version,” Patmore adds. “It has certainly turned out to be more profitable than our previous print version, which only lost money. Most of our readers access our free digital version, but we see a growing number of people buying the print-on-demand version.”

Patmore’s advice to aspiring magazine creators: “If you want to do it, then do it — it can be done now almost without any capital outlay,” he says. “But make sure the content is worthy of your intended readers. Quality should be the driving force — well written, grammatically correct articles; good photography and good design with legible, correctly formatted typography. If the design aspect is not good, then it might as well be a Web site or blog.”

Photographer and visual artist Adi Ashkenazi was simply looking for a way for artists to meet, collaborate and share their work when he launched his W25 Magazine Web site (w25mag.com) in late summer 2008. Since then, the site has become a community portal for artists, featuring art, photography, fashion, style and music.

Photographers, illustrators, art directors, musicians and others in the expressive arts register with the site and freely submit their work, as well as their ideas and comments. Known for its edgy, trendy focus, the site became an instant hit — just as Ashkenazi anticipated.

“I was interested in seeing other people’s projects — I think all artists are,” he says. “I created the site as a ‘home’ for all artists. I wanted to show not only well-known artists with proven portfolios, but any artist with an artistic soul. W25 is where art lives and evolves.”

Originally from Tel Aviv, Ashkenazi has made New York City his artistic home since 1998. The magazine’s W25 title comes from his West 25th street address. He began making photographs as a youth, and today shoots commercial and fine photography. His art is featured in exhibits around the world.

It wasn’t long before contributors and visitors to the W25 Magazine Web site began asking for a print magazine — a request that Ashkenazi wanted to fulfill, but had no budget for mass printing.

“I started looking for a print-on-demand solution and found MagCloud just by searching the Web,” he says. “I liked that MagCloud didn’t have any upfront costs and that we didn’t have to commit to any sort of minimum order. I also like the concept of printing based strictly on orders that people place so that we’d never have wasted paper. Keeping our operation green is important to me.”

Ashkenazi asked some artist friends to help him select several unusual fashion photographs and illustrations for the first print issue, which appeared in October 2008 ($12.50). Ashkenazi does all the design and layout himself, and he promotes the magazine through the W25 Magazine Web site, a Facebook group (now nearing 1,000 members) and by word of mouth. He also receives quite a bit of media and art-related blog coverage.

Now, eight issues later, Ashkenazi remains just as pleased with the results as he did from the beginning.

“From the very first proof, MagCloud’s quality has been beautiful,” Ashkenazi says. “I’ve tried a few other vendors just to compare, and they are a far cry from what MagCloud can do.”

Demand for newspapers and general news magazines may be on the decline, but Ashkenazi says magazines like his will continue to grow in popularity. “People like to buy unique magazines and artsy magazines,” he says. “These are not the kind of magazines you read and throw away. These are the kind of magazines you keep and collect.”

And the kind of magazine where artists like to see their work showcased. Ashkenazi receives so many quality submissions each week from all over the world that he’s revised his original bimonthly publishing schedule to a monthly one. He accepts published and unpublished work for consideration, looking primarily for pieces that stretch the boundaries of self-expression.

“I like simple yet sophisticated work, and I’m interested in the way something is presented and the story behind it,” he says. “I wouldn’t publish anyone specifically because of what he or she has done in the past. I just look at the art, itself.”

Ashkenazi notes that the site and magazine require a significant amount of personal time on his part. He includes his own work only occasionally, and never as a leading feature. So why spend so much time promoting others?

“This is a community that I wanted to build — I get a lot of satisfaction from it,” Ashkenazi says. “I receive emails from artists all the time, thanking me for sharing their art. They’ll say something like, ‘I was so down and something nice finally happened when you published my work.’ It makes me feel really good.”

Ashkenazi often suggests MagCloud to other artists for use as a promotional tool. “Putting portfolios together costs a fortune these days,” he says. “But with MagCloud, you can put together an issue of your work and submit it to your clients every few months. It’s an amazing niche in the market.”

Ashkenazi is confident that W25 Magazine will continue to grow, and that he’ll eventually hire staff members and attract advertisers. That MagCloud makes the print process so easy, he says, is reason enough for others interested in publishing to give it a try.

“If you want to make something that people will buy, why not do it?” he says. “And with MagCloud, it doesn’t cost you a dime. If W25 Magazine starts getting, say, 50,000 orders, I will consider other options. But for now, print-on-demand is perfect, and MagCloud delivers the best quality out there. It makes everybody happy.”

On Jan. 11, 2000, Noah Kalina, then 19, began photographing himself in the same pose with the same expression every day. In 2006, he posted the Noah K. Everyday project on YouTube. Within a week, 1 million viewers watched as Kalina’s face— and fashions —changed via a fast-moving, six-minute montage of six years of daily photos shown in sequential order. (12 million have viewed the video, to date.)

Kalina became a cyber sensation, which led to international media coverage, celebrity appearances and commercials and, in perhaps the highest form of flattery, seeing his video parodied in an episode of The Simpsons.

Today, the Brooklyn-based freelance photographer is frequently on assignment for New York Magazine, Blender, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Forbes, VH1, MTV, Sony, Neiman Marcus and other high-end clients, photographing fashions, musicians, interiors and any number of advertising campaigns.

While Kalina takes great pride in all of his work, his collection of images from a popular T-shirt campaign are among his favorites — so much so that he began looking for ways to publish them aside from their commercial use.

“I’d been photographing this particular model for more than three years, and there was just something I saw in the photos,” Kalina says. “The images were used for advertising, but I couldn’t stand not to use them for something else. I wanted to find a place to put them — a place where they’d fit.”

Kalina was hoping to find some casual and accessible medium — even something that would allow him to experiment a bit. When he came across the MagCloud Web site, he recognized right away that a print-on-demand magazine would be the perfect vehicle. “I especially liked the fact that MagCloud had no set-up fees,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about selling a minimum amount of magazines. Plus, it’s got me thinking of project ideas that I can pull off in only a few months.”

Kalina decided to give MagCloud a try, with the idea that each issue would center on a single theme or concept. He enlisted Jeffrey Docherty, one of his favorite art directors, to create the design. “I went over to Jeffrey’s house and said, ‘We’re making a magazine,'” Kalina recalls. “He created the Kalina logo and designed the whole magazine. It took just a couple of hours of design and tweaks, and then we had what we wanted.”

With that, the first issue of Kalina, titled Why Wouldn’t You Love Me?, was born. The 60-page issue, featuring those favorite model photographs, came out in February 2009 ($17), with Bean, a 44-page issue devoted to photographs of Kalina’s cat, following in April ($12). He plans to publish a new issue every two to three months.

Kalina promotes the magazine by email, his blog (blog.noahkalina.com), Twitter, Facebook and his Flickr site (www1.flickr.com/photos/noahkalina). He also created a Kalina Magazine site (kalinamagazine.com) where visitors can view sample pages before clicking over to the MagCloud site to purchase copies.

Not surprisingly, Kalina’s promotional efforts spread virally, with other bloggers and social media users helping him get the word out as each issue becomes available.

Most buyers of the magazine are existing followers of his photography, but Kalina believes those interested in art and photographs in general will be attracted to the magazine, as well. The print medium, he says, is a perfect complement to his online popularity — especially with the high print quality that MagCloud delivers.

“People still like objects and they like to collect things,” he says. “I’m a fan of photography as much as I am a photographer, myself. I like to collect photography books and prints, especially by artists who strike a particular chord with me. I think most people who enjoy art are like that.”

Kalina finds the magazine a useful promotional tool, too. He mails copies to specific photography editors and art directors he’s worked with in the past — or would like to work with in the future, using magazine sales proceeds to cover the postage costs.

Kalina’s advice for other artists thinking of creating a magazine?

“I get asked that a lot — there’s really not a right way or a wrong way to do anything in the art world,” he says. “Make the work that you like, and if you like it and put it out there, chances are other people will like it, too. These days, most things will work. You just have to devote some time to it. It doesn’t hurt to try new things.”

To prepare for an upcoming issue, Kalina plans to reach out to other artists he likes and invite them to contribute. He’ll then select his favorites for publication.

“I can see Kalina evolving into an open magazine and making other photographers part of this,” he says. “One of the things I love about MagCloud is that it’s given me a new medium to think about. And I think it’s inspired a lot of people to look into magazine self-publishing and try it for themselves.”

Kalina, by the way, continues to photograph himself. While fans clamor for more of the Noah K. Everyday project in video form, the daily self-documentarian has yet to commit to a second installment. But he doesn’t rule it out.