Yesterday I took part in a debate about digital magazines at the London College Of Communications. The last time I was there it was the London School Of Printing.
These debates are usually dominated by CEOs of major publishing companies who have to make optimistic predictions without really having a clue what they're talking about.
This was different because all the panellists had sufficient experience of actually producing magazines in both paper and digital formats to have shed most of their illusions.
Interestingly, nobody even used the words "bells and whistles", which is the term industry people use to describe the "feature-rich" iPad magazine apps which got all the attention when the medium first appeared. Everybody seemed to regard them as an irrelevance.
Afterwards I was talking to Adam Banks, the editor of Mac User. This used to have a staff of thirteen. It's now produced by Adam from his home in Newcastle. That's both paper and tablet editions. Fortnightly. Edited, commissioned, laid out and subbed by one, clearly very energetic man. I asked him if he found he got things done more quickly because he was doing them on his own. He said he did.
We could see an explosion of self published magazines just as we have with e-books and self published novels on Amazon.
ReplyDeleteNot an easy task though! I publish Your Town Centre with the help of a freelance designer. She is good at it, I am not.
Plans are being put in place to move to a digital tablet edition.
The way to go?
Inspired to bring back The Word from your back bedroom?
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