Hey Jim!

Sorry but no offense intended.........I have not published a magazine but I am certainly involved with advertising, marketing and pre-press issues. I don't have the issues from the beginning but the first few that I remember were not good quality issues with regards to layout and photography. It just hadn't found a layout and direction yet. Layout is the magazine's personallity. My wife has also been in publishing for 20+ years and had some comments.

I hope the magazine comes back because it really was starting to be something!!!

Not sure if we can make the Spring Poker run this year......are you still thinking about the San Diego thing? I haven't heard crap from Wayne (SCOPE) and he said he was going to call you.

Out first issue was $10,000 for 5000 issues and we had about 1500 subscriptions. It got better per issue as the numbers went up and then our mailing costs went up as we tried different things to get the issue thru the mail intact. Lots of complaints about covers being ripped off, ect.

The biggest nut to crack is distribution, just to get it on the news stands takes lots of cash. Yup, you pay the distributors to get it in the stores and if you would like to get them in airports and the like? Forget it, 5 to 10 grand up front!

Thats whats so great about the net, we can all publish what we want and do our own advertising

Nort,
All in fun :O)

Yes,
I'm planning the "San Diego Bayfair Storm" for Sept 16 thru 19,2010.
Working out the schedule details and hotel costs now. Paradise Point hotel will be the hosting location and we'll be part of the offical Bayfair activities along with POPRA. Should be a great time! I'm already lining up sponsors and a band ect.

I did speak with Wayne yesterday and it's a bummer our two dates conflicted!! Not much I can do as Bayfair weekend is set in stone.

jd how is Casey doing ?? what is he doing these days ??

I for one miss the Magazine and enjoyed it very much

I haven't heard from him in almost a year, last known doing well and focusing on database work for a company in the south east. I too hope he can bring the mag back from the ashes of a lot of burnt bridges.

So what is the short EBM story I remember the mag but do not remember much. My problem is I'm not a publisher, editor, story writer, etc. I do have printing exp. and connections I also have advertising exp. sales of advertising from printing and buying of advertising from other business ventures. (One thing about print advertising is it will always be somehwere meaning once you run a tv spot or radio spot it is gone forever print will be laying somehwere)

I would need to bring the right people together to do this I do know that for sure I know there are some great photographers on here I'm sure some people can write articles.

I am definatly not criticizing what is out there now but I feel there is a need for a different type of mag. Who knows if the demand is there. One problem I can tell you is I can hardly find a boat mag on newstands other than boating (which is not my style) One place I can get PB but I think a big part is getting distribution to these areas. (My hometown is 5 minutes to a lake that has plenty of performance boats but I cant find a mag anywhere around there I have to go an hour away just to find one.

Db71,
I am the creative director for a business magazine here in Charlotte. I am very familiar with the ins and outs of the producing a monthly magazine. I would like to help you out with any particular questions you have relating to time, costs and the actual production process of a magazine.

Here are a few random thoughts and answers to questions that have been brought up in previous posts.

• The first things you need to think about are the circulation of the magazine, the number of pages it will include and the physical size of the magazine. Those are the key factors in figuring out the cost.

• The magazine I work for has a circulation of 20,000. The cost of printing a 48-page publication is around 20K a month and 6K for mailing. And our circulation is primarily in Charlotte. If you want to include national subscribers, the cost is going to increase significantly. Postage is calculated by the weight of the publication x circulation x the areas or zip codes it is mailed to.

• The start-up cost for our magazine was more than $250,000 10 years ago, which I am sure has increased in today’s market, and involved sweat equity as well. Advertisers do not pay in advance; they generally pay 30-90 days after publication.

• If you are printing 10,000 or fewer issues, your printer will most likely use offset printing which will be more pricey.

• As a general rule, at a minimum you should have 40% advertising; that means, you need to sell more than one page of advertising to support two pages of text. It is also tricky to maintain the independence of your content from your advertising—especially in the beginning.

• A large issue with any magazine eventually becomes the content. It is very challenging to fill a publication with new relevant information month after month. You may have enough content initially to get out the first issue, but you need to think long-term. Are your contributors going to be able to provide content month after month…The odds are not in your favor.

• The most important thing to remember when starting, is that the production of a magazine is a full-time job. You cannot produce a successful magazine in a weekend. There is so much more behind the scenes than just throwing in some pictures and dropping in text in a layout program. It is like a jigsaw puzzle each month trying to get everything to line up and balance out, word counts, content issues, and ad sizes to work around. Not to mention all the time it takes to edit articles. You can’t produce a national magazine with typos and run-on sentences.

• As mentioned in previous posts, newspapers and publications are folding countrywide. It was a very tough year for most publications. What we are seeing now is a lot of advertisers that are not paying their bills. You will need to look into some legal representation to make sure that you get paid. Otherwise, the printing bill is coming out of your pockets. And, most printers will require a personal guarantee of printing charges, which means it is your house, too.

There is plenty more to consider, and I am willing to help you out any way I can. I hope that some of this information is helpful. I am not trying to discourage you at all and think you have a great idea. I just wanted to point out some of the immediate issues you will be dealing with and the reality of the magazine business. Please feel free PM me and I will help any way I can. I certainly can get you in touch with a great printer and my publisher would be willing to talk with you if your interested in picking his brain.

Good luck…and I look forward to reading about your progress.

Like the enthusiasm db71 but:

1. This is not the time to start a new magazine.

2. This is definitely not the time to start a new magazine in the performance-boat world.

3. There is one continuously successful consumer publication in the world that says "fu" to advertisers. It's called Consumer Reports. All the rest walk a sometimes delicate line.

4. Unless you are Us or People or something huge, subscription revenues and newsstand sales barely cover the cost of postage.

5. New-boat sales drive advertising in boating publications. "Fix-up-your-existing-ride" publications, however well done, face an uphill battle in securing advertising revenue.

6. The concept has been tried. It was called "Family and Performance Boating." They had a decent run, but they're gone.

Lest you think I am protecting turf as a writer for Powerboat for the past 15 years—and if I had a dollar for every magazine that was going to put PB out of business during those years I'd have about 20 extra bucks—I'm not. I hope you succeed, because healthy publications are indicative of healthy industries. I just want you to be aware of a few basic realities. Best of luck in your endeavor.

How is Pizza man typing since he is "banned"?

I would love to see boat shows on SPEED, like they used to have on Speedvision. I would also love to see a new magazine on performance boats. You could feature personally owned boats and do brief stories and photos (Reader's rides). Catch up to them at poker runs or busy waterways? Stay positive and go for it.

I do not feel that "new boat sales drive advertising" that would be like saying new car sales drive advertising in the car magazines. Now certain formats that will drive advetising like powerboat and in the car world car and driver (which I would consider similar formats)

The advertising thing keeps coming up and understandably the magazines need the money. But upon startup if you can shoulder the printing and mailing and not charge the advetisers much and get results for them the money will be there. You cannot expect to say hey I'm starting a mag this will be the format do you want to spend premium money to advertise.

There could be lots of reasons magazines come and go family and performance boating was the magazine I thought of I liked it. But lost all of my old copies.

I think that the magazines out there now for boating do not fit into the category of what I am thinking. I live within an hour of three lakes that people on this site go to all the time with boats like bajas, fountains, donzi, and many older model things like scarab. I cannot find a boating mag that fits for these people they already have a boat and may be wanting to upgrade performance or interior or paint or even just change thier own oil, or drive oil, etc. I do not feel that it exists it may have at one time but has long went by the wayside. PB sure does not fit for these people I assume because I can only find it at one bookstore.

Maybe there are different ways to get the magazine out there like instaed of wrapping up trying to get subscriptions maybe try to flood newstands as many as possible in certain areas of the country then get subscriptions from there. Instead of dealing with mailing, postage, and potentially mad customers and advertisers before you even start.