We’ve recently been convinced to try our hands at magazine publishing. Several of our clients have expressed desires to publish information that benefits various niche markets, and asked for our assistance in doing so. While we are not actually getting into the print business, we have long been thrilled by the prospects presented by Hewlett-Packard’s relatively new MagCloud service, which prints magazines on demand. The gist of this service is that an budding publisher with the right skill set could put together a magazine which appeals to a niche market and make it available through the MagCloud service. Anyone who orders a copy of the resulting magazine will have it custom printed for them. In short, the MagCloud service eliminates the need for long print runs and warehousing of merchandise. The magazine does not exist until someone orders it, and then it is printed and mailed to them.
The most exciting prospect, in our opinion, where MagCloud is concerned is the option to make the magazine available for download to the growing iPad market. At the moment HP does not allow publishers to charge for the iPad download, but it should be obvious what a powerful marketing tool this could be.
This is what we’ve been recommending to our clients. As per their requests, we have agreed to allow these magazines to be published under the auspices of Windhaven Network for continuity. Our creative input will be “hands-off” for the most part. As ever, our goal here is to provide the tools necessary for our community of clients and artists to reach their prospective audiences. This is a large step in that direction.
